FREEDOM OF SPEECH 2002 In a short time the World Bank Development Meeting (ABCDE) will commence. In the months preceding it much organization and preparation has taken place. The network Oslo2002 has prepared festivals and demonstrations. Unfortunately it appears that Oslo2002 has unintentionally done the work of the police by focusing on the prohibition of masks, violence and demo-wardens to guard protestors who do not follow the platform of 2002. All this has been at the expense of offering legal help and first aid to demonstrators (something the organizers of Reclaim the Streets offer advice about on their web page, look here). In addition, this has served to split the movement into the false and misleading categories of non-violent and violent.

While the arrangers of the demonstrations in Oslo2002 think they are having a good dialogue with the police, for their part the police have been systematically contributing to an atmosphere of provocation in the media by coming with alarmist contentions to the press. What hasn’t come out on front pages is how the media has actively speculated in possible violence and consciously distorted and falsified information (P4 was censored by the Official Press Council (OPC) for this and The Daily News {Dagsavisen} has been reported to the OPC for the same matter). The object of this is probably to secure pictures of violent confrontations and contribute to portraying the demonstrators as idiots.

The police in Oslo County have now terminated the contract that was made with Oslo2002 to use a school as a place for participants from outside the city to spend the night. The reason given for this was, among others, the experiences from last summers demos in Gothenburg (Sweden). The experiences of Gothenburg suggest a very different conclusion: the trouble there started after the police without cause surrounded a school and defined everyone in it as criminals. It looks as if the police in Oslo now consider following the same tactic as their Swedish colleagues.

We can see the same thing happening again: the arrangers think they have a good dialogue with the police, while the police have their own agenda the whole time: to create conditions leading to violence. The police, the media, and the politicians are the only actors who profit from violence, not the demonstrators. For them, violence hurts the cause.

The police are spending NOK 15 million on new equipment. They plan to seal off the entire inner city of Oslo. They have secured permission to use pepperspray in necessary situations. They are closing the national borders. They are building emergency-jails. Some politicians have even called for equipping the police with water cannons. As if this isn’t enough – now the policeofficers on duty are told they’ll earn more if things become violent. This is freedom of speech in the year 2002.

| Reclaim The Streets | Oslo2002 | Indymedia Norway |