Category: Yorkshire & The Humber

The repres­sion that falls on those who oppose the mafia-like projects of politi­cians is ever more vio­lent.

The Social­ist par­ty com­ing to pow­er hasn’t changed any­thing.

The police, the gen­darmes and the army injure and muti­late as much as ever, maybe even more, surf­ing on the wave of fas­cism that is ris­ing up under the guise of a world eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and thanks to their weapons, becom­ing always more effi­cient with the empha­sis on mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy.

Even more wor­ri­some than con­stant­ly increas­ing war bud­gets is the unwill­ing­ness of cops, gen­darmes, sol­diers and their politi­cian boss­es to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their vio­lence. The omnipres­ence and unre­strained usage of flash­balls, defen­sive ball launch­ers, and explo­sive grenades are some con­crete exam­ples.

The dis­course is also sim­pli­fied, glossed over, and the vio­lence made to seem mun­dane. When we ask the cops in front of us if they are proud to have killed, they smile or threat­en us. One of the police author­i­ties in the Tarn recent­ly affirmed that those who oppose the “forces of order” should expect vio­lence and even­tu­al injury.

And, some days ago, the police killed. Again.

We, who were gath­ered togeth­er in Testet to fight against this death­ly project of the Sivens dam, we lost a friend. In the ear­ly hours of Sun­day, Octo­ber 26th, a few meters from sol­diers of the State, armed and pro­tect­ed by their weapons and shields, Rémi Fraisse was mur­dered by the armed branch of the State.

By the lev­el shot of a mercenary’s grenade, most like­ly aimed at his head, the explo­sive hit between the base of his neck and his shoul­der. This despite that even the inter­nal laws of the armed branch­es of the State for­bid lev­el shots at a cer­tain dis­tance and also for­bid aim­ing at the head, or with some weapons, aim­ing at all.

This was not an acci­dent. It’s even sur­pris­ing that such a dra­ma hasn’t hap­pened ear­li­er. The attack­ing police, gen­darmes, and sol­diers brake their own laws every day (of the evic­tions). We’ve lost track of the knees, hands, stom­achs and heads that have been tar­get­ed. Their extra­or­di­nary and ille­gal vio­lence leaves its trace on all of us, whether phys­i­cal or emo­tion­al. This time it took some­one with it: Rémi Fraisse.

But even if Rémi’s mur­der is head­lin­ing the night­ly news and embar­rass­ing the gov­ern­ment, don’t believe that it’s an excep­tion.

At the end of August, an “ille­gal” migrant died in a car with the BAC (a noto­ri­ous­ly vio­lent under­cov­er police force) while being brought to the air­port. It was almost ten years ago that the teenagers Zyed Ben­na and Bouna Tra­oré died hid­ing in an elec­tric trans­former after being chased there by the police. We’re not even men­tion­ing deaths in war for eco­nom­ic inter­ests, in Mali or else­where…

We’ve stopped count­ing on the charges pressed by those close to the ones mur­dered by an armed branch of the State. None of these tri­als have result­ed in prison sen­tences.

We want rapid and implaca­ble jus­tice for the mur­der­ers in the armed branch­es of the State.

We demand that start­ing now, there is a legal amnesty for all those arrest­ed for their oppo­si­tion to the Sivens dam, who we con­sid­er to be almost polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

We also demand the total dis­ar­ma­ment of the mul­ti­ple armed branch­es of the State, to end the mur­ders, the “mis­takes” and the vio­lence of police, gen­darmes, and mil­i­tary.

Thus we join the call of the ZAD of Notre Dame des Lan­des to demon­strate every­where against police repres­sion on Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 22nd, 2014.

We call upon every per­son and every group that feels con­cerned by the dan­ger rep­re­sent­ed by the State’s police forces to make actions and protest from wher­ev­er they are.

Let’s make Novem­ber 22nd a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al day against the vio­lence of armed branch­es of the State, but let’s not for­get that every day, before and after the 22nd, is a good day to make an insur­gency against the exis­tence of an insti­tu­tion which muti­lates and mur­ders for a “law-based” state and their prof­itable, mafia-like, and dev­as­tat­ing projects.

Indignons-nous !

pro­pos­al–

Where did it come from, the grenade that killed Rémi? Strate­gic pro­pos­al for what comes next.
Rémi was killed by a police con­cus­sion grenade, Sun­day Octo­ber 26th. What hap­pened to him could have hap­pened to any one of us, any­where. Some days lat­er, Thurs­day the 30th, in a north­ern neigh­bor­hood in Blois, a young man lost an eye to a state rub­ber bul­let. Sat­ur­day in Nantes, a demon­sta­tor took a rub­ber bul­let to the face and lost his nose. How many times must his­to­ry repeat itself?

We are not mak­ing demands to State pow­er, for the con­vic­tion of the cop who shot him, or the res­ig­na­tion of a high­er police offi­cial, or even the Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or. For the death of Rémi to res­onate every­where and pro­voke a real move­ment, we pro­pose to orga­nize our­selves local­ly and nation­al­ly against the infra­struc­tures that main­tain order.

These are the infra­struc­tures which make pos­si­ble the ter­ror­ism of the State, which we are con­front­ed with in the “ghet­tos” as well as in our social move­ments. These are the infra­struc­tures which orga­nize the police occu­pa­tion of our ter­ri­to­ries and our exis­tences. It is also them who are deployed as soon as a move­ment of oppo­si­tion or con­tes­ta­tion adven­tures out­side of tra­di­tion­al paths cor­doned off by pow­er­less­ness.

France is an expert in main­tain­ing order, by neu­tral­iz­ing all efforts of peo­ple to rise up/bring them­selves up. It exports glob­al­ly it’s knowl­edge, weapons, and forms to many for­eign police forces. It has also par­tic­i­pat­ed in crush­ing move­ments across the world, as in the insur­rec­tions of the Arab Spring in 2011. Didn’t Michèle Alliot-Marie brag to have pro­vid­ed French exper­tise in counter-insur­rec­tion to the Ben Ali regime? Par­a­lyz­ing the infra­struc­ture of the police is an act which, out­side of the nation­al con­text, sup­ports all those who orga­nize to strug­gle in oth­er places and have to dodge French bul­lets.

The fac­to­ries that make grenades, uni­forms, and equip­ment for the police, their vehi­cles and their tele­vised pro­pa­gan­da, the logis­ti­cal plat­forms that orga­nize food sup­plies for the troops; for us they are all tar­gets. Out­side of occa­sion­al con­fronta­tions or deploy­ments, the con­tin­ued exis­tence of the armed group known as the nation­al police depends on these resources.
The announce­ment that a cer­tain type of offen­sive grenade has been sus­pend­ed will not bring about a “return to calm”. What’s at stake in this move­ment, born on Octo­ber 25th, is dis­arm­ing the police. Flash­balls, tasers, con­cus­sion grenades, have suf­fi­cient­ly muti­lat­ed, injured, or killed in these past cou­ple of years.

We are no longer in the era of Malik Oussekine or Vit­tal Michalon*. Not a sin­gle union, not a sin­gle left­ist orga­ni­za­tion called out for peo­ple to take the streets after Rémi’s death. They are in fact so afraid of the streets, they are reduced to orga­niz­ing vir­tu­al protests like those pro­posed by the Green Par­ty (#occu­py­sivens).

What can we expect from the “Occu­piers” who “con­demn the vio­lence of both sides” by care­ful­ly omit­ting which camp is equipped for war and which has a few cob­ble­stones? That one side kills peo­ple and the oth­er express­es their rage by break­ing win­dows? At a time when the left is decom­pos­ing, when the far right are on the upswing, why is there not a sin­gle reac­tion from left­ist polit­i­cal par­ties, NGO’s, or unions, after this police mur­der?

This week, 90 protests were orga­nized in around 60 cities. We address our call-out to this autonomous pow­er in the mak­ing. The col­lec­tive emo­tion expressed in rage and con­tem­pla­tion is legit­i­mate, but won’t be enough to change the sit­u­a­tion.

We call for a long term strat­e­gy, con­sist­ing of harass­ing and col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on all those who sup­port repres­sion, to dis­rupt all the tech­ni­cal ways which per­mit it to be armed, to move, to feed itself, and more. These objec­tives encom­pass a diver­si­ty of tac­tics that cor­re­spond to the resources and lim­i­ta­tions of groups and indi­vid­u­als. Noise demos out­side police sta­tions and bar­racks, ver­bal harass­ment of patrols, suing the police for injuries, sab­o­tage, street demos; it’s the simul­ta­ne­ous usage of all these tac­tics that will help us to estab­lish a favor­able “rap­port de force” against the police, in our neigh­bor­hoods and in our strug­gles.

A call-out is com­ing soon to orga­nize demos in front of police weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers. A list of strate­gic places will also appear soon. This is a strate­gic propo­si­tion that we are address­ing to all those that are assem­bling, agi­tat­ing, and orga­niz­ing so that the back­lash against this lat­est police mur­der spreads and grows.

*Malik Oussekine was killed by police in the stu­dent strikes of 1986, and Vit­tal Michalon in an anti-nuclear demon­stra­tion in 1977