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Courts strengthen German nuclear oppononents
Diet Simon - 11.07.2006 17:06
Germany’s supreme court has again faulted police and lower courts over the detention of anti-nuclear activists at a 2001 protest action near the Gorleben waste dump (see  http://de.indymedia.org/2006/07/151801.shtml). The judgment came almost five years after motor bikers with camping gear were seized by police and held for eight hours. I have often wondered whether such tardy justice is of any benefit and whether it has changed the behaviour of police and other authorities towards demonstrators. Dieter Metk, a media spokesman for the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg, the umbrella group of the Gorleben resistance, answered the following questions for me by email.
Question: The verdicts don’t seem to change anything. Do the police, the other authorities, the courts just keep going like they always have?
Metk: The rulings of various courts in favour of nuclear opponents, especially those of the Federal Constitutional Court [Germany’s supreme court] have definitely influenced police behaviour. At the last CASTOR transport in November 2005 there were no mass seizures of demonstrators like in 2001. But the police have changed their strategy accordingly. They now block off wide areas, let no one through, use immense technical means. Parts of the “endangered” transport route are secured with police vehicles standing bumper to bumper for kilometres, an immense input.
Question: What do they care if almost five years after an incident their actions are ruled illegal?
Metk: Certainly not a string of beans in regard to past police deployments. But for the coming transports – and we have to expect quite a few more – the court rulings can’t just be ignored. But if there’s any doubt, the truncheon rules over rights, we’ve had to experience that all too often.
Question: How many judgments have there been in your favour, how many went against you and how many cases are still pending?
Metk: It’s not possible to keep track of all cases. After all, all sorts of different people are involved – not just the Bürgerinitiative, but also other resistance groups here in the Wendland, "Widersetzen", "Bäuerliche Notgemeinschaft", loosely and spontaneously formed protest groups, individuals and so on and so forth. But also fairly large groups like "Robin Wood" have to defend themselves against absurd accusations.
Question: What were the issues?
Metk: There are very simple “breach of public order” cases because railway lines were stepped on or the most absurd charges in criminal cases in which tractor drivers who did not want to stop at a police line were charged with “attempted murder”. Just recently the Lüneburg regional court dismissed a “coercion” case against activists who chained themselves to the rails in a spectacular concrete block action in 2001, forcing the CASTOR train to stop for several hours. And even established political parties like the “Greens” had to go to the Federal Administrative Court because the police arrogantly prevented a public session of state parliamentarians near the Castor track. The Bürgerinitiative challenges more fundamental breaches of law, such as the far-flung demonstration bans along the transport route. In a corridor 72 km long and up to a kilometre wide no meeting is allowed to take place for several days during the CASTOR time. And demonstrations are practically forbidden outside this democracy-free zone as well because there can be no demonstrating either between two widely separated alternative routes because it’s not allowed to traverse the transport road on the way to the protest location. By that the demonstration ban is extended to several square kilometres. Just now an action against this is being handled by the supreme German court.
Question: Don’t you as nuclear opponents despair knowing the law has proved you right, but you keep being robbed of your rights?
Metk: No, on the contrary we are glad that the self-dynamism of the repressive state can still be checked a little. And this doesn’t apply “only” to the state of emergency during CASTOR transports. Some of the basic rights we were able to assert in connection with Gorleben, such as now the obligatory involvement of a judge if people are detained, has also led at other demonstrations to protesters not just being able to be arrested.
Question: Have the judgments turned anything in favour of the activists?
Metk: That remains to be seen. At any rate it’s not getting easier for the police to concoct justifications for banning demonstrations in large areas per “general order”. In doubtful cases there’s not likely to be any real change in the behaviour of the police chain standing in front of demonstrators if the order to “disperse” comes; basic rights will be bashed again with truncheons, no one’s deluding themselves about that.
Question: What’s lacking in the actions of the courts so that this arbitrariness stops? What could the courts do? What do you want them to do?
Metk: Courageous judges, and their basic understanding that in a democracy the executive also has to obey the law. And that laws are not just to be applied verbatim, but guarantee freedom and basic rights and have to be used as the yardstick.
Question: After such judgments, is there any negotiation between the authorities and you, or do the authorities behave as if no judgment had been passed?
Metk: There’s nothing to negotiate from our side. However, at the socalled “cooperation talks” we’re obliged to attend when registering a demonstration, we keep pointing out to the authorities that it’s not us, but they who are committed to cooperation under the constitution, meaning they are not allowed to arbitrarily curtail our freedom to demonstrate. Very often that’s very hard for the gentlemen and ladies of the police leadership to grasp.
Question: Going to law must be insanely expensive. Do you have to let some things pass unchallenged because you can’t fund legal action?
Metk: Yes, unfortunately we can only ever fight a few exemplary cases. Actually, the work our lawyers do couldn’t be paid for. Just the court costs through the various levels, with back-referrals and so forth are insanely expensive. And before we finally win, we have to advance the costs – 30 to 70-page plaints, hundreds of pages of filed materials, working up proof of wrong depictions by the authorities forbidding assemblies, and so on, takes an incredible amount of time. In the long intervening years the lawyers also have to live – the costs get mighty big.
Question: Where does the money to sue come from?
Metk: The Bürgerinitiative has to use some of its membership revenue for various court and attorney costs. And a considerable share of donation income flows into the legal actions, and can’t be used for other things, such as doing effective publicity work.
Question: How are such judgments received in the movement, especially by the more militant people? Surely they think all that makes no sense because it’s the same state – don’t they?
Metk: That view is quite widespread. And somehow justified, too. But we as a not-for-profit association see our responsibility in not just being active sporadically when the Castor transports come, but at other times to apply all possible energy to making clear to the nuclear state and electricity companies that the nuclear insanity that despises people has to end immediately. That doesn’t stop us, though, to mobilise onto the streets and to the rails not just during the CASTOR transports. Connected with the CASTOR is the insoluble final repository issue. And for that an international network is needed – we’re in intensive contact with groups in France, for example those opposing the planned final repository at Bure, and we have far-reaching other international contacts. It would also be very important to be able to do more – personally and financially - for this networking.
Question: When you win judgments the media appear not to report that, right?
Metk: Unfortunately that’s how it is in the action-driven media world. Even to the leftwing alternative daily "taz", which was itself co-founded from out of the anti-nuclear movement, this success is worth no more than ten lines. Even the spectacular chain-on actions and road blockades of the Wendland farmers during the last CASTOR transport, or the fact that a road-blocking hearse had to be cut in pieces by the police to clear the route, was worth hardly a larger report to the media world. That time and time again tens of thousands of police are needed to take the deadly freight to Gorleben against demonstrators is boring the press, radio and television more and more. And yet we know, all of us in the resistance, that without “us” the discussion of the impossibility of “safely” storing nuclear waste would have been over long ago, building of nuclear power stations would have resumed long ago and renewable energies wouldn’t have developed as far as they have. And in that light we’re a bit happy, too, about these “small” successes.
Dieter Metk (BI), 05841 / 6451
Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg
Drawehner Str. 3 29439 Lüchow
Tel: 05841-4684 Fax: 3197
www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
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