Renewed ban on Heiligendamm march: protesters angry
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/article_1312026.php/Renewed_ban_on_Heiligendamm_march_protesters_angry Jun 1, 2007, 11:19 GMT
Berlin - A renewed German ban on protests within seven kilometres of next week's G8 (Group of Eight) summit at Heiligendamm brought anger Friday from protesters who had hoped to converge on the venue.
'This is a rebuff to the peaceful protests at the G8 and a black day for freedom of assembly,' said lawyer Carsten Gericke, who had represented demonstrators in a lawsuit against the ban.
An administrative tribunal had upheld Thursday evening a ban on unauthorized marches up to a fence of welded steel mesh erected at a two-kilometre radius around the luxury Kempinski beach hotel.
During their convergence march on June 7, the marchers must stay about seven kilometres away on German federal highway 105, judges in the city of Greifswald ruled.
A tribunal spokesman, Eckhard Corsmeyer, said Friday the ruling reflected the venue geography: marching would block the country lanes down to the beach and obstruct fire and police trucks and ambulances if disaster hit.
Gericke said he was studying if there were grounds to appeal urgently to Germany's federal constitutional court.
Leftists and groups critical of globalization have already been upset by police scrutiny of their movement, heavy policing at pre-G8 marches and this week by Berlin's refusal to let 20 leftists attend the June 6-8 summit as reporters.
A Federal Press Office spokesman said 4,700 applications for media accreditation were received and 20 denied after vetting by federal police. He did not say why they were seen as security risks.
German journalists' unions protested, saying the rejections created the impression that critical reporting was unwelcome.
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Court Ruling Keeps Protesters Out of Heiligendamm
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2571850,00.html The new ruling will make it impossible for protesters to march near the security fence
In a decision that cannot be appealed, an administrative court ruled that protesters will not be allowed to demonstrate within a six-kilometer zone around world leaders meeting next week at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
The long-running debate over how close protesters should be allowed to get to world leaders at the Group of Eight summit was ended Thursday by an administrative court's ruling that authorities could ban demonstrators from entering a six-kilometer (3.7-mile) zone around the Baltic Sea resort where G8 leaders will meet.
The decision overturns a lower court's ruling last week that protests could be banned within 200 meters of the security fence built around the resort but not in the entire village of Heiligendamm, which will host the annual summit from June 6-8.
The court said the new restrictions "do not violate the basic right to freedom of assembly." Globalization opposition groups, however, have said the new restrictions are unconstitutional and insisted on the right to protest within earshot of the events they are demonstrating against.
Major setback for protesters
"We will not reduce our international mobilization against the policies of the G8 to a single-file march," the group organizing a series of protest marches scheduled to converge on Heiligendamm on June 7 said in a statement, adding that neither the administrative court nor the police have supported the protest ban with concrete indications that protests would become violent.
"This is a major setback for peaceful protests of the G8 and a black day for freedom of assembly in Germany," Carsten Gericke, a lawyer for the march's organizer told the dpa news agency on Friday.
Fencing in politics
Jörg Schönbohm, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and the interior minister for the eastern German state of Brandenburg, said the 175 police officers injured during protests of the EU and Asian foreign ministers meeting this week in Hamburg showed the protest could turn violent.
"There are more than just peaceful demonstrators," he said. "The deciding thing is that the conference takes place and that it takes place without disruption."
The Social Democratic Party's spokesman for domestic affairs, Dieter Wiefelspütz, told the online Netzeitung the court's ruling was "oversized" and added that the German Constitutional Court should be open to an appeal from demonstration organizers and that politicians needed to reevaluate the importance of such summits.
"No politician wants to make policy behind a fence," he said.
