13/02/2006

BARCELONA POLICE OPPRESSION= Dear All, Here is an english translation of the most recent report from Barcelona concerning the prisoners held for the events of 4th February, including bank account details for donations.

Most recent communique from the assembly for the freedom for the people arrested on February 4th in Barcelona. Midday 09 February 2006

In the early hours of the morning of February 4th, at number 55 Calle San Pere Mes Baix, Barcelona, the police violently arrested nine people outside a party. Three of them are being held in prison, two charged with attempted homicide and the thrid with assaulting a police officer and incitement. According to the official story, an officer of the municipal police riot squad is injured, and in an induced, therapeutic coma.

In an initial press release, Joan Clos, Mayor of Barcelona, gave a statement claiming that the officer was injured by a plant pot thrown from the building where the party was taking place. Sixteen hours later, the police contradicted this version saying that the injury could have been produced by any solid object. The following day a final official version came out, claiming that people from the street attacked the officer with a stone.

Which of the three official versions should public opinion believe? If we take the original police version, made public by Clos, then none of the three people being held under arrest could have been responsible for the blow that injured the policeman. Furthermore, so far there is only the police account of what happened, so there is no way of contrasting the police/city hall version with any other. The official version is a personal accusation, which has changed three times in just two days.

Those accused deny the charges absolutely. Eye witnesses and those arrested agree that a group of people was arguing with three police officers at the door to the party, when the police began to beat people and called for reinforcements. At that moment, a group that included the accused arrived in the area. They were also beaten, meanwhile the officer fell, injured. More riot police from the Mossos D‚Esquadra (Catalan regional police force) arrived and continued to arrest and beat people. It is important to add that the police shouted „Stop or I‚ll shoot!‰ and fired shots whilst chasing the people running away from the baton blows. The people arrested were beaten and tortured at the moment of their arrest and continuously in the police station, hospitals and police vans. They have multiple injuries all over their bodies, blows to the head, black eyes, and two have broken arms.

The official version, being spread by the press, reduces the event to a simple violent confrontation between police and young squatters. However, the reality is that it took place in the context of one of Barcelona‚s many neighbourhoods degraded by City Hall‚s town planning policies, where the inhabitants are victims of rampant land specualation and estate agent „mobbing‰ in which local officials are active participants.

Policies that are completely insensitive to social reality mean that City officials resort to heavy police presence in these areas to repress any kind of response from the tennants and residente affected by evictions, lack of public services and general destruction of their neighbourhoods and community networks. It is no exaggeration to talk about the criminalisation of poverty. Many neighbours witnessed the police charges from their balconies and were shocked by the brutality of the repression directed at the youths, and anyone else who was passing through the area. However, police violence has reached such extreme levels in the San Pere neighbourhood that most witnesses will only talk about what happened in private. They are afraid of what they saw and of the police who have been occupying the street and the doorways to the houses continuously since that morning. People known to live in the neighbourhood, and anyone who looks like a „squatter‰ were stopped for ID checks and recieved threats like „You prefer I kill you here or I take you to the Industrial Zone‰, as well as punches, kicks to the ankles and even taking off a victims shoes and abusing her, while each of the officers stepped on her feet. They justified the actions claiming that the injured officer had died.

With regard to the „Narko Penya Acultural‰ [translators note: the house in which the party was taking place was a mafioso establishment known to deal drugs, including crack cocaine, and suspected to have links to various police forces and City officials] It is much easier for the City to arrest and charge some South American youths who look like „squatters‰ than to risk an investigation which would ask questions about their responsibility for the building (which they own). It is very difficult to believe that the police were unaware of the Mafiosi practices for which the building was used For more info see: http://www.liberinfo.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s

None of this is accidental. The extent of the violence practiced by the different police forces for a long time now, particularly since new Civic Zero Tolerance laws came into effect, and they increased the use presence of the Mossos D‚Esquadra (instead of the National Police). There is clear harassment of certain collectives and of areas where the interests of the City officials are in conflict with the realities of the people who live there.

We demand the release, without charge, of the people being held prisoner, an end to the abuses and torture, and that they give us back our neighbourhoods! Donations for prisoner support and legal costs:
La Caixa 2100-3002-01-2105267123
IBAN: ES66
BIC/SWIFT: CAIXESBBXXX

02/02/2006

BEAT HOTEL- Issue #4 is an unwieldy 80 page beast, featuring; Tons of Columns, Aunty Em's Agony Page, Tube Tales, The Duel, Hardcore 101, Real Mckenzies, Becky Owen Tour Diary, Star Wars, Charlie Brown, Crap Advice, 58 Zine, Reviews, Goth Spotting, Pelican, Hunt Scum, Reading Festival 2005 Horror Stories, The Zero Point, 78 cd reviews, Live Reviews, Zine and Label Contacts, Ippo News & MORE http://beatmotel.co.uk STICK £2/ $3/ ¤3 (post paid) to a bit of card and lob it in the post to the address below. Beat Motel 71 Rectory Road Ipswich Suffolk IP2 8EQ ENGLAND 

09/01/2006

INFOURSURPA- Weekly independent poster of activities of london's social centres. Download PDF (380kb) here >>> or check http://www.wombles.org.uk for an article on this NEW project and any weekly editions. Eroding Empire wishes them the best of luck.
To submit: info_usurpa(at)riseup.net

11/12/2005

OUT NOW! Suicide Bid Debut release "This is the Generation" on Household Names Records.... Dub/Punk collective featuring members from : The Filaments, Ex-cathedra, PAIN, Inner Terrestrials, Deathskulls and King Prawn. Buy it, Borrow it, Steal it - Just get it!!! Check out www.myspace.com/suicidebid

02/12/2005

PROTEST THE EVICTION OF ST. AGNES PLACE- at LAMBETH COUNCIL'S HOUSING COMITTEE MEETING LAMBETH TOWN HALL, ACRE LANE, BRIXTON MONDAY 5 DECEMBER 2005, 7PM SHARP St, Agnes Place, the last squatted street in South London, occupied for 30 years, was evicted by Lambeth Council, with the help of several hundred police, on Tuesday 29th November. This long-standing community in a street of victorian houses next to Kennington Park, is to be demolished to make way for modern housing - supposedly mostly social housing, although this remains to be seen. The cops turned up at 10 am and smashed their way into most of the houses. Supporters gasthered outside the huge cordon, but little could be done. By mid afternoon there were still three houses resisting the eviction, as residents and supporters pledged to hold for as long as they could. But later in the evening, reports came in that the last resisting squatter had been removed from the remaining occupied house in an ambulance, as the eviction was brutality completed. He was taken to hospital after he was badly beaten on the head with truncheons. Meanwhile 50 ex-residents and supporters picketed the town Hall in the evening. The Council justify their destruction of sound houses and a compact community by saying the squatters cost them so many millions in unpaid rent... But in 1977, the council would have knocked the lot down and levelled the area if the squatters had not resisted the wrecking ball and occupied the Town Hall. There would never have been any houses to pay rent on! We don't expect sense from Lambeth Council, whose long record is well known: destruction of housing, persecution of squatters who make homes out of the flats and houses they abandon, and flogging off social housing to developers in their ongoing campaign to gentrify as much of the area as they can. And if they care so much about the money, what about the £3 million lost to the council through careless payment of a contractor who took the money, did no work, and ran? A scandal in which Councillor keith Fitchett is centrally involved, this is the man who recently called St Agnes residents "parasites". Hi Pot, this is Kettle calling. The Housing Committee meets on Monday night. We think we'll pay them a visit to discuss their decision to destroy liveable houses and make 200 people homeless. We hope youll come and join us. BRING BANNERS, PLACARDS, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, NOISE MAKING EQUIPMENT, LOUD VOICES AND DEFINITELY ATTITUDE. ST. AGNES PLACE LIVES ON IN OUR HEARTS SOUTH LONDON STRESS Councillor KEITH FITCHETT says the people of St Agnes Place are "PARASITES", Let him know how you feel telephone: 020 7733 9681 fax: 020 7738 4436 email: councillor@fitchett.net surgery: Every Thursday 6.30pm to 7.15pm, North Lambeth Town Centre Office, 20 Newburn Street, SE11 More info on the History and Eviction of St Agnes place can be seen at www.stagnesplace.net and at www.indymedia.org.uk

01/12/2005

Police steal and threaten in sex worker raids- On 6 October 2005, over 40 police and immigration officers raided 55 flats in the Baker Street area of central London.  70 sex workers were held and questioned, some for up to five hours.  Women working as "maids" for the working girls were forced to sign cautions under threat that otherwise the flat would be raided again and they would be charged with living off immoral earnings.   During the raids police removed goods and money.  In one flat, police from Marylebone police station took £2,000 of women‚s hard-earned cash.  No receipt was given, the money has not been returned and the police now deny any knowledge of it.  To get their money back women would have to make a formal complaint to the police and would have to be public about their occupation.  None of them feel able to do this as their families don‚t know about their work.   The police tried to impose conditions on women working in the flats that bore no relation to the law.  Women were told by Marylebone police that they couldn‚t work with a maid.  Other women were told they could stay open with a maid as long as only one girl worked at a time and none were immigrant ˆ labelled by the police as Œillegals‚. Other women were told, under threat of being charged with trafficking, that they couldn't employ illegals. One woman caught up in the raids spelt out the implications: „The police have been encouraged to run rampant ˆ taking out money and threatening us.  When they treat us like this, how can we go to them for protection when we are attacked?  Some women will be terrorised out of their premises.  If businesses are taken out of women‚s hands, gangsters will take over.  We have been visited by men who try and heavy us over but because we know each other we have been able to stand up to them.  We have been here for years and we have families to support.  Which of those women in high places will speak up for us.  Violence has increased as women are forced further underground to avoid the police.   Many organisations, including Home Office funded sex workers projects, which work directly with sex workers, speak privately of the horrendous consequences of these government laws and policies on some of the most vulnerable women.  How long will they keep quiet?   Meanwhile a national umbrella for women‚s organisations is promoting, in the name of equality, the criminalisation of clients which was introduced in Sweden some years ago with disastrous consequences. But no attention is being paid to New Zealand where the decriminalisation of prostitution has resulted in women being able to get off the streets and work more safely. Info: English Collective of Prostitutes 020 7482 2496 ecp("at")allwomencount.net

ongoing

ADDRESSES of EMPTIES. Wanted for an empties list for squatters. Contact: Box Squat, c/o 56a Infoshop  

YOUR CLASSIFIED NOT IN HERE? well, stop sobbing and send us your info ya lazy slob! Email or write c/o 56a Crampton St, London SE17 3AE UK.

06/11/2005

WAVE IF REPRESSION HAS STRUCK POLAND- with double force. We assess the number of people currently or lately under police repression to be about 80. Of course it is not only because right-wing and neoliberals have won last parliament and president elections. For several years actions of many different political and social groups that openly protest against the Polish government's policy are submitted bigger and bigger repressions, with the use of the police and a machinery of court. This phenomenon is not an incidental, but on a mass scale. For the past 3-4 years many activists of anarchist, antiwar, radical left wing, social worker and ecological movement, have been put on trial. The reason of the government's repressions is undoubtedly an increase in number of social conflicts (for example a number of demonstrations, according to the police statistics, raised from 315 in 2001, to 2054 in 2003, and 1476 in 2004). The government apparently is not able to manage with so tries to restrict the freedom of assembly and speech. But we know that not only we have a r i g h t to protest, but we are f r e e to protest!

We announce 8.11.2005 a day of protest against the state and the police repressions! That day demonstrations are going to take place in few Polish cities (Poznan, Warszawa, Katowice, Wroc³aw, £Ûdº, Szczecin, KrakÛw, GdaÒsk). If you can do anything to protest and to support us - do it! You can help us by sending a donation for costs of lawyers, suits etc. We are collecting money through the Anarchist Black Cross's bank account: PEKAO BP // XX o/PoznaÒ // ul.Stary Rynek 44 // 61-722 PoznaÒ // Poland // swift code: bpkoplpwapoa // for USD: 10204085-5999100-270-44787 // owner: Marek Piekarski

http://pl.indymedia.org/pl

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