lausanne street medic report
inter-relay-unit - 07.06.2003 00:16
An eye-witness account of police human rights abuses in Lausanne, from a street medic, relayed from the Euro-Street Medic mailing list
(transcribed from a phone call)
Firstly, there were only a small number of medics,compared to the size of
the crowd. The police started firing teargas, even when there was nothing
really going on. They gave no warning in any language, and fired randomly
into the crowd. I was with the pink and silver bloc at the time. I have
heard others say that we were teargassed about 20 times in 2 hours. They
started directing the canisters straight at people, firstly at their legs,
then their stomachs, and then at people's heads. I saw several people directly hit in the stomach. As medics, we had only
quite basic kit, but I saw a woman with a serious burn on her leg from a
canister, so I went to sort out her injury. Four police came and baton charged me, and started beating me. She and a friend escaped in one direction, I, in another, with
the police giving chase. I was clearly marked as a medic. We saw several
medics, and two of the legal support lawyers being specifically targeted. A
little later, I came across a man lying unconscious on the street. It was
unclear whether he was even breathing. I tried to go to at least assess his
condition, but the police wouldn't let me near him, or find out his name.They started to threaten me, and then gave chase. I
ran into a wooded area, with them still after me. I eventually found someone I
knew, and a swiss doctor, about 60 years old. We went back to find the
unconscious man. He was still there, but the police would not let the doctor
near him and even stopped an ambulance from collecting him for sometime.
As has already been reported, they herded us back to the official camp, and then came into the camp and demanded to see everybody's ID. They only spoke in French, and would not allow us 10 minutes to get translators or legal support. When they
decided to detain me, I explained that I was the only medic in the camp at
that time. Many people were suffering fro m extended exposure to teargas,
and had burns on their skin. They would not let me stay, nor leave my medical kit bag behind. We were taken away in vans.
Some people I spoke to later in the detention centre said they had been kept
in coaches and vans in the heat with no water, tied up for a few hours before
they arrived at the holding centre. This operation was carried out by army
personnel, and swiss and german police. Nobody knew where we were being
taken, and many of those detained had been in non arrestable roles, like myself. The detention centre was a series of concrete bunkers with wire cages, about 7m by 7m. We were separated by sex, although we were just across a narrow corridor from each
other. In the cages there were no benches or blankets. In my cage, there
were 31 women, in the cage opposite, 46 men, and in another 37 men. Minors
were also being held. A girl of 15 was locked in a uniform cupboard by
herself for hours. We were not allowed a phone call, food and t hey only
occasionally gave us water through the cage wire, like animals in the zoo.
They were verbally abusive, and extremely racist to anyone of colour. They
would not let us use the bathroom for as long as they could, and when they
did permit women to go, they kept the doors of the cubicles open, with male
personnel watching women urinate. One guy tried to make a run for it. He was
brutally attacked with a baton hard into his
testicles. When they did release us, with no charge, later, they released people in dribs and drabs. It was already dark and instead of taking us back to where they had got us
from, they started dumping people on the road. Country roads, miles from
anywhere. I have been on many demos and actions, but I have never seen the
level of violence and repression from the police that we witnessed today.
Somebody I was with has at least part of our detention and the journey on
minidisk, and there has to be some sort of co-ordinated exposure and legal
action aga inst the authorities for these abuses. Notwithstanding the stress
and physical effects of the gas and beatings, the solidarity amongst people
was great. I seriously think that they organised the site of the 'official'
camp to be in a place that was easily isolated, and that they had
premeditated at least some of today's events. They had said they wouldn't
use the army, or german police or water cannons, all of which were deployed
today.
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