Demonstrations in Lausanne


Procession and Popular Party
Thursday may 29 2003 6 o’clock PM
Bellerive swimming pool


Fires on the Lake
Saturday may 31 2003 9.30 o’clock PM
Near Vidy and in 50 others towns by the lake


Quarantaine of World Leaders
Sunday 1st of June 2003 3 o’clock PM
Park of Milan

Declaration of the anti-G8/G21 committee

Because of the security hysteria nourished by the medias and the autorities, we found it necessary to make known our motivations and the forms of our actions during the G8/G21 summit in Evian, France. We have adopted the principles of the charte of the Lemanique Social Forum, and the following text has been rewritten so as to be better adapted to the situation in Lausanne.
Our principal objectif is simple : total opposition of this summit, during which the global leaders of the most richest countries impose, in total illegitimacy, their policies on all the peoples of the planet. In particular, they propage "free exchange", constant politic of the G7 since their first reunion in 1975. Put into practice by the WCO and the IMF, organisations controled by these same powers, this politic triggered a «race towards the lowest commun world level» : pressure on the salaries, unemployment, the breaking up of all social acquisitions, ever increasing disparities, ruin and expulsion of millions of littles farmers in the whole world, strangulation of southern countries through their «debts» and integral privatisation. Who are the winners ? Obviously those who control the international exhanges : the leaders of the transnationals enterprises. These are their interests, not those of the peoples, and they systematically serve G8 leaders, may it be through economic war or by ordinary war. These politics of looting kills millions of peoples and are a mortel danger as well for our societies as for our biosphere. Our unprecedent movement of worldwide resistance corresponds to a menace that is real. It is not for nothing that the calm of the Lake Léman is troubled !
Since Seattle, the well-established pratical experiences of the anti-mondialisation movement which contribute to its phenomenal growth, are to express political resistance by a material opposition of the holding of these summits. It is by blocking, or at least by perturbing and hampering them, that our protests have been able to show our force and determination and have been able to establish a credibility and a force of mobilisation against the criminal powers and their immense problems. These actions have not only galvanised and mobilised the political activists, they have also triggered a large general consciousness. If the manifestations now mobilise ten even hundred thousand peoples, it is because we have partially broken the grip that the totalitarian free-market philosophy have on people. The kings are naked and we are beginning to discern the links between the multiples disasters that affect our societies. For this reason, we see the necessity to give a chance for all persons who are in opposition with the state of our world, including those who have never protested before, to express their angers and their hopes of a different world.
Our different types of actions stem from these considerations : a "Wall of Shame", many "Fires on the Lake", the "Quarantine of World Leaders", the concerts and other shows, the village and the demonstrations are placed on determined pacific grounds. However, it is possible that certain persons will be thinking of other types of actions during the G8 and profit to attack the establishments symbolising the capitalist power in general. We ask them to renonce to all violent actions.
If it is true that certain material destructions can be understood as political acts by a large public when they are well specified and explained (destruction of transgenic plants, for example), generalised destructions during the G8/G21 will only serve to substantiate the amalgam between demonstrators and «hooligans» and hide the political will of the demonstrators to go against the summit. It is obvious that the growing popularity of our movement increasingly scares the masters of the world.
Their answer is just as evident in more and more violent repressions as seen with the shootings during the Göteborg and the Gênes summits. In Switzerland also, the police did not hesite to betray the agreements concluded at Davos to prevent the demonstration and deliberatly harassed the demonstrators in order to provoke violents exchanges. The deliberate genevois’ police provocation at Cornavin the 29th of mars 2003 is also an example of this tactic. By the use of violence, these grands world “bleeders” seek to scare the majority and to provoke a minority by edging them on the terrain of physical confrontation, so to repress the whole movement. It is exactly the «tension strategy» which permits the breaking and the criminalisation of this movement born in 1968. Let us not fall in this same trap a second time ! Let not violence be systematically assigned to us, because the first violence comes from the system and we are precisely fighting for a less violente society ! The facts are today established that many of the destructions at Gênes were programmed by the police and this must make us think. Such opportunistic actions blurs our message and do not correspond to our objectif : stop the G8/G21.
In consequence, we are opposed to all violence done to persons and their belongings. We call everybody to respect the collectif decision we took. Also, we offer juridical and sanitary support to all the demonstrators.
We denonce the “fear” campaign that the police and the medias mounted against us.

anti-G8 Committee vaud