Column in: Schwaebisches Tagblatt, June 15th 2007

German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the heads of state and government of the other most powerful industrial countries including Russia for the so-called G 8 Summit in Heiligendamm. The official results of the G 8 Summit are extremely scanty: the completely non-binding declaration on climate protection made the most headlines. Together with ten thousands from Germany and many other EU countries, and from all over the world I participated in the very successful demonstrations, blockades, gatherings in Rostock, Bad Doberan and around Heiligendamm as well as at the Alternative Summit. Everything could have passed off quietly, if some of the police had not escalated the situation continuously. There are increasing indications that the riots at the big and colourful demonstration of at least 80.000 participants on Saturday, June 2nd could also have been started by police provocations. However, participants at the demonstration joined in the escalation, which included irresponsible stone throwing. Many protesters tried to calm the situation. Answering a question at an interview: "It still remains incomprehensible that the police did not intervene when stones were prised out of the pavement with pickaxes in front of the officer's eyes", the police spokesperson Falkenberg replied: "This was also part of the strategy. The normal citizen is amazed but he has not benefitted from a strategical training with the police." The police and probably other state authorities were employing undercover officers. Obviously they were inciting other demonstration participants to violent acts.

The police restricted permitted demonstrations or made them impossible at short notice for unconvincing reasons. There was an allegation that there were rioters among the protesters, even though the police chiefs in charge at the demonstration confirmed that this was not the case. Police units baton charged peaceful demonstrations with water cannons. Several protesters were injured, some of them quite seriously. Again and again, people were arrested arbitrarily (including journalists and doctors), or were banned from the area. People were imprisoned for hours or days in specially constructed detention cages under constant light. Lawyers asked me to inspect these prison cages but the police would not allow this. Lawyers were working under conditions in which normal legal procedures were suspended and justice was made an appendix to the police. To top all this at the Summit, the German army operated at home with armoured reconnaissance vehicles and Tornado fighter planes, which is completely unconstitutional. There never was a de-escalation strategy as the police claimed, this is a blatant lie. What we experienced in and around Rostock was a police state. This will continue if we still let the Minister of the Interior; Wolfgang Schäuble have his way. Together we must fight to prevent the whole republic being turned into a police state. Unfortunately, all my predictions in my speech on June 2nd were confirmed. We presented our answer to the police state conditions: the successful and peaceful blockades on Wednesday and Thursday.

The German original of this text contains detailed references for the statements above and can be found at my website www.tobias-pflueger.de