Saturday 20th December sees at least 33 major demonstrations against the much hated ‘Gagging Law’.
The law has already been pushed through as the corrupt far right PP still have a majority, and is due to come into effect, giving the police ridiculous powers, plus fines of up to half a million for protesting, plus internet censorship, etc,
Judge Gómez Bermúdez sent to jail seven people arrested in Operation Pandora
Using server Riseup.net or reading the book «Against Democracy» are two of the ‘crimes’ used in the order to justify their imprisonment
Last Wednesday in a further provocation The PP controlled High Court ordered 5.00am raids on 3 anarchist social centres, with 11 arrests for »terrorism», (they are »seven women and four men, aged 31 to 36, Spaniards, as well as emigrants from Uruguay, Italy, and Austria »). No »terrorist» material was found but accusation of membership or sympathy for a terror group is enough to hold 7 of them without bail, 4 are now free..
As usual the state controlled press announced ‘the capture of anarchist terrorists», referring to the destruction of a few cash dispensers in Italian owned banks some years ago, and linking by pure speculation to the case of Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar, the Chilean born anarchists imprisoned for supposedly attacking a cathedral in Zaragoza.
The attack on the anarchists has received wide solidarity and demos across Spain and in Berlin already. On Twitter the trending tag is #OperacionPandora. On Saturday smaller demos will form columns from various Barcelona barrios, meeting up at the main anti Gag Law demo.
At the gates of the National Court dozens of friends and relatives of the detained have picketed all day until the police dispersed and identified the all.
Meanwhile, speaking to the Direct Asens James, one of the lawyers who attends one of the detainees Operation Pandora denounces the opacity of the entire case and says that his client has been declared today without knowing for what is accused, Asens assured that everything is «shameful police and judicial.» Tonight and tomorrow cmore protests were called to denounce the entire operation and several columns of protesters from Barcelona neighborhoods to reach the starting point of the demonstration against the gag law to be held Saturday at noon at the center of the city.
Applied anti-terrorism law
The eleven people arrested during the joint operation of the National Court of Spain and the Catalan police spent Tuesday night in the dungeons of Cerdanyola, Sabadell, Ruby, Sant Cugat del Vallès and Madrid. Already called to testify, they all refused because they did not knowwhat they are accused of.
The detainees, whoare held under anti-terrorism law but are not being held incommunicado at present, were transferred to the Spanish National Court between yesterday and today in the morning and made available to the magistrate No. 3 of that court.
The judge attributed crimes of »constitution, promotion, management and membership of a terrorist organization in relation to possible crimes of possession and storage of explosives »
In the many raids they found »machetes, brass knuckles, knives, golf balls and hand and boat flares». Also «other pyrotechnical elements and instruments commonly used to make homemade devices.»
Anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists interpreted the police operations and arrests as the beginning of a new wave of repressions against the anarchist movement against the background of a deepening crisis, the growth of dissatisfaction of the population, and the cranking up of repressive laws.
Later anarchists coordinated their actions through social networks and arranged mass-scale actions of protest in Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, and Zaragoza, Valladolid, and Salamanca. Meetings ended with clashes with police.
In the centre of Madrid, anarchists tried to set up barricades. Actions were started at the Tirso de Molina Plaza, but soon the crowds spilled into the adjacent streets. There are reports of 3 to 5 arrests, charged with disturbance of the peace.
In the Catalonian capital three thousand people took to the streets, demanding the released of the arrested. Meetings took place mainly in the Gracia district, where early on Tuesday morning (December 16) arrests took place. Around 6:00 pm anarchists gathered at Plaza del Diamante. They demanded the release of the arrested persons and shouted slogans. For example: “The only terrorist is a state-capitalist”. Then they set out on a march through the streets of the city, not avoiding confrontations with the police who were blocking the path of the demonstrators. In retaliation, the demonstrators began to break the windows of banks and real estate agencies, overturn and set on fire waste receptacles, and smash the windows of parked cars (https://directa.cat/actualitat/milers-de-manifestants-als-carrers-de-gra…).
Pandora’s box and the catch-all of Spanish counter-terrorism
note: 2nd half of article is google translation only
by Solidàries 18 Dec 2014
Tuesday morning December 16 suprised us with a wave of searches and arrests … Are we surprised? No, really we are NOT surprised. The Catalan police, (the Mossos d’Esquadra), the paramilitary Civil Guard and bailiffs of the National Court raided more than 10 homes and some local anarchists in Barcelona, Sabadell, Manresa and Madrid, with their searches, arrests, confiscation of propaganda material and computer.
Plus they took this opportunity to raid and loot the Kasa de la Muntanya, an occupied space that just turned 25 years old, using the entire riot Mobile Riot Brigade of the Mossos d’Esquadra, smashing doors with battering rams at 5.00am, steel cutters, even a riot van, holding comrades at gunpoint, including children, for up to 10 hours, smashing by mistake into an old folks home… etc etc the same in two more anarchist social centres.. only to find NOTHING OF TERRORISM
.
According to the press, playing as always their role as police spokesmen, the purpose of these arrests is undoing «a criminal organization with terrorist aims and violent anarchist character«. Although it sounds repetitive we must repeat once again: the only criminal organization that seeks to terrorize people with its violent nature is the State and its tentacles: the press, the legal system, its repressive bodies and politicians, are spectrum that are.
Why did this repressive action not surprise us ? Because we were expecting it.
We don’t pretend to be oracles or anything, but anyone can read between the lines, sometimes literally, and interpret events. As with the arrest of other comrades last year, there have long been orchestrated waves, as on Tuesday, against libertarian and anti-authoritarian environments, although various raids were smaller they had the same pattern.
«Italian style» Operations
For a couple of decades the anarchist environment the neighboring region of Italy lives from time to time, and in recent years with increasing regularity, macro similar to the operations Tuesday. Not only in the form of simultaneous raids and searches in different houses, also the use of names that sound easy to remember and with a certain black humor, as in this current operation, called Pandora because this case, according to the press repeated their judicial sources «was a box that despite numerous scares that we had, there was no way to open«. With numerous «scares» refer to various actions that happened in recent years throughout the Spanish territory. Returning to the Italian operations not remember the names of some occurred in recent years, such as Operation Thor, whose name alluded to the charge of a series of attacks with hammers to ATMs and other offices, Operation Ixodidae, which refers to the technical name of the family of ticks, how they called fascists communists and anarchists, or other like Daring, Cervantes,
Nottetempo, etcetera.
In addition to the procedure and nomenclature, a factor that is very reminiscent to the neighboring country is the role of the press, which also helped us visualize what was coming. For about three years ago or even a little more, the Spanish press began a campaign to prepare the ground so that operations how are you not only possible, but also predictable. Pointing environments, even occasionally spaces or people with names, groups, etc., working on building a caricatured image and somewhat bizarre an internal enemy, that while decades usual, in recent years was taking a character very specific, «violent anarchist«, the «insurrectionist» the «anti infiltrating social movements» and so on.
The Chilean fiasco
The year 2010 was a glorious year for the Chilean state. Besides being elected president and fourth richest businessman in the country, right Sebastián Piñera, police, media and judicial operation against anti-authoritarian environment with the balance of more than a dozen searches and arrests, known as Operation Salamander orchestra, popularly denominated as «Case bombs» being based on the investigation of a series of bombings that occurred in previous years, and the creation by police imagery of a hierarchical macrostructure of an alleged charge of all these explosions: a circus that not only weakened the image of the state, besides leave it ridiculous, but highlighted the gross of the investigation procedures, including the falsification of evidence, blackmail or pressure to get informants or «sorry», chance, and so on. The process ended with the acquittal of all charged with a vengeance by the Chilean State against the environment and people investigated.
A year after the end of the farce of «Case bombs», and through an operation, this time on this side of the pond, ministries, and Chilean courts and police worked together on a new case. Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar, both former defendants in the «Case bombs» were arrested in Barcelona, where they lived at the time, along with 3 other people who then were left out of the case, accused of placing a bomb in the Basilica del Pilar de Zaragoza, conspiracy to a similar event and membership of an alleged terrorist organization. These comrades currently in custody awaiting trial do not know when it will be, nor do we know what this new process will alter its crackdown.
The situation is more or less known by all and if one thing we are certain is that the recent arrests serve to flesh out a case that alone does not hold.
Coincidence?
A few hours before the arrests Tuesday the Spanish government from their media echoed the «ministries of Interior Spain and Chile opened a new phase of enhanced cooperation in the fight against anarchist terrorism«. On Monday December 15, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz, met with Vice President Chile and Chilean Interior Minister Rodrigo Peñailillo at the Palacio de La Moneda government in Santiago de Chile. «In the fight against terrorism, Chile find in Spain to a solid ally», the Spanish boasted, as he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Chile, «the highest distinction of the country to civil merit» according to press, the Chilean state trophy given in this case by the police work and as a reward for the arrest of Monica and co Francisco last year.
In addition to accolades and awards, trade Fernández was to sell some of his own: police training, judicial repression varied materials, etcetera.
And what is to come …
What is this repressive step? We do not know. So far little is known about how they are our brothers and sisters, what they are accused exactly what repressive measures shall be submitted, if they come into custody or not, etcetera.
The truth is that this operation is not an isolated incident, but ring as a link in a chain. A string of brutal repression and other subtle moments, which come from the new laws (no more to think about the recent Gag Law), the siege of undocumented through increasingly massive racist raids, police brutality, aspiration to manage and administer misery repression, which after all is what makes the State, by a pseudo–left (can a head) which is increasingly obviously a parody of herself . Evictions, sticks, fascism, legal and punitive hardening of all kinds, nationalist illusions and social democrats, is what will bring the present. Do not expect anything worse, the worst is never gone.
The range of possibilities of Spanish counterterrorism is a mixed bag in which everything fits. It is there, in sight, to remind us that the state is fighting terrorism. Works like a scarecrow. Are we going to scare?
The State and its agents say they have opened Pandora’s box. In Greek mythology, Pandora is the equivalent of the biblical Eve. With characteristic misogyny of both mythologies, Pandora opened her box, like Eva eats his apple, and releases all the evils that are there.
We are able to create our own story and spend where we see fit mythological shit. Our story is different. The «box» that opened this crackdown urges us to act, to remain vigilant, to be attentive to the next steps of his story. It makes us think and rethink what the world we want and what is the distance of that world with it. It leads us to see the urgency to act, to move on.
The companions and fellow detainees are part of different projects, spaces, groups, etc., and it is very important that this does not falter, that the ruin (in every sense) that usually have this type of situation does not generate ipotencia and a feeling of paralysis.
We always say that «the best solidarity is to continue the struggle.» Okay, but what does that mean in practice? They also chanted «if they touch a touch us all.» This has been made evident in the responses and protests that had at different points, and the unconditional warmth of the compas that are out.
Of one thing we can be sure, is that the comrades arrested can feel the heat that transfers the bars and isolation, because it is the same heat at different times also been known to them.
Barcelona, December 18, 2014
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Reblogged this on we are not afraid of ruins.
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