Category: Action Reports

Since ear­ly this win­ter, Ice­land has been fac­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The three major busi­ness banks have been nation­al­ized, putting their dept on the people’s shoul­ders. Peo­ple have been los­ing their live­long sav­ings, loans have increased and are get­ting sky high (and for sure they already were high enough). 200 peo­ple lost their job, every sin­gle day of Novem­ber and more and more peo­ple are fac­ing the threat of los­ing their hous­es.

Activists vs. the police

Peo­ple are get­ting angry, some of them want­i­ng back the “good old” pros­per­i­ty, while oth­ers and hope­ful­ly the major­i­ty, are real­iz­ing the real cost of cap­i­tal­ism. More and more peo­ple are stand­ing up against cor­rup­tion and demand­ing new form of soci­ety — soci­ety of jus­tice. But every day the cur­rent gov­ern­ment proves that it’s main aim is to save their own and their friend’s ass. A loan from the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has been grant­ed, most like­ly lead­ing to the com­mon after­maths of an IMF loan: the pri­va­ti­za­tion of social sys­tems as the health care and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and more destruc­tion of the Ice­landic wilder­ness.

Week­ly demon­stra­tions

For more than 2 months peo­ple have gath­ered week­ly in a park in front of the par­lia­ment. The first protests demand­ed that the gov­ern­ment would “break it’s silence” about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple were tired of not even being told about what was hap­pen­ing and what the gov­ern­ment was doing about it.

One of the week­ly domon­stra­tions

But soon peo­ple real­ized that it was not enough to ask the gov­ern­ment to speak, so the protests took up anoth­er and more rad­i­cal demand: the resign of the gov­ern­ment and new elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble. The gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly ignored this demand and peo­ple are get­ting more and more angry.

Anar­chists and oth­er rad­i­cal left­ists have come to most of the protests, but not to protest against the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, not to ask the gov­ern­ment for solu­tions, not to ask for new elec­tions, not to ask any mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment or par­lia­ment or any oth­er offi­cial insti­tu­tion to do any­thing to “solve” the cri­sis we are fac­ing. But to spread anar­chis­tic and anti-cap­i­tal­is­tic infor­ma­tion among peo­ple, analyse the prob­lems of author­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism and to encour­age Ice­landic peo­ple to take direct action against the forces of cor­rup­tion.

Burn­ing flag and mon­ey

Burn­ing of bank flags and “hang­ing” of a cap­i­tal­ist

Dur­ing a protest in front of the prime minister’s office in late Octo­ber, the flags of two Ice­landic banks were burned. A group of anar­chists, prob­a­bly the biggest in Ice­landic his­to­ry at that time, shout­ed anar­chis­tic slo­gans, point­ing out cap­i­tal­ism as the real prob­lem. Until then, cap­i­tal­ism seemed to be a ban-word among the pro­test­ers. The flag burn­ing caught the inter­est of for­eign media, e.g. CNN which showed the burn­ing in their news show lat­er the same evening. An event like this had not hap­pened in Ice­land for a long time.

Burn­ing the flag of Lands­ban­ki bank

A week lat­er, a big demon­stra­tion parade went through the cen­ter of Reyk­javík, demand­ing the resign of the gov­ern­ment. Anar­chists, which grew big­ger and stronger every week, joined the march with ban­ners, black flags, leaflets about direct actions, and anar­chis­tic slo­gans. While oth­er pro­test­ers chant­ed “Away with the gov­ern­ment”, anar­chists shout­ed “Nev­er again gov­ern­ment!”

When the parade came down the the park were week­ly speech­es took place, a group of peo­ple climbed a big fence and hung a doll of a cap­i­tal­ist. Again for­eign media cap­tured the per­for­mance on tape and screened it around the world.

Cou­ple of meters away from the park were the protests take place, a Food Not Bombs groups has been giv­ing away food every Sat­ur­day for the last 8 or 9 months. Food Not Bombs has for sure had it’s effect of the walk­ing-by Ice­landers, who are get­ting more curi­ous and inter­est­ed in alter­na­tive solu­tions to the prob­lems of cap­i­tal­ism.

Dur­ing a protest, Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 8th, an anar­chist climbed on top of the par­lia­ment were he hung the flag of Bónus, Iceland’s cheap­est super­mar­ket. The mes­sage was clear since the flag is yel­low with a pink pig on it: “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!” Unlike to the usu­al Ice­landic pro­test­ers, peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed this act and sang along “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!”

Soon hun­dred pro­test­ers sur­rouned­ed the par­li­ment to help the anar­chist to get away from the police, which had already arrest­ed a mate of him. After a bit of a strug­gle with the police, peo­ple man­aged to help the flag-man (like he lat­er became known as) to get down of the roof and de-arrest­ed him more than once. One could feel some change in the air.

Ille­gal arrest

Less than a week lat­er, on a Fri­day night, the police arrest­ed the flag-man. He was in the mid­dle of a research trip to the par­lia­ment, orga­nized by his uni­ver­si­ty, when some par­lia­ment staff rec­og­nized him and called the pigs.

The man had been arrest­ed two years before, for an action with the envi­ron­men­tal direct action cam­paign Sav­ing Ice­land, protest­ing against the build­ing of a big dam, Kárah­n­júkavirkjun, in the east­ern higlands. For this action he had got sen­tenced and fined, but refused to pay the fine and instead insist­ed on sit­ting in jail for 18 days. But after only four days of his jail-sen­tence he was “thrown out” because of lack of space in the prison.

Now, the police stat­ed that the man would have to sit the oth­er 14 days of the sen­tence. The fact is though that the it is not allowed to split the sen­tence like this, and the man was sup­posed to get an announce­ment about fin­ish­ing his sen­tence with at leas 3 weeks notice. This had not been done in his case.

Peo­ple claimed this was espe­cial­ly done by the police, fun­de­men­taly to “take out” an activist who was like­ly to take more actions dur­ing the upcom­ing week­ly demon­stra­tion. So the next day, dur­ing the protest which 10.000 peo­ple had joined, anoth­er protest was announced, this time in front of the police sta­tion, a lit­tle bit lat­er that day.

Riots by the police sta­tion

500 peo­ple came to the police sta­tion and demand­ed that the man would be set free. After a while, no sign of the police was seen and noth­ing looked like the man would be set free. The protest got heat­ed and soon peo­ple had start­ed to break win­dows of the sta­tion and in the end the door of the sta­tion was bro­ken. A group of peo­ple went in were the police wel­comed them with a splash of pep­per spray, with­out even announc­ing it.

The protest got even hot­ter, red paint and eggs were thrown at the sta­tion and on the riot squad which now had formed a chain in front of the sta­tion. A lot of peo­ple were pep­per­sprayed, includ­ing the flag-man’s moth­er and young kids down to 16 years old. In the end, the flag-man was payed out of the prison by an unknown per­son. The flag-man came out were he was cel­e­brat­ed like a hero. He thanked peo­ple for the sup­port but encour­aged peo­ple to use their ener­gy for some­thing else: a rev­o­lu­tion!

The Inva­sion of the Cen­tral Bank

A week after the riots by the police sta­tion, the weeke­ly protest was a lit­tle more chilled. Instead peo­ple hoped for some­thing big tak­ing place the upcom­ing Mon­day, Decem­ber 1st, the day of Iceland’s sov­er­eign­ty.

1st of Decem­ber used to be a free day in Ice­land but cou­ple of years ago the pro­le­tari­at move­ment dis­claimed it´s right. This 1st of May peo­ple were encour­aged not to pay their bills, not show up in work and come to a big out­door meet­ing on a big hill close to the gov­ern­ment offices and the Cen­tral Bank. Few speech­es took place, most of the includ­ing some nation­al­is­tic pif­fle which the rad­i­cals answered with a slo­gan: “No nation­al­ism — Inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty!”

After the meet­ing was for­mal­ly over the word on the street was that more rad­i­cal action was going to take place. Sud­den­ly a big group of peo­ple marched to the Cen­tral Bank and entered the first entrance.

The entrance was com­plete­ly full of peo­ple shout­ing and demand­ing that Davíð Odd­s­son, the chair­man of the Cen­tral Bank board and a for­mer prime min­is­ter, would resign. Few police­men had closed the sec­ond entrance but peo­ple shout­ed at them, asked in “what team” they were in, telling them to join the pub­lic, leave the entrance and let the peo­ple in. Sud­den­ly the police left the entrance, the peo­ple cheered and opened the door to the sec­ond entrance.

Pep­per spray again?

The sec­ond entrance became com­plete­ly full as well as the first one, but behind big glass doors the riot squad had formed a chain of c.a. 30 pigs, armed with shields, clubs and pep­per spray. Again, instead of speak­ing to the peo­ple, the pigs start­ed shak­ing their spray cans, forc­ing to use it against the peo­ple it they would not leave.

The riot squad, ready to strike inside the Cen­tral Bank

Peo­ple start­ed bang­ing on the door, shout­ing slo­gans against the Cen­tral Bank and the police. After a while, when a police offi­cer had sev­er­al times threat­ened to use the pep­per spray, peo­ple decid­ed to sit down peace­ful­ly and not stand up until Davíð Odd­s­son would resign. The action stood over sev­er­al hours and had it’s peaks when peo­ple stood up, lift­ed up their hands to show they were unarmed and chal­lenged the police to leave, open the doors and let the peo­ple bring Odd­s­son out.

When it became clear that Odd­s­son had already left the build­ing the pro­test­ers gave the police an offer: the riot squad would leave and than the pro­test­ers would leave the build­ing. About 30 sec­onds lat­er, the pigs walked back and the peo­ple cheered some kind of a vic­to­ry of the peo­ple.

Into the par­lia­ment

A week lat­er, last Mon­day Decem­ber 8th, thir­ty peo­ple went in to the Ice­landic par­lia­ment, head­ing to the inside bal­cony were the pub­lic is legal­ly allowed to sit, watch and lis­ten to what takes place there. The group announced that the par­lia­ment no longer served it’s pur­pose and the gov­ern­ment should there­for resign right now, the oth­er MP’s should use their time for some­thing more con­struc­tive.

Pro­test­er thrown out by police after telling the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the par­lia­ment

Only two per­sons got to the bal­cony and shout­ed at the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the build­ing. Quick­ly they were bru­tal­ly removed by a police offi­cer, while the rest of the group was stuck in a stair­case inside the build­ing. The par­lia­men­tary ses­sion was delayed and all the MP’s left the room.

Mean­while the pro­test­ers were bru­tal­ly han­dled by secu­ri­ty guards and police, which end­ed up arrest­ing 7 peo­ple, most of them for house­break­ing. But like said before, the pub­lic is allowed to enter the par­lia­ment bal­cony.

Police car­ries a man out after hand­cuff­ing him and rope his legs — “Fas­cist, fas­cists!” the man shout­ed while being car­ried out

The next morn­ing, 30 peo­ple had gath­ered in front of the prime minister’s office were a gov­ern­ment meet­ing was sup­posed to take place. The peo­ple had formed a human chain blockad­ing the two entrances of the house. When min­is­ters start­ed to show up, the police had already arrived and start­ed to try to remove the chain. The peo­ple resist­ed heav­i­ly and read out a state­ment sent out by the group.

The state­ment said that the aim of the action was to “pre­vent the min­is­ters from enter­ing the house and there­fore stop fur­ther mis­use of pow­er. Mon­ey has con­trolled peo­ple on the cost of their rights and the author­i­ties and their cliques have manip­u­lat­ed finance for their own ben­e­fits. That manip­u­la­tion has not entailed in a just soci­ety, just world. Time of action has dawn, because a just soci­ety is not only pos­si­ble, but it is our duty to fight for it.”

With the help of the police, all the min­is­ters got in, but heard the state­ment and were under big pres­sure from the media. They were not pre­pared for ques­tions and came out bad­ly when asked. The gov­ern­ment meet­ing was delayed because of the actions.

Two were arrest­ed, one for enter­ing a police line and the oth­er one for sit­ting in front of the police car which was about to dri­ve the oth­er arrest­ed one to the police sta­tion. More peo­ple sat on the street and it took the police quite a long time to get out of the street. Only when a police offi­cer gave the dri­ver an order to “just dri­ve hard”, the dri­ver did so and near­ly drove over two per­sons.

One of the biggest news­pa­pers in Ice­land, DV, report­ed the bru­tal behavoiur of the police. The paper’s jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er were both attacked by the police, as well as notic­ing when a police punced a pro­test­er in the face, while he lay on the street. Most oth­er media did not dare to report the bru­tal behav­iour.

A left wing web­site, Smu­gan, told about a police offi­cer who was asked by the pro­test­ers if he would have pro­tect­ed Hitler. His answer was sim­ple: “Yes, if it would have been my duty.”

More actions have been announced and it will be inter­est­ing to see what comes next.

http://aftaka.org/