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Cop arrested during May 1st demonstration in Berlin

Date Mon, 11 May 2000 13:10:33 -0400

Left/Liberal newspaper TAZ writes that among the 400 arrested
at the "Revolutionary May 1st Demonstration" in Berlin, is a
policeman from Leipzig.

He was not on duty, but on a holliday when by coincidence he
saw the demontration pass by. Police attacked the
demonstration and as usual didn't hesitate to rough up
innocent bystanders. Our tourist from Leipzig got so angry
when riot-cops hit him, that he joined the demonstrators who
defended themselves throwing stones, bottles and other
portable stuff. According to the police the policeman had
thrown a bottle at a water-canon when he was arrested.

This year's revolutionairy 1st of may demo was 10.000 persons
strong (there was also a separate Marxist-Lenininist-Maoist
demonstration of some 2000 people. Fascists mobilised 1000
demonstraters earlyer that day in Hellersdorf outskirt and
were intensely protected by cops against antifascist).

The autonomist/anarchist movement has been demonstrating on
this day (again) since 1987. The demonstration that day ended
in a major riot in which the police was defeated and thrown
out of the leftwing neighborhood Kreuzberg. Biggest warehouse
Bolle (a.o.) was fully looted and then burned down. Three days
later Reagan was to visit the town...

Somehow since then the demonstration always end in a big riot
with the police. Newspaper TAZ writes that the troubles
started this year because the police made the big misstake to
attack the demonstration to arrest people at the end at
Oranien-Platz (park). They lost. Spartacus-type scenes (the
film) were seen. The chief of police described it as follows
"The sky looked grey so many stones flew". And the newspaper
describes classical events such as flowerpots being trown out
of windows on the cops, and neigbours putting ladders against
the walls leading to gardens, so activists could get away more
easy. 279 police-men/women were reported woonded and teargas
filled the streets...

It's not the first time police fight their own kind in
Germany, by the way. One of the historical annecdotes in the
early eighties is the courtcase a plain-cloth cop started
against his employers. He had to infiltrate in leftwing
activist circles during antimilitarist demonstrations, but his
colleagues got him (not nowing who he was) and beat him up so
severly that he was partly paralysed and had to quit his
'work'.

(end): This was another of those marvelous teksts of Liberal
Animation Prods. (LAP). LAP writes the truth, but in bad
english out of principle)



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