Europe: We're not the only ones to stifle dissent - Police tactics at the G20 demonstrations reflect an Europe–wide trend to conflate terrorism and protest as equal threats to security

We're not the only ones to stifle dissent: Police tactics at the G20
demonstrations reflect an Europe–wide trend to conflate terrorism and protest
as equal threats to security
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/08/civil-liberties-protest>
Tony Bunyan (Statewatch), Friday 8 May 2009

--snip--

The European Union produced two relevant security handbooks, one dealing with
international events and another designed to prevent terrorist attacks at the
Olympic Games in 2004. In December 2006 they were combined into one Security
handbook [pdf] "the security (both from a public order point of view as well
as counter-terrorism) of all major international events, be it political,
sporting, social, cultural or other". It also provides information on the
gathering of intelligence, how to stop and turn back "suspected" protestors at
EU borders and details how to expel protestors in an "efficient" manner if
they are detained.

These guides conflate terrorism and protests as equal threats to security and
this viewpoint is reflected in a changed police attitude to protests and
public order across the EU. The heavy handed policing of protests at the EU
summit in Gothenburg, Sweden in June 2001 was followed by repeated police
attacks on a demonstrators at a massive protest at the G8 meeting in Genoa in
July 2001. This lead to a series of trials[pdf] of both protestors and police
officers that have only just finished.

There were similar violent police responses to protests at the World Economic
Forum in Davros [pdf] and Evian, the EU summit in Thessaloniki in 2003, the
2005 G8 in Gleneagles and the 2007 G8 meeting in Heiligendamm[pdf], Germany.

An emerging pattern suggests that EU citizens wishing to exercise their
democratic right to protest – and to attend cross-border protests – are
confronted by para-military style policing, pre-emptive surveillance and
raids, denial of entry, preventive detention, the control and dispersal of
protests and expulsion from the country, sometimes with a lengthy re-entry ban.

These tactics imperill the right to dissent, an intrinsic democratic right,
and endanger the public safety of those attending protests.

For how long will free movement, one of the EU's founding principles, include
the right to cross national borders to protest?