Nottingham folk report from G8 in Germany #2
Received by email | 01.06.2007 10:45 | G8 Germany 2007 | Social Struggles
Second report from some Nottingham folk who have travelled to Germany to take action during the G8 summit, which takes place at from 6-8 June 2007 in a hotel in Heiligendamm next to Rostock at the Baltic Sea. For more coverage of the G8 summit, click here. For the first report, click here.
Day 4 (28/05/07): Berlin-Hamburg
Today we hitched to Hamburg with the vague hope that we would make it to the ASEM demo. Unfortunately we didn't do too well and missed several hours of marching. Oh no. The pictures are impressive. 5000 mostly black-clad activists and 5000 cops, but I can't say my sore feet minded missing out on all that walking. Apparently we also missed some cop cars being smashed and, rumour has it, many cops being hospitalised from their own tear gas (police are looking for someone who injured 170 cops).
When we headed to the Rote Flora, where we hoped the infopoint system would find us a place to stay, we found it surrounded by some of the crazy, military style cops that I believe are unique to hamburg. After an hour we gave up and found a place through another centre, called the B5.
Day 5 (29/05/07): Hamburg
This evening, around 8pm, hundreds of activists waited outside the Rote Flora for a demonstration against the police repression of the day before. 500 police turned up, proceeded to violently restrained two people on the ground simply for standing slightly in the road and stood around threateningly. Around 300+ people marched through Hamburg, to the place the remaining arrestees were being held, and back to the Rote Flora with, I think, 3 arrests in total.
Day 6 (30/05/07): Hamburg
Today there was an artsy demo in Hamburg. The local left radio station broadcast, in English, some "exercises"; movements, for people listening on their personal stereos to act out. In theory the city centre was overrun with strange acting people in a similar fashion to events that have been held in the UK. I'm yet to find a report of the event, however.
Day 7 (31/05/07): Hamburg-Rostock
We hitched to Rostock, got here late, bumped into a few English speakers heading the same way as us and found the campsite just in time to put up a tent in the dark. Lots of hippy/student activist types here trying to get petitions signed etc. so I'm looking forward to heading to another camp where I hope to find more smelly punks who are on the same wavelength as me. I've heard a rumour that one of the other camps might soon be invaded by a camera-mounted crane so I hope they manage to do something about that.
Received by email