Interview with Medic 1 and Medic 2 – (Astrid and Ruth)

MEDIC 1
We have pretty much been thrown out of Scotland by the courts who today gave us bail conditions, preventing us from entering Edinburgh, the council of Edinburgh, the council of Stirling, Perth, also the Stirling campsite, or the council of Stirling, which incorporates the campsite. And we have to report to our local police station.

INDY
So that means basically that you are effectively deported from Scotland?

MEDIC 1
Essentially we have to be there between 5 and 6pm tomorrow night. The logistics of escaping Scotland and back to Bristol before 5pm tomorrow evening is a bit …. interesting.

INDY
Ok, could you tell us a little bit about what happened?

MEDIC 2
Basically it was near the end of the day. We had been treating people all day and we were kind of making our way back. We saw groups of people in Princes Street Park - we treated lots of people who had injuries with spikes through their feet earlier, which were from the [fence] railings. We went to check if there were any more. Once we were in the park, we suddenly realised there were tons of riot police walking through the undergrowth. Everything kind of kicked off. There were stones being thrown at the police so we kept to the side. Basically the police pushed us into a pen. Once we were in there we walked around and checked for injured people, the usual. We were standing together, nothing was really happening with the pen. A kind of snatch squad got sent through the police lines. And they looked at us and the guy in charge said “Get those girls first!” - then they grabbed us.

INDY
So you were actually pointed out?

MEDIC 2
Oh sure, yes.

MEDIC 1
They knew who they were aiming for, before they came in. They were in full riot gear, including some of them carrying shields. They grabbed us, at which point we linked arms just because it seemed like the right thing to do when there’s lots of big scary people trying to beat you up. And then the forcibly removed us behind their lines using pressure points at the top of the jaw, just under the ear. Also in the back of the shoulders, wrists, and fingers.

MEDIC 2
Before we got taken beyond police lines we were on the floor for a bit surrounded by cameras and it felt like a lot of police. They were using holds on my fingers and my wrists and I think possibly my shoulder.

INDY
I can see the bruises there on your wrists

MEDIC 2
All I can say is that I’ve never screamed in pain before, but I couldn’t not.

MEDIC 1
It was definitely the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I was yelling out: “We’re not resisting, we’re not resisting!” - sure we weren’t standing on our feet and walking with them, but we weren’t like, you know, holding onto the ground or locking onto a post or anything, we were just like being basically limp.

MEDIC 2
My opinion is that when you’re being arrested for nothing, I’m not gonna be led away by them like I’ve done something, because I wasn’t doing anything. Just standing and watching people.

INDY
And I can see you’ve both actually got matching bruises on you’re arms in the same places…

MEDIC 2
They look like finger marks, they’re kind of black-ish/purple. It’s what, 5 inches? With pinch marks as well, because it was a technique they were using. I really just can’t emphasise how much it hurt. We’ve both been carried away by the police before in various situations, but not on a level where they were just inflicting pain to the extent that we were screaming.

MEDIC 1
They cuffed me and then carried me by the arms, which it is just not very intelligent to work out that that’s gonna hurt your wrists a lot, so my wrists were pulling against each other, that generates a way for wrists to break. They’re bruised now. There are plenty of bruises around my wrists. I can’t believe that they were so violent because I was just limp. I wasn’t resisting at all. They carried me face-down, which they’re not meant to do either.

INDY
Sure, I mean obviously nobody expects that kind of thing, but you folks were clearly identifiable - you had markings as medics?

MEDIC 2
I’ve got a huge duck tape cross on my back, with full medic kit.

MEDIC 1
A full medic kit which are marked out. I had a red head scarf on, with the black medic cross on it. We were so visibly medics that people would come up to us and say: “Hey my mate over there is stuck on a fence”. The whole idea was for us to be visibly marked. We had been searched earlier in the day 3 times by the police.

MEDIC 2
And we didn’t get a receipt record of any of those.

MEDIC 1
We requested them, but they refused.

INDY
Which they should give.

MEDIC 2
Yeah, absolutely. And they also threatened us with arrest for not giving our names and addresses. Which they can’t do.

INDY
That’s correct.

MEDIC 1
We were basically pushed around all day, and then it erupted at the end.

INDY
For you two it was clear that you were pointed out for arrest – did you hear of other instances?

MEDIC 1
In the cell we were with people who said it had also happened earlier in the day, but with legal observers.

INDY
We also had reports about other medics being targeted for arrest. What happened to you once you were taken to the police station?

MEDIC 2
Well they put us into the tiny cells in the vans. We were next to each other. We sat there and than we got swapped into another van with other woman. We were in those vans for two hours. I was handcuffed. By this point they had moved the cuffs. My hands had been cuffed behind my back. They were now cuffed at my front.

MEDIC 1
My hands were originally facing each other crossed over, and now they were facing the same way, if that makes sense?

MEDIC 2
So we were moved to Waverly Bridge for a while. The other woman prisoners joined us. Some of them had been held since 2 o’clock that afternoon. All the police had given us was water. They than drove us when the van was full with, perhaps 8 prisoners, to the detention facility at which point we were very slowly unloaded to be processed.

MEDIC 1
It is worth mentioning that we weren’t formally arrested at the scene, I don’t remember anything being read to me or cautioned.

INDY
Which I think there supposed to do in Scotland

MEDIC 1
We had to actively ask why we were arrested. First time I asked, we’d been shouting for a while, asking why we were arrested. Then when the police would look me in the face, I was on the ground, they said I was being arrested “for being a wanker”, and then that was is. For a long time I didn’t even know why I was being held. I couldn’t think of any reason to be honest.

INDY
What did they charge you with in the end?

MEDIC 2
They’ve charged us whith “breach of the peace” - which they’ve charged pretty much everyone in jail for, where we were staying. The breach of the peace goes from very high levels of breach of the peace, like someone who’s throwing a glass bottle at a copper, to being breach of the peace for us… who apparently sat on the ground and formed a disorderly crowd of two! - Apparently we also shouted abuse at the police. If they can find evidence of any of this, I’ll personally join the police force!!

MEDIC 1 [laughs]

MEDIC 2
Because it’s just… I mean. I don’t think I’ll be convicted! It’s a charge with no grounds at all, there’s no evidence. Basically they’re just trying to keep us out of the way. Like we now have to leave Scotland.

INDY
The bail conditions say you have to leave Scotland?

MEDIC 1
I don’t think they care very much if they are shown to have completely falsely arrested us. I don’t think they care if we sue them, because all they care about is not having medics on the ground for…

MEDIC 2
For cleaning up their mess, which is literally their mess. We were at the police station, we were divided up, we were in shared cells originally with two woman, because they had anticipated that a huge amount would end up there. What in reality happened is that, this is why we thought everything was processed so slowly, the reality was, they have a sticker system, for when they arrest people on the scene, at the G8. I don’t fully understand it, but they’ve got stickers for a form they fill in and the back of your photograph. The sticker also goes on your belongings. In a few cases, such as ours, they weren’t attached to our forms, so they didn’t know what they were supposed to do with us.

MEDIC 1
Oh, and they were arguing, and saying; “Oh, can’t you just stick the sticker on their handcuffs’. The forces were arguing so much. There are so many different forces and they are all very competitive. When we were in the van they were bitching about each others different vehicles.

INDY
Do you know where the police were from that arrested you?

MEDIC 2
I think mine was from Birkenhead

INDY
Near Liverpool, Ok… What about the treatment inside [prison] overnight?

MEDIC 2
They eventually divided us into individual cells. And we got given a blanket. I was refused a bible. Which I was very hurt about. I asked and they didn’t give me a bible.

MEDIC 1
We didn’t get food. We were arrested at 6 in the evening, so we didn’t get there [prison] ’till 8 or 9, we didn’t get any food until 7am the next morning. And because most of us had been penned in all day, we were ravenous. And then the food the did get was…

MEDIC 2
Not vegan. You don’t expect kind of gourmet prison food, but when it doesn’t actually cater to your eating dietary requirements…. basically the first thing we had to eat in the morning were chips, which we had at lunchtime today after getting out.

MEDIC 1
I was told to shut up, when I asking for vegan food.

INDY
We also heard that some people were being denied phone calls or the police weren’t passing on… did you hear of any other things like this?

MEDIC 2
I nominated someone to be called and I can only presume that he’s not been notified, Because I have not had any contact from him. My message to him was to ring my mother. She didn’t know about it.

MEDIC 1
Also we have a legal number for the medics, working with the legal group here. That number wasn’t called. The medics kind of figured out eventually we had been arrested. Especially when one of our pictures appeared in the paper, and they had to phone the support group. They were doing the same thing to the foreign prisoners. Basically it was the solicitors today that were telling us that these phone calls hadn’t been made and no one knew who was where. They were also taking every individual prisoner an interview with CID.

INDY
Really?

MEDIC 1
Asking questions - they said “We’re not interviewing you about your arrest”

MEDIC 2
They said “We don’t know anything about your arrest, it’s nothing to do with us, all we’re concerned about is the safety of the public”. And then they said basically we want to find out about future protests that are planned. They had their spiel real down to a tee, it was like they had learned a script. I don’t think anyone co-operated with them. And they got a bit snooty. One of them was particularly sarcastic to me after I refused to basically tell them anything.

INDY
And all of this won’t put you off working as a medic again in the future?

MEDIC 2
Oh no, if anything it has made me realise we are important, especially if we’re being targeted.

INDY
Ok thanks for the interview, good luck travelling back home, and thanks for all the good work you folks have done on the streets.