Things are moving fast in hamburg, the g20 summit is coming closer and the police & other officials are trying everything to prevent the protest from happening. Over the last couple of weeks we have spent the most time preparing, building and fighting (legal) battles with the authorities. This text should give you a brief summary of the latter and how the authorities are trying to limit protest - at any cost.
First things first: So far we have won both of the cases and we‘re very optimistic that we‘re going to win the objection too.
The cases
Case 1 – the camp as a political assembly
The city of Hamburg is trying to deny us the nature as a political assembly. By German law a political assembly generally has the freedom of assembly when- and wherever wished. Which means the police doesn‘t need to approve the camp but needs to give valid reason to prohibit it.
By denying the nature of the camp as a political assembly we would be bound to the same rules as an open air concert which needs to be confirmed.
The first court ruled that our camp in fact is a political assembly and the administrative authority has to treat us according to their own rules.
As expected the administrative authority objected. If we win the objection, we have won the case. If we don‘t then we can and will go to the supreme court and beyond.
We expect the verdict by the end of this week.
Case 2 – the blue zone
Just one day after the court declared us as a political assembly the police published a so called „Allgemeinverfügung“ ( general ruling) which ruled that in a 38 km² area all political assemblies will be prohibited from Friday July 7th 7am until Saturday July 8th. Our camp is part of this so called ‘blue zone‘. So we went to court against this blue zone – and yesterday we won again.
Although the verdict was a resounding slap for the administrative authority they objected again.
It‘s the same as above: If we win we‘re done and if not we‘ll have to go to supreme court and beyond.
The why
If we win both cases – which we all expect - they will be looking for new obstacles that can be pushed in our way.
The reason for this is – and it‘s important to bring this to mind again and again – they want to prevent criticism of their capitalist bullshit. They want to stop all of us from coming to Hamburg.
Are we going to let this happen? Are we going to let them intimidate us?
No!
We as the preparation group will go through the courts and together with you we‘ll go beyond.
We will see you on our last preparation meeting on Sunday or at the setup from Monday on!
ases and we‘re very optimistic that we‘re going to win the objection too.