Police target CJA spokespeople

photo credit: Nico Jankowski

Following yesterday’s arrest of CJA spokesperson Tadzio Muller after the Climate Justice Action press conference, about four more spokespeople were violently snatched out of the crowd today. At 18:00 a CJA press conference will address the arrests of the media spokespeople that aim to limit their freedom of speech [audio file of press conference]

[Video of undercover snatch squad making arrest | petition for release of "climate prisoners"]

As was reported yesterday, a CJA activist and spokes person, Tadzio Muller was violently snatched by plain clothes police minutes after he left a Climate Justice Action press conference [pic] at the Bella Centre, where COP15 is being held. The conference presented the rationale behind today’s Reclaim Power! action, which aimed to take over the climate conference for one day and turn it into a people’s assembly. Some mainstream media have since wrongly branded Tadzio as the “leader” of CJA (CJA is a non-heirarchical organisation), while others relay a more balanced view and echo fears that the police are trying to silence dissent by targeting spokes people.

These fears seem to have materialised: at todays action, Reclaim Power!, up to four additional CJA spokes people seem to have been arrested in a targetted manner by plain clothes police using pepper spray and plenty of muscle. Another arrest in the morning is unconfirmed. At 9:19 am the 6 plain clothes officers arrested one of the CJA spokes people at the Tornby station as the Green Bloc was assembling. Later in the day at 11:43pm, the police attacked the Blue bloc, took over the van, and arrested a further 2 CJA spokes people, it seems in a targeted fashion (YouTube video).

Following these arrests CJA called a special press conference at 6:00pm to denounce the deliberate targeting of spokes people. This targeting has stopped people from being able to express the opinions of CJA to the public and journalists, without having any operational impact on the actual actions. This is a narrow attack on the freedom of speech of activists, after many days of attack on their freedom to protest.

Today many activists were again arrested in a preventative manner, while others trying to make it to the Bella Centre were charged with batons and pepper sprayed to prevent them from holding a people’s assembly there. In a perverse twist, the police even threated to arrest the assaulted delegates and accredited COP15 participants who tried to join the assembly from inside the negotiations.