Copenhagen Getting Ready for COP15 Protests

10.12.09

The Trade and Cli­mate Car­a­van [more] will final­ly arrive tonight to Copen­hagen [report], mean­while hun­dreds of activists are already in town putting the final touch­es to dif­fer­ent aspects of the mobil­i­sa­tions [2]. Police also seem to have stepped up their activ­i­ty, and in a move appar­ent­ly designed to harass pro­tes­tors they raid­ed the Ragn­hildgade acco­mo­da­tion space in the ear­ly hours of 9th Decem­ber [Fea­ture | Press Release], a few days after a raid at activist hous­ing in Tegl­hol­men.

COP 15 gears logo10.12.09

The Trade and Cli­mate Car­a­van [more] will final­ly arrive tonight to Copen­hagen [report], mean­while hun­dreds of activists are already in town putting the final touch­es to dif­fer­ent aspects of the mobil­i­sa­tions [2]. Police also seem to have stepped up their activ­i­ty, and in a move appar­ent­ly designed to harass pro­tes­tors they raid­ed the Ragn­hildgade acco­mo­da­tion space in the ear­ly hours of 9th Decem­ber [Fea­ture | Press Release], a few days after a raid at activist hous­ing in Tegl­hol­men.

Mean­while protests have already start­ed in Copen­hagen. On the open­ing day of Cop15 there was a Die-in protest at the Bel­la Cen­ter along with many inter­ven­tions from dif­fer­ent goups demand­ing Cli­mate Jus­tice. Nao­mi Klein spoke at the open­ing event of the Kli­mafo­rum, say­ing “Let’s not restrict our­selves to polite march­es and for­mu­la­ic pan­el dis­cus­sions” [report + video]. The sec­ond day of Cop15 saw protests by African groups and oth­ers fol­low­ing the leek­ing of the so-called ‘Dan­ish text’[2].

On wednes­day, the Sum­mit nego­ti­a­tions were sus­pend­ed after inter­ven­tions by Tivalu and oth­er small Island states and their sup­port­ers, while youth activists took over a live web­cast of cli­mate change denial.

Infor­ma­tion about the intend­ed polic­ing of the Dan­ish bor­ders is also becom­ing clear­er. Borderwatchcop15 reports about police con­trols on the motor­way near Flens­burg, as well as reports of coach­es get­ting into Copen­hagen being stopped and searched. But this is not dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from trav­el­ling to Copen­hagen, nor is it stop­ping activists from set­ting up infra­struc­ture in the city itself: the Be The Media / Indy­media Media Cen­tre has now been set up and it is open for busi­ness, a First Aid Cop15 group has been set up, as well as Street Medics, a Trau­ma Sup­port Group [more], info­points and acco­mo­da­tion [see google map 1,2].

For more cov­er­age see: Cli­mate Jus­tice Chron­i­cle News­pa­per | Democ­ra­cy Now! Broad­cast­ing Dai­ly | OneCli­mate

See also: