Reclaim Power! Action at COP15 — updated again

16 Decem­ber 2009
Indy­media action time­line &  live radio stream.

Today is the first day of the min­is­te­r­i­al phase of the COP15 sum­mit, that so far has made lit­tle progress. The Reclaim Pow­er! Action, aims to take over the sum­mit for this one day to turn it into a peo­ple assem­bly (call for action, lat­est press release). Sim­i­lar assem­blies have already been tak­ing place out­side the UN sum­mit for a week, as part of the Klimaforum09 peo­ple’s cli­mate sum­mit with an esti­mat­ed 25.000 peo­ple hav­ing tak­en part in dis­cus­sions.

Ear­ly in the morn­ing, mul­ti­ple march­es tried to make their way to the Bel­la Cen­tre where the COP15 is held. The group meet­ing at Orestad sta­tion (Green) was sur­round­ed by police and some were arrest­ed [pic], but oth­ers man­aged to move towards COP15. A sec­ond block (Blue), of more than 1000 peo­ple, made their way to the Bel­la Cen­ter whilst resisit­ing attempts from the police to break it [Video 1 | 2 | 3 | 4] [Pics 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5] The bike block was blocked by police and redi­rect­ed away. At the same time a group of pro­tes­tors man­aged to get into the area of the COP15-Sum­mit with a raft [pics]

Police have been repeat­ed­ly attack­ing the crowds with baton charges and pep­per spray, as well as arrest­ing pro­test­ers through­out the morn­ing, and arrest­ing medics [pics]. Cor­po­rate media report 200 to 250 arrests [video] Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s arrest of Tadzio Muller after the Cli­mate Jus­tice Action press con­fer­ence, at  more spokes­peo­ple were vio­lent­ly snatched out of the crowd today. At 18:00 a CJA press con­fer­ence will address the arrests of 4 media spokes­peo­ple that aim to lim­it their free­dom of speech.

Mean­while at the COP15 Friends of the Earth, Avaaz and Via Campesina were refused entry despite acquir­ing a sec­ond accred­i­ta­tion. Del­e­gates staged a sit-in protest [pic, video], whilst 200 oth­ers from NGOs, indige­nous peo­ple and the Glob­al South marched out [Pics 1 | 2 | Videos 1 | 2] but police with batons and pep­per­spray pre­vent­ed them from reach­ing the Peo­ple’s Assem­bly. An hour lat­er a protest broke into the COP15 ple­nary with the slo­gan “Cli­mate Jus­tice Now!”, and the Indi­an del­e­ga­tion burned its badges [vid].

The Peo­ple’s Assem­bly took place at mid­day out­side the Bel­la Cen­tre [Pics 1], with­out those from inside the Bel­la Cen­tre — they were pre­vent­ed from get­ting out. After speech­es the assem­bly decid­ed to move towards the cen­tre [vid] of town, while the police have been snatch­ing peo­ple, and block­ing progress inter­mit­tent­ly. 

[ Reports from cor­po­rate media: 1 | 2 | Video of whole Reclaim Pow­er protest day ]

Time­lines Indy­media DK | Motkraft.dk (dk) | Motkraft.net (se, en) | Glob­al Project (it)