14/12/09: Tar Sands, No Borders protests & incursion into Christiania — updated

For lat­est reports see: Indy­media Time­line 14th Decem­ber 2009
Pre­vi­ous days’ report­ing: 10th, 11th, 12th & 13th Decem­ber 2009 

Fol­low­ing on from the actions from Hit the Pro­duc­tion and Via Campesina of the 13th Decem­ber, the day has start­ed with a protest at the Cana­di­an Embassy in Kris­ten Bernikows Gade about the Cana­di­an Tar Sands [report]. At the same time a group of inter­na­tion­al activists staged a protest against the Inter­na­tion­al Emis­sions Trad­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (IETA) who were hav­ing their annu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in cen­tral Copen­hagen. [report & pics]

Then at 11AM a NO BORDERS demon­stra­tion meet­ing at Israel Plads, Vester­bro­gade, has pro­ceed to march to the via Nørre Voldgade and Gothers­gade, where around 1,500 pro­tes­tors formed a sol­id block enclosed by peo­ple with arms linked in front of the Dan­ish Min­istry of Defence at Hol­men­skanal 42, near Hol­mens Bro. Speech­es were giv­en around the fact that “Cli­mate Change is an issue in terms of migra­tion because the Glob­al South is suf­fer­ing and the bor­ders are try­ing to repress them”. The protest then crossed Hol­mens bro bridge and moved on to Slot­splads where it con­tin­ued as a sol­id bloc.

In Slot­plads the demon­stra­tors suc­ceed­ed in unteth­er­ing a large orange bal­loon adver­tis­ing the COP15 process. [video] The police strug­gled to keep it tied down, but it was even­tu­al­ly lib­er­at­ed. The police then moved in and most of the crowd dis­persed, although some were trapped there by a police ket­tle. Even­tu­al­ly the crowd man­aged to break out of the ket­tle and crossed Knip­pel Bro onto Torvs­gade. The main body of the demo then moved towards Chrs­tia­nia fol­lowed by a large num­ber of riot police who even­tu­al­ly left the demo alone. Once the demo arrived at Chrs­tia­nia the crowd dis­persed in high spir­its.

See video reports direct from the demo:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11| Pho­tos: 1 | 2 | 3

For lat­est reports see: Indy­media Time­line 14-12-2009 | Oth­er time­lines: Motkraft Den­mark (en), Motkraft Swee­den (en) | La Haine (sp)

The morn­ing’s protest at the Cana­di­an Embassy was called by the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, the Rain­for­est Action Net­work, the Coun­cil of Cana­di­ans, the Indige­nous Peo­ples Pow­er Project, and UK Tar Sands Group to protest about the plan­et’s most destruc­tive indus­tri­al project, which is destroy­ing the habi­tat and cul­ture of Cana­di­an First Nations peo­ples whilst tip­ping Canada’s car­bon foot­print com­plete­ly over the edge.

News is also com­ing out of the offi­cial Sum­mit. The BBC is report­ing that the “nego­ti­a­tions at the UN Cli­mate Sum­mit have been sus­pend­ed after devel­op­ing coun­tries with­drew their co-oper­a­tion” [full arti­cle] The G77 chief nego­tia­tor Lumum­ba Di-Aping explained the lat­est devel­op­ment with the fol­low­ing state­ment: “The pres­i­dent of the COP (Dan­ish cli­mate min­is­ter Con­nie Hede­gaard) is absolute­ly com­mit­ted to vio­late any demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es”.

After a long day of demon­stra­tions against the Cana­di­an Tar Sands, and the issues of cli­mate change and migra­tion activists have been tear-gassed and arrest­ed by police while attend­ing an evening par­ty.  The police appear to be try­ing to wear down street-lev­el oppo­si­tion through con­stant offen­sive action against activists. 

In the ear­ly evening Nao­mi Klein addressed a Reclaim Pow­er par­ty in Chris­tia­nia. Lat­er in the evening, in unclear cir­cum­stances, the police arrived with a water can­non whilst a bar­ri­cade had been built and fired tear gas [reports 1 | 2]. The sit­u­a­tion spi­ralled, street fights broke out and the police entered Chris­tia­nia, mak­ing numer­ous (200+) arrests [Pho­to 1 | 2 | 3] [Video 1 | 2 | 3].

Despite the suc­cess­ful protests of 14th Decem­ber, where activists were able to march through the streets with­out mass arrests, it seems it is effec­tive­ly ille­gal to pub­licly voice oppo­si­tion to emis­sions trad­ing, car­bon mar­kets, and oth­er “solu­tions” to the prob­lem of cli­mate change in Copen­hagen.  Over 1500 peo­ple have now been detained, arrest­ed, beat­en, tear-gassed, pep­per-sprayed, and pur­pose­ful­ly held in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures for voic­ing their oppo­si­tion. Despite this peo­ple remain com­mit­ted to show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the glob­al south and tak­ing direct action.