At 6am on 29th May a repressive operation was launched by the German investigative police ‘Schwarzer Block’ (Black Block) on an international level. The operation has already obtained results in France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain.
Given that the German police lost control in its biggest and most militarized operation of the century – given that we took the streets during the protests against the G20 in Hamburg last summer, showing the State that it can’t control us completely, not even by force – the German State is looking for people to accuse and punish, people to represent the G20 revolt and the repression that followed.
There is an investigative team with more than 180 police officers, which call themselves ‘Soko Black Block’, which is trying to arrest as many demonstrators as it can. Since last summer they have been carrying out massive repressive waves from time to time, with operations that appear to be specifically devised to capture the attention of the media and intimidate demonstrators. They have carried out raids and two big public investigations with over 200 pictures of suspects participating in the riots, which were published by the German media along with a call to report those people to the police. One of the greatest aspirations of the Hamburg police was to also have this power in other European countries, and now it has happened.
Last Tuesday raids were carried out in several places in search of evidence and people were called to testify. In Spain, one of the four raids they wanted to do was not possible for legal reasons; in Italy there were raids in Genoa and Rome, including the home of a comrade who had already been sentenced in Hamburg; in Bremgarten (Switzerland), a comrade’s home was raided; and in France three other comrades were wanted.
On 13th April the police launched a pan-European search for 24 suspected rebels. The Federal Crime Police (BKA) sent out a list of wanted persons with about twenty people’s pictures, unknown until now.
The investigation that led to this operation concerns mainly episodes during the night of 7th July. The German police are working a lot with genetic material and are comparing pictures and footage.
11 months after the counter-summit, repression on an international level is just starting, so we think it is necessary to be on the alert. It is important to give updates of these investigations and trials, and at the same time it would be useful to consult the photographic archive published on the Hamburg police site, preferably taking all the necessary precautions so as to work in conditions of internet safety.
During the raids the police don’t just look for any kind of material that could be related to Hamburg or the protests, such as maps and clothing; they are also showing a particular interest in international contacts and relations. Everything that links us to the milieu and to comrades in other countries is useful to them. Any note on paper that ends with @riseup.net interests them very much. It’s also important to pay attention to all electronic material and devices, such as computers, USB keys and SIM cards.
We invite everyone to stay alert and well informed, to clean our homes of material that could link us to the G20 protests and continue to support the struggle that was and is, as well as the comrades who are suffering the resulting repression.
Obviously this avid search for contacts and links is not happening by chance. Once again the police are trying to trace a kind of international network or coordination so as to better equip these events with some kind of coordinated terrorist action. Several German media outlets are repeating that ‘Andy Grote of the SPD, responsible for the Interior of the city of Hamburg, has linked the disorders to terrorism’.
Through this international operation they are also creating a network among themselves, reinforcing a collaborative way of working. The German police storm our homes and take what they want, and then the police of each country use it, take note and prepare the repression in their own territory. Moreover, according to the quoted words of their spokesperson, this is only a first stage which will be followed by others, whose goal is mainly that of intimidating the people who were at the G20 protests, also those from other countries, and making them feel insecure.
In this case, as always, ‘terrorist’ is nothing more than one of the classifications with which they can apply their repressive apparatus and articulate a discourse meant to fight dissidence and the agents of conflict more easily. The same goes for their categories of ‘good demonstrators’ and ‘bad demonstrators’, ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’. Terrorists, rebels, delinquents: sometimes we are, others we are not. Sometimes we are guilty of making opposition when the bosses of the world meet in order to decide on our lives, always looking for the greatest profit. We are not much interested in their categories, their front pages or their judgments. Any act of violence against the State and Capitalism, their infrastructures and repressive forces remains for us largely justified by the systematic and structural violence to which we are condemned by the imposed conditions of life.
Strength to all those who struggled to ‘overshadow’ the G20, to those who have been arrested and raided, and those who are still in jail!
SWITZERLAND:
Note of ContraMadriz: taken from Aargauerzeitung and translated into Spanish. In the following note there is more information on the Swiss operation that is part of the context of the European operation led by Germany on the pretext of the G20 protests in Hamburg. Modus operandi similar to: https://anarhija.info/library/madrid-spagna-operazione-repressiva-europea-a-partire-dai-disordini-durante-il-g20-di-it.
Raids in Bremgarten: this morning police raided a cultural centre (KuZeB) and a private home as part of a campaign all over Europe. The authorities interrogated a twenty-seven-year-old, one of their ‘targets’, over the disorders that took place in Hamburg during the G20 in July 2017.
The raids in Bremgarten are part of a European operation. Officers raided a twenty-seven-year-old’s home, whose photograph had been published by investigators in relation to the disorders in Elbchaussee during the G20 in Hamburg on 7th July 2017. Demonstrators had caused huge damage in the area.
In particular, a home was raided in Reussgasse and simultaneously a cultural centre was raided in Bremgarten. ‘A request came from Germany through the power of attorney’, Bernhard Graser, spokesman of the canton police, explained.
Translated from Italian by act for freedom now!
