Eyes wide open at the G8
Oli Renton is part of the face-to-face team that gets people to subscribe to New Internationalist on the streets and at public events. The G8 summit opened his eyes to police brutality and has got him worried about what lies in store after the London 7/7 bombings.
Some of you reading this will have met me, or someone very like me. If you have ever been confronted in the street by a grinning, weather-beaten form grasping a blue folder bursting with ragged back issues of the NI, there’s a good chance it was me.
I was also one of thousands of people who made the journey first to Edinburgh, then Stirling, to register my outrage at the injustices being meted out by our leaders, and to demand that we do more than scrape stale crumbs from our table onto the plates of the starving and oppressed of the world.
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Taking part in protests against the Gleneagles G8 was a life-changing experience for me. I do not regard myself as an extremist, a hardliner, or even a trouble-maker. Over the course of successive days of protests, however, my emotional response to the sight of a police uniform flipped on its head.
There exists a subtle understanding between activist and police officer. Each understands the role that the other is playing. The activist is engaged in creating civil disorder, the police officer is charged with restoring order. In fulfilling their respective obligations, each is aware of the other’s duties. I hold no grudge against honourable officers of the law, undertaking their duty. Presented with a human blockade on a main road, it is only natural that the police should endeavour to move the protesters.
But when the blockade is entirely peaceable, consisting of a group of around 20 unmasked, unarmed, vastly outnumbered protesters simply lying in the road, the task confronting the police does not appear arduous. To then see the police clearing such a blockade in the manner they did sickened me to my core. The first words to come from the mouth of the commanding officer, after ‘Get out of the fucking road!’, were ‘Pressure points! Pressure points!’.
I witnessed slightly built girls dragged off the road by burly armoured police, carrying them via two gloved fingers inserted up the nose; kicks to the undersides of knees, throttlings. Once the group was moved off the road, there began the provocation. Entirely hemmed in by police, and made to stand on a steep motorway verge, contradictory orders were screamed in our faces. ‘Get up the hill!’ the police at the front screamed, pushing and thumping. ‘Get down the hill!’ the police behind screamed, pushing and thumping.
They heaped insults, physical abuse and intimidation upon the protesters, seemingly desperate to provoke a reaction – one swung fist, one good reason for the batons. None was given.
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Ominous signs had appeared early on – during Gordon Brown’s self-congratulatory speech to the Make Poverty History rally on 2 July a lone heckler had the audacity to shout out a question about the conditions that would accompany debt relief, and was bundled swiftly away. This is not a dictum that protesters have any right to challenge.
Two days later a demonstration had been planned in Edinburgh city centre. By the end of the day, every activist and protester I talked to had a different tale to tell of police intimidation, thuggery and lawlessness.
Riot police were out in massive force and appeared to be, alternately, trying to provoke violence and intimidate. A colleague of mine had joined a group of around 50 protesters marching around the city centre, only to be confronted by around 300 riot police. These promptly marched the group underneath a flyover, and away from prying eyes, into the path of a further 200 or so armoured and shielded police.
In anticipation of the use of excessive force by the police, the Dissent network had organized for groups of protesters to be accompanied by legal observers, wearing bright orange jackets emblazoned with the words ‘legal observer’, and medics, bearing large crosses on their backs, armbands, and often headdresses. Both groups were especially targeted by police. Almost every medic in attendance seemed to have been either detained or arrested, often with use of what is euphemistically termed 'excessive force'.
Some were charged with public order offences, and bailed on condition that they leave Scotland immediately. Others were detained or searched for sufficiently long that they were unable to provide any support to the injured on the protest. Numerous people were injured during the day, many whilst being forced by police action to climb over sharp fences; some received head injuries sustained more directly.
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For several days the police cordon that encircled the eco-village of protesters camped outside Gleneagles refused entry to an NHS team that had been offering medical support. The justification given for targeting legal observers, as well as for refusing press the right to film police activities, was that many of the protesters carry video equipment or cameras to take photographs of the police as part of their ‘intimidation strategy’. Quite how, then, should one regard the omnipresent police cameras?
It is difficult to see any legitimate reasons for targeting individuals whose sole purpose was to provide medical assistance to injured protesters, or to observe the legality of actions of the police force. Similarly, the way in which many police removed their own identity numbers raises grave concerns.
These are simply the actions that I saw with my own eyes, at an understated protest. I heard tales of genuine police brutality, saw many bruises – not to mention the marks left on one young activist by some particularly irate cows (a number of vegans vowed to eat steak that day). But these are others’ stories.
One of the most disturbing revelations over the course of various protests was the yawning chasm between the scenes that I witnessed with my own eyes, and the reportage and images broadcast in the media. Police cameras were ubiquitous, but there was no shortage of press photographers. I saw pictures of protests that I myself witnessed, carefully framed to omit evidence of police violence. Never have I been more grateful for Indymedia.
The next day, I saw a man arrested for breach of bail, all the while protesting that his bail conditions, signed by the Sheriff, were in his back pocket and proved that he was doing nothing wrong. At least three more men were arrested for breach of bail, whilst waiting for trains out of Edinburgh. Their bail conditions may have stated that they were not allowed within the city limits, but given that the police released them from custody inside the city, it’s not clear how they could have departed any faster than they did.
I was stopped and searched, as was almost everyone I spoke to, under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act – effectively meaning that no reason needed be given for the searches. The same (lack of) reasons were given to justify preventing us from entering the campsite to return to our tent and get some sleep prior to driving back down South.
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As I write these words, the British Government is building consensus across the political divides of Westminster in order to smooth the way for the passage of yet another raft of anti-terrorist legislation. As the nation quakes in the aftermath of bombs ripping open our capital, opposition to ID cards seems to crumble away and debate into the use of excessive force by our security forces at the G8 seems to have all but evaporated.
We have abandoned the right of Habeas Corpus, a central check in our judicial system. We have already granted the police powers that would allow for you to be detained indefinitely in your home without due process of the law; that allow for you to be stopped, searched, filmed and to have your possessions confiscated without due reason being given.
The recent killing by police of an innocent Brazilian in a London Underground station prompted police not to reassess their use of deadly force, but to announce the existence of Operation Kratos, a pre-emptive shoot-to-kill policy.
I leave you with some sobering reflections from the Russian newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, looking ahead to the forthcoming Russian G8: ‘Given our bureaucrats’ servile ardour,’ it warns, ‘one dreads to think what the security arrangements will be.’
Web sources:
http://www.dissent.org.uk/
http://video.indymedia.org/en/2005/07/121.shtml
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/07/317346.html
http://www.cepmedia.ca/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=503&Itemid=47
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/07/316920.mov
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4667459.stmFor more see: Poverty and the G8: So... what now?
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