Anti-G8 protests focus on flight and migration

SPECIAL REPORT FROM THE G8 SUMMIT IN GERMANY

By Brenda Leonard
05 June 2007

The Anti-G8 campaign is organised around theme days, and June 4 had marked the flight and migration day, focussing on refugees and their rights.

At the first demonstration sit-down yesterday morning at the Werf Strase foreigners office in Rostock, Germany, about two thousand people gathered to protest against the treatment of refugees. At this centre refugees and migrants are allegedly tortured and prosecuted on a daily basis. Decisions are also made here on which status people without EU citizenship will receive.

Hagen Kopff, organiser of the demonstration says, “What we have today the fourth of June is in the frame of anti-G8 protests. The day is about flight and migration, and our central demands are: global freedom of movement, equal rights for all and the slogan of our refugee friends of course. We are here because you destroy our countries. To speak about the background of flight migration and to say again the G8 are mainly responsible for the poverty, for the wars, for this free trade agreements which bring so much problems. For example, Africa, where people are forced to flight, so this is what we explain in our action day today.”

According to reports, some 400 protestors pelted police with bottles as they protested restrictions on refugees and asylum seekers in G8 countries. After a demonstration that took place over the weekend in Rostock, police have been continuing with strategies of provocation and obstruction. On the day following the mass demonstration, the police continued to patrol the situation in the state of Mecklenburg – Vorpommern. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the violence and warned that the authorities will not tolerate such action.

World leaders are meeting in Heiligendam, Germany for the 33rd G8 Summit.