Category: Action Reports

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)

15th Decem­ber 2009

The Resis­tance is Ripe Agri­cul­ture protest start­ed today at 12pm and has marched through the cen­tre of town under a ban­ner read­ing “Food Cli­mate Jus­tice, not Cli­mate Change” [pic]. Hun­dreds of peo­ple stopped out­side the Net­to super­mar­ket for speech­es about the impor­tance of food sov­er­eign­ty and the links between cli­mate change, agri­cul­ture and exploita­tion of peo­ple.

See Indy­media Time­line | Mod­kraft Time­line [en] | icop15 on Agri­cul­ture action

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Pre-event press release:

To farm­ers around the world the false solu­tions that are pro­posed in this cli­mate sum­mit are as much a threat as drought, tor­na­does and new cli­mate pat­terns.

At this moment the Unit­ed Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UNFCCC) is dis­cussing how to include farm­land into CO2 emis­sion trad­ing. To high­light that this is a false solu­tion we will hit the street on the 15th of Decem­ber.

Bente Hes­sel­lund of the Dan­ish CJA: ‘In spite of the urgency of the cli­mate cri­sis the UNFCC process fails to ques­tion an eco­nom­ic mod­el that is based on infi­nite growth on a finite plan­et. Gov­ern­ments have done noth­ing to move beyond set­ting up mar­ket mech­a­nisms to com­bat the cli­mate cri­sis. These mech­a­nisms are not aimed at push­ing back the use of fos­sil fuels or green­house gas emis­sions in the indus­tri­al coun­tries. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of includ­ing agri­cul­tur­al land into CO2 emis­sion-trad­ing is one of the false solu­tions to cli­mate change. It can lead to farm­ers being forced into depen­den­cy of agro-indus­tri­al projects. Instead, agri­cul­ture needs to be removed from the prof­it-dri­ven mar­ket in order to devel­op a rad­i­cal­ly eco­log­i­cal food sys­tem that cools down the plan­et.’

To make clear that large scale indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture aggra­vates cli­mate change rather than solve the cli­mate prob­lem, Cli­mate Jus­tice Action (CJA) is organ­is­ing a demon­stra­tion in Copen­hagen on the 15th of Decem­ber. Our mot­to is “Food Sys­tem Change, not Cli­mate Change”. CJA is one of the net­works that active­ly mobilis­es the crit­i­cal voic­es around the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit.

The agri­cul­ture man­i­fes­ta­tion will be tak­en to the streets of Copen­hagen, call­ing atten­tion to the pos­i­tive alter­na­tive that non-com­mer­cial, organ­ic agri­cul­ture for human needs offers. In a cre­ative man­ner, the atten­tion will be drawn to com­pa­nies that are respon­si­ble for the indus­tri­al food mod­el. Will it be a block­ade on the Mon­san­to premis­es or do the agri­cul­ture activist have some­thing else in store? Let your­self be tak­en by sur­prise on one of the many stops on their way through town.

To farm­ers around the world the false solu­tions that are pro­posed in this cli­mate sum­mit are as much a threat as drought, tor­na­does and new cli­mate pat­terns.

In the South, forests are burnt or cut down and small farm­ers are cleared off their land to make way for large scale indus­tri­al mono-cul­tures as soy and maize to sup­ply the Euro­pean inten­sive live­stock breed­ers. In fac­to­ry farms, mil­lions of ani­mals are fat­tened as fast as pos­si­ble, cre­at­ing vast amounts of dung and methane and con­sum­ing a great deal of ener­gy.

Stim­u­lat­ing agro­fu­els and bio-plas­tics to com­bat the cri­sis will only increase the pres­sure on the peo­ple cur­rent­ly liv­ing from the land. Already in the devel­op­ing coun­tries large areas of land are grabbed by multi­na­tion­als, small farm­ers and indige­nous peo­ple dri­ving off their ter­ri­to­ries.

‘Small scale, organ­ic agri­cul­ture remains the best way to com­bat hunger, mal­nu­tri­tion and the food and cli­mate cri­sis.’ argues activist Flip Vonk of Cli­mate Jus­tice Action (CJA) and part time farm hand on an organ­ic farm. ‘Native seeds offer the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for adap­ta­tion to cur­rent and future changes in the cli­mate. Sus­tain­able local food pro­duc­tion costs less ener­gy, makes us inde­pen­dent from import­ed ani­mal foods, cap­tures CO2 in the soil and improves bio­di­ver­si­ty.’

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Ear­li­er in the day activists protest­ed at an exclu­sive meet­ing between busi­ness and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters organ­ised by The Cli­mate Group, an inter­na­tion­al lob­by group who rep­re­sent busi­ness inter­ests — there were 17 arrests see report below [ video]

At around 4.45pm, police sud­den­ly arrived unan­nounced at the Can­dy Fac­to­ry (Boljse­fab­rikken) in the city’s north­west dis­trict. In this space, activists from the ‘Bike block’ have been build­ing bicy­cles for tomor­row’s ‘Reclaim Pow­er’ action. Peo­ple inside the Can­dy Fac­to­ry were told to leave the build­ing while it was being searched, and then they were even­tu­al­ly brought back inside, into the library, and their details were tak­en. An activist who was in the build­ing at the time describes the sit­u­a­tion:  “We all got placed in one room, after that the police start­ed to search the place. Peo­ple got reg­is­trat­ed before they were allowed to leave the place. They got some kind of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion-forms, where they not­ed name and address, but also length, hair col­or and which clothes peo­ple where wear­ing”. By 18.15 the search seemed to be over. The coach that police had brought left with one arrestee. Police then blocked off the build­ing with red and white tape and set up spot­lights onto the build­ing. By 19.45 reports came in of police trucks tak­ing away two bicy­cles as well as some com­put­ers [pho­tos | report]. Due to this raid, an indy­media ben­e­fit par­ty had to be can­celled.

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Cli­mate Activists Invade Meet­ing of Senior Politi­cians in Copen­hagen

Sev­en­teen cli­mate activists invad­ed an exclu­sive meet­ing between busi­ness and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters at a Copen­hagen hotel this morn­ing. The meet­ing, called the “Cli­mate Lead­ers Sum­mit” was organ­ised by The Cli­mate Group, an inter­na­tion­al lob­by group who rep­re­sent busi­ness inter­ests in tack­ling cli­mate change.

The activists entered the invite-only meet­ing at the DGI Byen com­plex at 11.00am, with a ban­ner say­ing “Cli­mate Group: Lead­ing us into Cli­mate Chaos”. They invad­ed the foy­er and got to the entrance of the meet­ing room, where politi­cians includ­ing Sego­lene Roy­al of France, First Min­is­ter Alex Salmond of Scot­land, Pre­mier Mike Rann of South Aus­tralia, and Prince Albert of Mona­co [1] were address­ing busi­ness lead­ers and a wide
cross-sec­tion of the glob­al media. The activists dis­rupt­ed the meet­ing with loud chants of “Cli­mate Jus­tice not Cli­mate Prof­its” before being seized by secu­ri­ty guards and police and dragged out of the build­ing. The pro­test­ers were placed on the pave­ment out­side the entrance of the build­ing with their ban­ner. How­ev­er, they refused to remain silent and instead dis­played their ban­ner, chant­ed, sang, and read a pre­pared state­ment to the watch­ing media and mem­bers of the pub­lic. The state­ment [full text at the bot­tom of this press release] began:

“We’re here today because cli­mate change is not a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is already respon­si­ble for 300,000 deaths per year — it’s a glob­al emer­gency, not a chance to make mon­ey. The Cli­mate Group sup­ports car­bon trad­ing as the “solu­tion” to the cli­mate cri­sis, but car­bon mar­kets are noth­ing more than an excuse to con­tin­ue to pol­lute as usu­al, while also prof­it­ing from a whole new mar­ket in hot air.”

The Cli­mate Group meet­ing was tar­get­ed not just for the poli­cies being dis­cussed, but in protest at the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic way in which these kind of events give priv­i­leged access to indus­try lob­by­ists. Accord­ing to one of the pro­test­ers, Sara Horne: “It’s not sur­pris­ing that del­e­gates from the Glob­al South have start­ed walk­ing out of the COP15 sum­mit, when the inter­ests of their peo­ple are being side­lined in favour of busi­ness
inter­ests at cosy back­room meet­ings like this one. The Cli­mate Group is push­ing an agen­da based on prof­its, dubi­ous tech­ni­cal fix­es and failed mar­ket ‘solu­tions’. We need real cli­mate solu­tions — food and ener­gy sov­er­eign­ty, local­i­sa­tion of pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion and full recog­ni­tion of Indige­nous peo­ples’ and local com­mu­ni­ties’ rights. These solu­tions don’t make any prof­it for indus­try, how­ev­er, so you won’t hear them dis­cussed by the Cli­mate Group.”

The activists were then led away one by one by police and arrest­ed. The last pro­test­er was removed at around 12.00 noon.

ENDS

ACTIVISTS’ STATEMENT IN FULL:

“We’re here today because cli­mate change is not a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. It is already respon­si­ble for 300,000 deaths per year — it’s a glob­al emer­gency, not a chance to make mon­ey. The Cli­mate Group sup­ports car­bon trad­ing as the “solu­tion” to the cli­mate cri­sis, but car­bon mar­kets are noth­ing more than an excuse to con­tin­ue to pol­lute as usu­al, while also prof­it­ing from a whole new mar­ket in hot air.

We’re here as part of Cli­mate Jus­tice Action [2]. Like you, we have trav­elled to Copen­hagen because of a deeply-held belief that the world must act now to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change. Unlike you, we believe that the solu­tions to cli­mate change must be based on effec­tive­ness and glob­al jus­tice, not the needs of big busi­ness.

The Cli­mate Group presents itself as a net­work of organ­i­sa­tions who are seek­ing equi­table solu­tions to cli­mate change. Yet with mem­bers from the oil, avi­a­tion, and glob­al finance indus­tries [3], it is hard to believe it is free from vest­ed inter­ests. Rela­tion­ships with prof­it-seek­ing multi­na­tion­als are at the very heart of the organ­i­sa­tion.

We want to high­light the deep hypocrisy of this meet­ing. The Cli­mate Group claim that they want to “rec­on­cile devel­op­ment goals and cli­mate pro­tec­tion”, but car­bon trad­ing is sim­ply a way for the Glob­al North to retain its dom­i­nance and effec­tive­ly pri­va­tise the future of our plan­et. Sim­i­lar­ly, the exclu­siv­i­ty of this meet­ing is an excel­lent exam­ple of the way in which cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions favour the rich coun­tries who have caused the cli­mate cri­sis in the first place. Where are the cosy meet­ings with indige­nous peo­ples and South­ern farm­ers’ move­ments? Why are the voic­es of those most affect­ed by cli­mate change being exclud­ed, while busi­ness gets this kind of exclu­sive access? None of this can “rec­on­cile devel­op­ment goals and cli­mate pro­tec­tion”.

Mar­kets fun­da­men­tal­ly can­not solve cli­mate change. Their pur­pose is to max­imise prof­its, not reduce emis­sions. Putting busi­ness con­cerns, rather than social con­cerns, at the fore­front of solv­ing cli­mate change com­plete­ly ignores the fact that cor­po­ra­tions and eco­nom­ic growth have caused this prob­lem in the first place. There are real solu­tions to cli­mate change, but you won’t find them in this room.”

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1. The full list of atten­dees was: Steve Howard (CEO, The Cli­mate Group); Helen Clark (Admin­is­tra­tor of UNDP); Prince Albert II of Mona­co; Shai Agas­si (CEO of “Bet­ter Place); Alex Salmond (First Min­is­ter of Scot­land); Pres­i­dent Nasheed (Mal­dives); Pre­mier Jean Charest (Que­bec); Pre­mier Mike Rann (South Aus­tralia); Gov­er­nor Jose Sier­ra (San Pao­lo); Min­is­ter Christa Thoben (North Rhine-West­phalia); Pre­dis­ent Jean-Paul Huchon (Ile-de-France); Pres­i­dent Jose Mon­til­la (Cat­alo­nia); Gov­er­nor Jim Doyle (Wis­con­sin); Pre­mier Greg Selinger (Man­i­to­ba); First Min­is­ter Car­wyn Jones (Wales); Pre­mier Gor­don Camp­bell (British Colom­bia); Pre­mier Eva Aari­ak (Nunavut); Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire (Wash­ing­ton); Min­is­ter Kate Jones (Queens­land); Min­is­ter Erik Van Heljnin­gen (South Hol­land); Min­is­ter John Ger­ret­sen (Ontario); Min­is­ter Dr. Markus Soed­er (Bavaria).

2. http://www.climate-justice-action.org/
3. Mem­bers of The Cli­mate Group include BP, Tesco, Vir­gin Atlantic, HSBC and Bar­clays. See http://www.theclimategroup.org.

13 Decem­ber 2009

For lat­est reports see: Indy­media Time­line
Call for wit­ness­es: If you have been pep­per sprayed whilst detained get in touch! +45 528 792 04

The main actions around the COP15 for the 13th Decem­ber are Hit the Pro­duc­tion at the Har­bour, and a Farm­ers action called by Via Campesina. The farm­ers actions starts at 12:30 with an atten­dance of about 300 peo­ple, doing street the­atre about Farm­ers and big busi­ness. At 12:40 hun­dreds of peo­ple march towards the har­bour, with ban­ners read­ing “Our plan­et not your busi­ness”, and giv­ing inter­views about the mass arrests yes­ter­day. Riot police walk along­side them and less than an hour lat­er the police blocks the demon­stra­tion by sur­round­ing it, tak­ing the music truck away [Pho­tos 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Videos 1 | 2] Mass arrests start, and at about 14:45 coach­es arrive to take peo­ple away. Read our eye­wit­ness report and report of first release. By the evening, DRL TV sta­tion reports a total of 257 pre-emp­tive arrests today.

At the same time the Via Campesina march has pro­gressed more peace­ful­ly, but demon­stra­tors found that police lines have their blocked access to the Kli­mafo­rum.  Live video feed of Via Campesina Farm­ers action. It arrived in its final des­ti­na­tion, near the Råhuset info­point, despite the police attempts to dis­rupt it. (Report and press release).

The CJA has issued a con­dem­na­tion of the unpro­voked police actions while oth­er groups are plan­ning on launch­ing an offi­cial com­plaint regard­ing the inhu­man treate­ment of pris­on­ers yes­ter­day (press con­fer­ence). First reports from those released point to sim­i­lar deten­tion con­di­tion: “They offered us no food and water. I am a dia­bet­ic and when I spoke to the police and recov­ered my stuff to take insulin I could not find it. After I was told by the doc­tor there that they did not keep insulin there, the released me.” At 17:00 a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo start­ed out­side the Vål­by deten­tion cen­tre, that has been ket­tled with­in an hour.

For lat­est reports see: Indy­media Time­line | Lis­ten to Cli­mate Radio show for Dec 13.

See Mod­kraft Time­line [eng] | Motkraft.net Time­line [eng] | Nocop Imc Italy | icop15 aggre­ga­tion

Yes­ter­day’s Fea­ture: 100,000 Protest at COP15, Police Make Mass Arrests

Mean­while the offi­cial Sum­mit seems to be falling into fur­ther dis­aray as the days go by. The Guardian news­pa­per reports today that “the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks hit trou­ble tonight as a num­ber of African coun­tries indi­cat­ed their lead­ers would refuse to take part in the final sum­mit unless sig­nif­i­cant progress was made in the next three days.” The main stick­ing points seem to still be about emis­sion cuts, long-term finance, and when poor coun­tries should start to reduce emis­sions. Read full arti­cle here.

CJA press release:
Copen­hagen Police Accused of Vio­lat­ing Human Rights at UN Sum­mit

Sat 12 Dec

Dan­ish police have indis­crim­i­nate­ly arrest­ed hun­dreds of cli­mate jus­tice activists dur­ing a cli­mate change protest made up of 100,000 peo­ple that took place today in Copen­hagen. Ques­tions have been raised about the fact that the arrests occurred in a dif­fer­ent time and place to where some trou­ble had momen­tar­i­ly flared ear­li­er in the day. Jour­nal­ists have been restrict­ed from report­ing at the site of the arrests since 1800hrs.

It’s esti­mat­ed that 100 peo­ple are still being held on the road in extreme­ly cold weath­er, cuffed and forced into seat­ed posi­tions in lines (1). They have expressed severe phys­i­cal dis­com­fort and have no access to water, med­ical atten­tion or toi­let facil­i­ties since 1530hrs. Many activists are report­ed to have uri­nat­ed them­selves while detained on the ground.

An esti­mat­ed 200 have been removed from the site and tak­en away in coach­es. Sev­er­al peo­ple are report­ed to have faint­ed around 1945hrs.

Hel­ga Matthi­assen, who was detained for an hour before being released due to an injury she had recent­ly sus­tained, said, “Of course we’re angry — peo­ple all over the world are angry about being lied to by gov­ern­ments who are mak­ing a cor­po­rate deal at the cli­mate talks, and now when we try to protest against this on the streets we are ran­dom­ly held by police.

“Not only have we been denied the right to protest, but our basic human rights have also been ignored in this ludi­crous, staged police exer­cise. It seems Dan­ish Police have a new mot­to: why just crim­i­nalise pro­test­ers, when you can dehu­man­ise them too?” (2)

ENDS

Con­tact: 0045 5066 9028 (Inter­na­tion­al)
0045 4129 4994 (Dan­ish)
media@climate-justice-action.org

_______________________________________

NOTES TO EDITORS
(1) http://twitpic.com/t7dts
(2) See Hel­ga inter­viewed on TV2 News, 2015 broad­cast http://news.tv2.dk/?channel

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Video

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At the demo in Copen­hagen on the 12.12.09, some demon­stra­tors smashed in the win­dows of the Stock Mar­ket, also the min­istry of for­eign affairs had its win­dows bro­ken.

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Time­line

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COP15 EASIER access to Den­mark and COPENHAGEN

The Dan­ish and Ger­man police forces and the intel­li­gence ser­vices (PET, FE, BND) of both coun­tries, and prob­a­bly also some oth­er coun­tries, “vio­lence ser­vices” has made it more dif­fi­cult to enter Den­mark in order to avoid polit­i­cal activist to enter the coun­try and join the demos at COP15 etc.

BUT, there are more, per­haps, less con­trolled bor­ders to Den­mark, they fol­low below, and also warn­ings against the more con­trolled bor­der cross­ings.

DONT TRAVEL THROUGH:

Copen­hagen Air­port or Bil­lund Air­port

and;

The land bor­der cross­ing at PADBORG, KRUSÅ, in oth­er words AVOID any land bor­der cross­ings in Jyl­land!

TRAVEL BETTER THROUGH THESE CROSSINGS
(so far):

RED ROUTE ONE;
Trav­el to Ros­tock in Ger­many (old DDR), best by train/bus/car, then jump on the fer­ry (SCANDLINES) to GEDSER port in Den­mark, less heavy con­trolled, at the moment.

Then jump on the train/bus to Copen­hagen, takes two hours.

RED ROUTE TWO;
Trav­el to Hels­ing­borg in Swe­den, best by train/bus/car, then jump on the fer­ry (SCANDLINES or HH-fer­ries) to HELSINGØR port in Den­mark, less heavy con­trolled, at the moment.

Then jump on the train to Copen­hagen, takes one hour.

Or take the local train to Hillerød (half an hour) and then the S‑train to Copen­hagen, 40 mint. trav­el time.

RED ROUTE THREE;
Trav­el to Oslo in Nor­way, take the fer­ry direct to Copen­hagen (DFDS).

RED ROUTE FOUR;
Trav­el to Born­holm, then by fer­ry to Køge, then S‑train to Copen­hagen (half hour).

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aggre­gat­ing rad­i­cal news about Copen­hagen

iCOP15

Report your news from the streets of Copen­hagen on http://indymedia.dk.
Report from actions world­wide at http://climateimc.org and/or at you local IMC.
Any feed miss­ing? Check on http://icop15.org/feeds.

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Cli­mate Radio is fil­ing dai­ly audio bul­letins from inside the Bel­la Cen­tre where the most impor­tant talks in human his­to­ry are hap­pen­ing. Dur­ing the sec­ond week we’ll also have reports from the street actions and par­al­lel People’s Sum­mit aka Kli­mafo­rum. Copen­hagen Dai­ly has a run­ning time of 60 min­utes