Police Violence During Protests
Waar: ACU Utrecht, Voorstraat 71, Utrecht, Netherlands
Wanneer: 31/10/2013 - 15:00 t/m 31/10/2013 - 17:00
A students and activists discussion about police violence during protests, and on what we can do to change it.
Too often police violence toward protests is legitimised by the flags of public order, security and proportionate response against threats of violence. On the one hand protesters are portrayed as violent, provocative and ready to distruption. These discourses allow both preventive and repressive action by the police during demostrations, and activists become subject to violence, massive arrests and criminal prosecution. On the other hand police monopoly and abuse of violence are not questioned as such, and each year we assist to an increasing militarisation for the control and repression of protests. In court, terms such as 'legitimacy', 'proportionality', or 'incident' dismiss the structural and institutionalised character of the problem.
How can we change this?
The Utrecht University is organising a postgraduate conference in critical criminology, that will take place from the 30th of October til the 1st of November. The title is: 'Criminology Beyond Borders: Flows, Conflicts and Power.' Beside academics, we are inviting political activists and undocumented migrants to tell their experience of criminalisation here in the Netherlands.
In addition to this, we are organizing a student debate on police violence toward protests, where students from different countries (NL, UK, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, etc) can share their experiences and discuss how criminologists can play a role in denouncing police power and monopoly of violence. We are doing this in an activist-friendly environment, rather then in an university room, so that more people outside of academia could join the discussion.
We will trigger the discussion by showing three videos of police violence: one related to police violence against the squatters' movement in the Netherlands (Simon Stevinstraat, Amsterdam), one about the G8 protests in Genova (2001), and one about the militarization of students protests in Chile.
Everybody is welcome to come, debate, share their experiences and ideas.
Here there is the link to the conference website: http://commonstudyprogramme.wordpress.com/