i was cordoned off in oxford street for 9 hours. i'm willing to go to court to defend what the police, i.e. the government did against me and many others as i see it.
it upset me greatly, and i think my respect for the authority and the police has waned as a result.
i will divulge personal details if you get back to me.
ps. i am middle-class, university-educated etc..., but i've also been brought up to believe in DEMOCRACY and human rights..
look forward to hearing from you.

carlsson

Blair keeps banging on about the democratic right to peacefully protest, yet endorses illegal detentions of citizens, not guily of any offence on the pretext that they "may" cause a breach of the peace. Has anyone noticed we live in a Police State?

What the Caribinieri did was a breach of the peace, greivous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, torture, manslaughter and murder...not to mention false imprisonment.

>Monday July 23rd - Protest at the Italian Embassy in London takes to the
>streets.
>6pm
>On arrival at the front of the Embassy a small group refused to enter the
>designated sheep pen across the road and chose instead to hang their
>banner denouncing the police beatings, directly in front of the Embassy
>and alongside the police. After a brief scuffle with the police attempting
>to remove the people and the banner, the police backed down as it was
>obvious that the people holding the banner were going to stand their ground.
>After about one hour this seemed to be too much for the police to bear and
>the T.S.G. reinforcements arrived to arrest and physically remove each
>person - only to de-arrest them again when they had been dragged to the
>other side of the road.
>After one more hour of hemmed in protest across the road from the front
>of the Italian Embassy, a group of about thirty people spontaneously
>decided to take part of the now musical protest through the busier streets
>of Central London.
>With police in confused pursuit, the group chanted "Police Assassins" and
>"Brixton, Genoa, The police are Murderers" and walked behind a banner
>protesting the beatings. They made their way to the Italian Tourist Board
>and Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry at 1 Princes Street, W1 (just
>by Regent Street), before moving onto Regent Street itself, where they
>stopped traffic by walking slowly down the middle of the road. The
>chanting in Italian, and the banner, seemed to attract as much attention
>as the stopping of the traffic and curious shoppers and tourists came over
>to ask questions about the protest. The police eventually caught up and
>pushed the remainder of the group against up shop windows arresting and
>then de-arresting one person.
>Two arrests had been made earlier in the evening and so people made their
>way to the police station on Saville Row in support of the two. They were
>released shortly afterwards. One person having being charged with a public
>order offence and the other being released without charge.
>
>[If anyone knows what has happened to the people arrested on Sunday's
>demonstration at the embassy when the crowd were Secion 60'd can they
>please let LDMG know.]
>
>
>[NEXT EMBASSY PROTEST is a NOISE DEMO - Saturday 28th - 2pm - bring lots
>of small banners, and pots, pans, drums, children and anything else that
>can make a lot of noise!]
>
>=============
>Meanwhile at the Globalise Resistance Demo around the back of the Embassy:
>On Monday 23 July Globalise Resistance held a well-attended press
>conference at the back of the embassy. After this, over 200 people
>protested, with banners from the Socialist Alliance and UNISON.
>Demonstrators - held by police in a narrow pen of crash barriers across
>the road from the embassy - chanted loudly for over an hour in protest at
>the murder of Carlo Giuliani and the imprisonment of other protesters. We
>then heard from the Branch Secretary of University College Hospital
>UNISON. He spoke about one UNISON member at the hospital who was in Genoa,
>and beaten by police around the face so badly that he may lose the use of
>an eye. He is currently still in hospital in Italy.
>Helen Salmon of NUS Executive said that the authorities had resorted to
>violence because they know how our movement is growing - including 300,000
>marchers on Saturday. Tom Behan of Globalise Resistance reported that
>there were demos yesterday in Milan and Turin, and there was one today in
>Rome. Tomorrow demos are planned for virtually every town in Italy.
>We then marched round to the front of the embassy to join protesters
>there. There was again a heavy police presence, but we were allowed to
>demonstrate and leave as we wanted. So we walked straight into the pen put
>there for us.