Page Content | Events
Features
Newswire
Publish
Links
Regions
Other IMCs
Search
Leeds Bradford IMC | UK IMC | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Support Us

(((i))) Leeds Bradford

Read It. Write It. DO IT!

Bayer Feb 11th high court ruling

london bod | 11.02.2004 16:52 | Bio-technology | Cambridge | London | Oxford

Today, Bayer AG tried to make permanent a court order against six named individuals and five 'organisations' connected to campaigns against the company.

The high court judge (who has a history of granting injunctions, for example responsible for a recent injunction preventing a tabloid news paper publish some poxy royal dirt story), will give his ruling on Friday 13th.

The interim injuntion, which was granted late last December, will remain effective until the ruling is given on friday.

The injuntion effectively makes previously lawful activities into criminal offences and it seems quite clear that the judge will rule in favor of bayer...

at one stage the judge said that protesters could not be trusted! Fair point perhaps, but of course there was no mention of Bayer trying to impose GM into everyones environment against the wishes of the public. There was also no mention of them being named amoung the top ten worst corporations by Multination Monitor.
[ http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/profiles/bayer/bayer1.html]

The court order uses the Protection From Harassment Act, which was orginally introduced as being needed to protect women from stalkers (needless to say, the new powers were first used by companies in an attempt to stop demonstrations). In the court, both the judge and the bayer representative talked about the 'balancing act' required to ensure that the freedom from harassment did not effect people rights to protest, or protest effects people right to not be harassed.

When talking about resent demonstrations against bayer, the bayer representative said that they had no problem with people shouting, but making a noise was unacceptable apparently. He explained how protestest had made a terrible racket at Bayers Newbury HQ a few months ago and gave evidence that the noise was intended to distrupt workers.

The judge also heard that protesters were planing a 'virtual sit-in' of bayers website (coincidently happening on this very day while they sat in court discussing the injunction that they apparently hope will end the campaign against them). Ask what effect this would have, the bayer representative explained that it would shut down all of the companies electronic communications system and prevent staff from sending emails.

One might wonder what email blockades have to do with a court order alledgedly intended to protect staff from intimidation and harassment.

The named individuals were being represented by a barraster but the named 'organisations' were not represented. Most of those names are not membership organisations in anyway - infact two of the so-called organisations are websites (one of which no longer available as the domain name has lapsed).

After the court I spoke to the baraster acting on behalf of the six named individuals.

He talked about how difficult it was trying to represent people who had taken part in accountable actions while the opposition was talking about the actions of unrelated people who had also targeted bayer.

He also said that some protesters played right into Bayers hands with the language used on some of the websites and reports.


The wider implications

Reading the injuction (available in full from the Bayer AG website), it is clear that the court order will effect not only those named.

There is a sections about reporting actions which might have implications for Indymedia. While Indymedia is an open publishing site, it could potentially be held responsible for posts by people that breach the injunction. Certainly Bayer are reading Indymedia [hiya guys] and have presented many articles from Indy as evidence in court.

Of course taking on Indymedia might be opening a can of worms that would backfire on Bayer. Time will tell.



Further info
Injunction www.bayer.co.uk
Bayer profile www.corporatewatch.org.uk
Bayer Watch www.cbgnetwork.org
Stop Bayer GM Crops www.stopbayergm.org

london bod

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. Reporting actions — time
  2. Publication of names and private addresses — l
  3. Hey London Bod!! — questions questions questions

Write It
Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

Search

The Common Place - Leeds The 1 in 12 club - Bradford The Trades Club - Hebden Bridge

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech