Netherlands by hooligans on their way to football matches, they say, but this has never led to mass arrests. Indeed it seems that the real purpose of the police operation was to prevent as many people as possible from joining the protest march and to remove those Italians regarded as would-be trouble-makers from the Netherlands. A statement of the public prosecutor in the case seems to confirm this: "If you saw what was coming out of this train, you understand what could have happened"
The second wave of mass arrests took place on Sunday 15 June around the Vrankrijk building, one of the information centres belonging to Dutch groups opposed to the Summit. In the late afternoon the police suddenly began arresting people entering or leaving the building, or
Europe's FBI in action While the heads of governments of the EU were discussing the amendment of the Maastricht Treaty at the Amsterdam InterGovernmental Conference in June, the Dutch capital was under a state of siege. The Dutch police preventitively arrested hundreds of demonstrators, accusing many of "membership of a criminal organisation" All this was observed with great interest by police liaison officers from other EU-countries. Nicholas Busch asks if this was a first glimpse of the "area of freedom, security and justice" established by the Amsterdam Treaty? When the Summit was over, at least 700 people, most of them anti-Summit protesters, had been temporarily detained, sometimes without their arrest even being registered. Preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 and 300 foreigners from EU countries were summarily deported, in many cases without being informed of the grounds for their removal. Many foreig ners were deported without their passports, money and other personal belongings. Some were told they would not be allowed to enter the Netherlands for some time and were advised to pick up their belongings at the Dutch embassy in their country.
Approximately 130 Italians were held for hours on the train that brought them to Amsterdam and sent back to Italy under police escort in the middle of the night. 2 International Viewpoint #295
Belgians and Germans were bussed to the borders and handed over to their home countries' police. Scandinavians were put on planes. 4 Swedes and 12 Danes were brought home on a military aircraft, escorted by a Dutch fighter-bomber the first part of the way. Hundreds of people randomly arrested on the streets of Amsterdam were subjected to police abuse and ill-treatment under detention.
On Saturday 14 June, a large, long planned European demonstration against unemployment gathered some 50,000 demonstrators from many EU countries. Some minor clashes with the police occurred during this march, but both the SocialDemocrat Mayor of Amsterdam, Mr Schelto Patijn [incidentally a brother of Michiel Patijn, the Minister of European Affairs and Dutch chief-negotiator at the IGC] and the public relations officer of the police declared themselves very satisfied with the outcome of the march and said that minor damages and disturbances were quite normal at events of that size.
They omitted to say that hundreds of Italians had been effectively prevented from taking part in the march. The police simply held them on the train upon arrival at Amsterdam. Only after the demonstration was over were most of them allowed to leave the station. However, approximately 130 passengers were locked in the train during the whole afternoon. They were later handcuffed and brought to a penitentiary. Their photographs were taken and in the middle of the night they were put on a train back to Italy, allegedly on suspicion of having caused damage in
Two Italian members of the European Parliament, who wanted to check these police allegations were denied access to the train by the police. Dutch observers question that the alleged damages were the real ground for the mass arrests. Extensive damage to trains is often caused in the merely walking around in streets in its wider surroundings. Some people were literally kidnapped - handcuffed, blindfolded and driven away by plain-clothes police in black Mercedes cars. Soon, information spread that the people arrested were being detained and charged on the accusation of "membership in a criminal organisation", , in accordance with Article 140 of the Dutch Penal Code.
At 9pm a group of about 350 people attempted to leave 'Vrankrijk' for a demonstration at the police headquarters in protest against the arrests. After only 20 metres, the marchers were surrounded by riot police, whereupon they sat down on the street and began chanting. After having "cleaned" the area around Vrankrijk from passers-by and curious press people, the police arrested all 350 people, as well as some passers-by protesting against the operation. Again, the arrests were made on the charge of suspected "membership in a criminal organisation". It was the biggest mass arrest in the Netherlands since 1966.
On Monday 16 June, the opening day of the official summit, the city centre of Amsterdam had all the characteristics of a fortress. The police were omnipresent. Throughout the city people "disappeared", randomly arrested as possible troublemakers - a suspicion based only on their appearance. Far away from any security zone, 6 people were arrested under Article 140. Their crime consisted in having somewhat naively, perhaps, asked some policemen for the way to an announced demonstration of Kurdish people.
That evening, a few hundred people gathered near a security zone for what they called a "jubilation march". The marchers intended to approach the hotels where the European heads of government were staying and "cheer" them (somewhat noisily) "for all the efforts they are making". The organisers also carried a cake they intended to deliver to French President Chirac. Some 200 people were arrested. They were released the next day with a fine of 125 guilders (US$63) for "illegal gathering , according to a provision of the local emergency regulation in force during the Summit.
Most of those detained under Article
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140 were released only after the official conclusion of the Summit - without being interrogated. None have been formally charged and Dutch lawyers doubt that anyone will ever stand trial. This is a further indication that the purpose of the arrests never was to actually start penal procedures, but merely to keep them away from the streets during the Summit.
The chief public prosecutor stated several times on television that, long before the Euro Summit, the decision had been taken to get hold of possible troublemakers through the use of Article 140. Fritz R., a professor of penal law at the University of Amsterdam, said that in considering what had happened he could see only one criminal organisation - formed by the Mayor, the public prosecutor and the head of the police, who had been working in a organised way for some months on preparing these deliberate and unlawful
Almost 90% of the charges based on Article 140 never resulted in a conviction. The "usefulness" of the provision consisted in its authorising the police to make much wider use of sweeping investigative techniques than in investigations based on other provisions of the Penal Code. In most of the cases the provision has been used not against dangerous, violent criminals but against radio pirates, organisations involved in the trafficking of soft drugs, squatters, football supporters and extremist right-wing parties.
In 1918, a leading member of the Social Democrat Workers Party was sentenced under this article for having called for a revolution in the Netherlands. After World War Il the provision was used against freedom fighters in Indonesia, when the Netherlands were fighting their colonial war there. Thus, it has been used before against political groups, but always after something actually had happened and with more substantial evidence and more
This is the first time that Article 140 has been used for "pro-active" policing purposes, 1.e. to prevent an alleged risk of "disturbances" of public order and security. Dutch critics claim the objective of the operation was not only to prevent people from exercising their basic right to demonstrate at the Amsterdam summit, but also to generally establish a new interpretation of Article 140, extending its use to groups within society whose crime consists in being disliked by the state.
On Tuesday 24 June the Amsterdam city council discussed the events occurring during the Summit. Only the Green Left clearly disapproved of the behaviour of the police. Most other parties approved, because, as the leader of the Social Demo-
"it is better to have an investigation as to why the police arrested innocent people than to have an investigation into the question of why half the city was
The majority of parliament did not disapprove of the arrests as such, but said that the use of Article 140 was not really appropriate and that the time had come to amend the penal code, in order to make this kind of arrest possible under another article of the penal law. Most parliamentary groups carefully avoided addressing the crucial question of whether there were any grounds for the arrests in the first place and whether the state has the right to prevent demonstrations only because it dislikes them.
Minister of Justice, Ms Winnie Sorgdrager, said she personally approved of using Article 140 in cases like this, but that it was ultimately up to a judge to decide whether its application was justified or not.
Most political parties now demand that at least some people be prosecuted under Article 140, so as to allow a court to state whether its use against the anti-Summit protesters was lawful or not. In the meantime, most observers agree that there will be no convictions under Article 140 in this case. Consequently, by calling for "test" prosecutions. the parliament has in fact given the Department of Justice a mandate to investigate an unknown organisation' which - in application of the "guilt by association" principle - could theoretically comprise the entire extra-parliamentary opposition in the Foreign police involved
According to a Dutch police spokesman, German, Belgian and British police were dispatched to Amsterdam during the Summit. The Germans brought with them dogs trained to find bombs. The spokesman insisted, however, that the foreign police did not actively take part in any operations, but were there merely as observers. The Swedish police officially confirmed that they had dispatched an "observer" to Amsterdam. And according to Italian activists, an Italian police liaison officer passed information on protesters on the train from Italy to his Dutch
Dutch groups organising the antiSummit activities claim that German and Italian police warned the Dutch authorities before the Summit about "trouble-makers" from their respective countries planning major disturbances of the Summit, thereby triggering panic among the Dutch police who had earlier shown a rather relaxed attitude in preparing for the Summit.
Weeks before the Summit, a couple of Dutch detectives visited numerous squatted houses in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities and strongly warned the occupants against accommodating foreign guests during the Summit. The detectives particularly encouraged people to ring them if they had "problems with Germans". The occupants (whose squats have been legalised by the authorities), were told that non-compliance with these instructions could entail their immediate eviction.
The Dutch police were not the only ones to collect fingerprints and photocontents europe
2 Europe's FBI in action
-- • Nicholas Busch
4
Portugal: municipal elections
• Luís Branco
5
France's 35 hour week
6
Britain: Labour Party conference
• Pete Firmin
8
EU Employment summit
9
Russia: trouble in Moscow
• Boris Kagarlitsky
10
France: Truck drivers' strike
• interview with strike leader
10 Denmark: Red Green Alliance advances
11 Ireland's new president
• David Coen
11 Czech anarchists win court case against police
15 Gypsy asylum seekers
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ISpain's Dis-United Left
12 The crisis in Izquierda Unida
12 A necessary rupture?
• Jaime Pastor
14 A liberating rupture!
• Diosdado Toledano americas
16 Canada's new left • Charlie Post
17 USA: •FBI "sting" against US Communists • Million Woman March
18 neoliberalism in Brazil
• Gustavo Codas africa
20 South Africa: the truth about the
Apartheid debt asia
22 China: Labour struggles
• Zhang Kai
23 South Korea:
Queer Film Festival banned
Labour leader stands for President
24 Indonesia's forest fires
• B. Skanthakumar
26 The crisis on financial markets
• Andy Kilmister regular features
28 conferences
30 books
32 Index for 1997
36 Radical press review
36 NetWorking • Internet action
* Europe's FBI in action graphs. The German police took photographs and fingerprints of those deported, and told them they would be charged for "disturbance of the peace". . German police even tried to take photographs and fingerprints of some of the people on the returning Italian train. And Italian authorities were put under strong pressure from the Netherlands and Germany to arrest their returned nationals upon arrival in Italy, but refused to do so.
As yet, however, there is no official confirmation of any formal structures of international police co-operation, such as Schengen or EDU/Europol, being involved in police action before, during and after the Summit. The Dutch authorities have so far chosen to neither confirm nor deny specific suspicions expressed by activist circles of extensive registration of protesters in the Schengen Information A test run for Europe's political police?
The novelty with the police operations around the Amsterdam Summit, is, on the one hand, their purely pro-active character and, and on the other, their astounding legal motivation and the participation of foreign police.
Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested before anything happened and after nothing had happened. After several days of demonstrations and protest marches drawing tens of thousands of people, all the damage done consisted in little more windows, destroyed flower beds, and a police car turned on the side. Not one police officer was injured. Neither does the police's own list of objects seized from more several hundred people arrested suggest a strong inclination to violence among the protesters. The "weapons" found consisted of 14 (mostly pocket) knives, four screw drivers, a starting pistol and 3 teargas aerosol-sprays.
Random arrests of hundreds of people, including passers-by, were based on the alleged suspicion of "membership in a criminal organisation". This served a double purpose. On the one hand, it enabled the immediate arrest of people who had not committed any more concrete offence. It thereby allowed the police to clear the street of "disturbing" elements until the end of the EU summit. Secondly, and more worryingly, reference to the offence of "membership in a criminal organisation" gave the police authorisation