Text report from Belfast demostration

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday April 08, 2003 17:58 by steve - indymedia belfast steve at gluaiseacht dot org

Some nasty police brutality

Tuesday: A protest, low four figure number, outside Belfast City Hall resulted in a number of arrests and injuries as riot police move in to snatch random protesters.

Tuesday: A protest, low four figure number, outside Belfast City Hall resulted in a number of arrests- 14 according to one senior police officer, 6 according to another, 11 at the last count of an activist doing legal support.

The protest began at about 13.30 and many people went onto the road and lay down, as a number of people dressed in white overalls and skull masks, carrying drums, arrived and began dancing in the street. There were huge numbers of mainstream media videoing, interviewing and taking pictures.

Some of the crowd remained on the footpath, while officers from Musgrave St. police station formed a line in case they attempted to join the protesters on the road- and in order to encircle the civil disobedients.

On previous occasions, the police had allowed road blocking to continue for an hour or so before moving in, but this time a very heavy prescence was deployed immediately. Cops in full riot gear formed a line in front of protesters and snatch squads began grabbing people apparently at random and dragging them away.

Several people were de-arrested, sometimes repeatedly. The police began throwing protesters they couldn't grab into the crowd behind who had linked arms and sat down.

The second time the snatch squads moved in, they were heavier, beating protesters with batons before dragging them off. They only stopped when a bag of red jam (brought for a separate street theatre action) was burst in the chaos and for a moment everyone thought it was blood.

After a tense standoff, lasting until at least 14.45, the line of riot cops moved back, to cheers. After a few minutes Caoimhe Butterly went forward to lift or move something on the ground near where the jam was spilled and two police immediately grabbed her, number 6277 dragging her by the hair.

Protesters who were snatched reported a high degree of intimidation. One who was shouting "You batoned me" was told he'd be hit again if he didn't shut up. A cop was seen drawing his baton and entering a van where arrestees were being held, but backed off after realising there were cameras on him.

Some cops became quite silly indeed, one claiming that a drumstick was a weapon, before breaking it ceremoniously and smugly throwing it on the ground like a playground bully.

After yet another tense standoff, the riot police moved off, to yet more cheers, and were replaced with the new "friendly" look PSNI. At all times the crowd remained peaceful, despite the atmosphere of fear and anger.

About 30 - 50 of the crowd moved on to Musgrave St. Police Stn to try to get information about those arrested. About 120 riot police with camera vans followed. A senior officer eventually came out and claimed not to know how many were arrested (he did venture that it was "a number"). About an hour later he revealed it was 14.

Meanwhile in Hillsborough, a mere 7 people made it through security but they managed to stage multiple die-ins in the town centre. According to people who were there, one woman was "shoved into the back of a van and driven off, we don't know where she is yet".

The BBC reported that the protest had been taken over by undesirable elements.