account of 1st June with pink n silver (and police)

At 7am, an hour later than planned, demonstrators from the 2 camps in Lausanne, met outside Bourdonnet, the "official" camp, and started the march, led by the Pink and Silver Block's samba band from the sortie maladiere roundabout along the edge of the designated red zone around the harbour. The purpose of this demo was to block as many as possible of the routes the delegates would be taking to the ferry .We'd heard delegates would arrive from 8:30 onwards. There was a carnival atmosphere, people waving to us from balconies. As we passed through, barricades were placed by other blocks to block the intersections the delegates might use. We were first hit by tear gas about half way through our route. The police fired the gas into the middle of the Pink and Silver block, people had to run into the gas because the road in front was blockaded.The march split and ran into sidestreets & regrouped close to the place de Milan park. The local boulangerie filled our water bottles & sold us croissants the samba band & soundsystem were still leading us.Then we were tear gassed 4 or 5 more time including gas right into the park where locals, including mothers & children were walking. The Lausanne papers 24 heures and Le Matin and the Geneva paper Le Tems have good coverage of all of this. Coming out of the park we found ourselves heading away from our route & back towards the camp. I don't know if this was planned or we were blocked on al other sides.When we got there the lower camp had been sealed off and a 5 hour standoff with the police followed. We sat peacefully & refused to show papers because many people didn't have papers with them. There were ambulances, red cross, water cannons & tear gas outside. The police dragged people away to be "controlled", the figure I heard was 400. Because the police stations were full 28 of us sat in 2 police vans for four and a half hours waiting. We had no access to toilets, there was a bush we could use, food or legal representation. Those of us with mobiles texted the camp legal team. We were told we hadn't been arrested & that we were in transit. We were searched , photos taken, not fingerprinted though other groups may have been and left in a cell, 3 in mine for another hour before being bussed back to the camp. I was told everyone was released from Police Headquarters but heard later 30 were detained, I don't know what the figures were or if anyone is still being held. Almost everyone had left the camp, we left too. I had a flight out of Geneva, which appeared quiet at 2pm and am now back in Dublin following the situation in Geneva on Indymedia.

(A similar report to this is available in Swiss German.)