To: Hans Gammeltoft-Hansen (Ombudsman), Per Larsen (Detective Commander of the Danish National Police) and Ritt Bjerregaard (Lord Mayor of Copenhagen)

Over the past two weeks, citizens of countries all over the world have come to Copenhagen for the UN COP-15 climate negotiations. Many have engaged in peaceful, nonviolent protest, trying to push world leaders to sign a meaningful deal that will save our planet for future generations.

Rather that giving them the space, the Danish police have used extremely heavy-handed and cruel mass arrest tactics, potentially violating European human rights laws. The Danish police are out of control, and they need to be held accountable.

SIGN PETITION HERE

Please join us and take action! Sign this petition calling on the Danish government to immediately investigate the police actions of the past two weeks, and demand that they allow future peaceful protests to go forward without similar abuses.

Danish Police: Going Too Far

On Saturday, Dec. 12, 100,000 people in Copenhagen participated in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest – but this protest was marred by the overzealous Danish police, who blocked off streets surrounding large groups of protestors, and arrested almost 1,000 people, the vast majority of which were clearly doing nothing illegal. Arrestees were handcuffed and forced to sit in rows for hours, as the temperatures dipped below freezing; numerous people urinated on themselves after being denied use of toilets. According to Maria Ludwig from Germany, “They kept me for two hours with plastic cuffs around our wrists and our hands behind our back, and then they put us on the bus. We had nothing to eat or drink, and one man asked the police to go to the toilet and they said: ‘No way are you going to put your trousers down, you’ll just have to piss into your trousers.”

And this is only one example of the harassment of environmental protestors by the Danish police in recent weeks. On Dec. 11, police arrested 68 people at a nonviolent protest in downtown Copenhagen, refusing to give reasons for making arrests. (You can see examples of police violence at the Dec. 11 protest on this video.) On the night of Dec. 14, police raided the district of Christiania, where a protest group was holding a fundraiser party, arresting 200 people and using tear gas, police dogs, and water cannons on people that they claimed were protestors. Lily Kember, 22, from London, said: “There was no warning. We were dancing, having a great night and then suddenly the tent was full of tear gas. I saw an old man near me doubled up and coughing.”

Possible Violations of EU Human Rights Laws?

Throughout these protests, police have cited a controversial law, passed on Nov. 26, that gave them sweeping powers to make “pre-emptive arrests” and hold people for up to 12 hours without any actual wrongdoing having taken place. The new law was publicly denounced as “draconian” by numerous environmental groups, trade unions, and other organizations.

In a press release from Aug. 10, the Danish police stated that “all people are, without previous permission, at liberty to assemble unarmed” and that “the police arenít allowed to take action, unless attacked, until after the crowd has three times been called upon to disperse.” However, in these protests, these commitments have been blatantly disregarded.According to Claus Bonnez, a lawyer working with Krim, a human rights organization, “according to the European Court of Human Rights process, the police will have to prove that it is necessary for democratic society to make such arrests. And I don’t think that the Danish police will be able to prove that.”

On Dec. 13, Amnesty International called for an investigation into potential human rights abuses, stating that “when nearly 1,000 people are arrested and then all but 13 are released it means that many of those people were just innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Take action now! Please sign this petition, and help make Denmark a safe place for peaceful protest.

SIGN PETITION HERE

After 14 years of ineffectual talks, activists from social movements across the globe are taking the struggle for climate justice to the streets. Planned is a series of events ranging from a mass action to shutdown the harbour of Copenhagen to an action aimed at bringing a people’s agenda for climate justice to the elite summit space for a day. “The UN climate talks will not solve the climate crisis. We are no closer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than we were when international negotiations began fifteen years ago: emissions are rising faster than ever, while carbon trading allows climate criminals to pollute and profit”, says Tadzio Mueller, a press spokesperson for CJA.

In response to what they perceive as a political circus playing to the interests of corporations, Stine Gry, also from CJA, argues that “we cannot trust the market with our future, nor put our faith in unsafe, unproven and unsustainable technologies. Instead of trying to paint a destructive system green, we need to take mass action for climate justice.

On the 13th of December Climate Justice Action will take direct action against the root causes of climate change by disrupting the toxic, fossil fuel-driven flows of global capitalism and overproduction for overconsumption by shutting down the harbour of Copenhagen.

On the 16th of December, CJA will put climate justice and the voices of marginalized peoples from across the North and the South at the top of the agenda. Led by activists from the Global South we will challenge the corporate and governmental elites at the UN climate talks, overcoming police barriers with civil disobedience to hold a People’s Climate Justice Summit.

Against the “false solutions” adopted by the UNFCCC, the networks call for:
- leaving fossil fuels in the ground
- reasserting peoples’ and community control over production
- relocalising food production
- massively reducing overconsumption, particularly in the North
- respecting indigenous and forest peoples’ rights
- recognising the ecological and climate debt owed to the peoples of the South and making reparations

Again Stine Gry: “Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by women and men in both the South and the North who fight every day to defend their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these solutions and work for a just transition towards a post-fossil fuel future.”

SOURCE:

Press conference in Copenhagen Sunday 18th October

Media team Climate Justice Action
Copenhagen, 16 October 2009

Notes to editors:
(1) Climate Justice Action is a network of a wide diversity of groups from both the global north, and the global south. Among them Terra de Direitos (Brazil) and Focus on the Global South, international Climate Camps, Rising Tide and Indian Social Action Forum. The complete list of groups can be found on the website.
Climate Justice Action will hold a Press Conference on Sunday 18th October, 12.00-13.00 at Fabrikken in Christiania (Prinsessegade, 1422, KA, Benhavn, Copenhagen)

Contact:
Danish phone: +45 41294994 (Stine Gry)
International phone: +49-176-77414303 (Tadzio Mueller)
Website: www.climate-justice-action.org
“follow @actforclimate on twitter”