APPEAL FOR CONVERGENCE TO COMBAT SECURITY POLICIES AND THE REPRESSION OF SOCIAL GROUPS

Throughout Europe, throughout the world, state repression is on the increase. It is a matter of urgency that we should mobilize in order to preserve a means of continuing our political action. We attach below an appeal drafted for the widest possible circulation, which we hope will serve to encourage a convergence of all those groups who are seeking to combat the repression of social movements and all those who are seeking to combat current security policies.

As well as this document, we are launching several initiatives. We hope you can take part or relate these intiatives to your own.

One project which is already under way is to collate all the evidence, including personal accounts, on how information on activists is being recorded in data bases, through police action during global days of action and other worldwide mobilizations. This project is advised by an international lawyer. We have also constituted a group named CRISE (Contre les Répressions Internationales, Solidarité Face aux Etats; which means Against International Repression, Solidarity against States). The aim of this group is to bring together all individuals or groups who possess information regarding repression, in order to combat disinformation and data base policies.

We are looking for witness accounts covering arrests, security force data bases, imprisonment and other forms of security force violence.

We also need to connect victims, lawyers and anti-rep groups who have been involved in past repression at Geneva, Seattle, Washington, Brussels, Prague, Nice, Davos, arcelona, Göteborg, Genoa and elsewhere. The appeal below contains our contact addresses.

Several other avenues are being explored. We are considering a march in September and a National Day of Action against repression. Also, setting up an Observatory of Repression and Control; publication of a Handbook to Legal Rights; publication of a Glossary of Terms of Repression; organization of public debates; and so on.

The aim is to generate reflection and political offensives on these themes, in advance. Ex post facto defence often distracts us from our cause.

The appeal below has already been signed by the following organizations:

Agir ensemble contre le Chômage (AC!) - unemployed groups; Comité des Sans Logis - homeless people; CRISE (see above); Observatoire des Libertés Publiques - a civil liberties group; Fédération SUD Education - autonomous teachers' union; Alternative Libertaire - a libertarian group; Collectif pour les Libertés Individuelles Face aux Technologies de l'Information (CLIFTI) - an information technology freedoms' group; Mouvement pour l'Immigration et les Banlieues (MIB) - an immigrants' rights' group; No Pasaran - antifascist group; Souriez, vous êtes filmé !; Play Fair Europe !; Droit au Logement (DAL); Indymedia-france; RES; Play Fair Europe !; Coordination des Comités de soutien aux Prisonniers Politiques Basques; syndicat Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak (L.A.B.); Organisation Socialiste Libertaire (OSL, Suisse); Laurent Bonnelli; Pierre Rimbert; and other citizens...

APPEAL FOR CONVERGENCE TO COMBAT SECURITY POLICIES AND THE REPRESSION OF SOCIAL GROUPS

As Social Democratic Governments have renounced the fight against the damage to society caused by capitalism they have joined conservatives in repressing political action groups and in exercising widespread police control over their populations. Prosperous states are banding together to open their borders and cutting themselves off from the rest of the world (Schengen Agreement, Security Agreement in the Euro-Med partnership, European Ministers of the Interior meeting at Tampere in 1999 and soon in Brussels North American prisons and security policies.)

States have handed over joint management of poverty to charities. This "joint management of poverty" policy appears in visible form through increasing use of the law courts and increasing police violence - but also, less visibly, as generalized social control.

Political and social interest groups, at a local level and internationally, are being criminalized. So is everyday poverty. This justifies the use of repression. It also limits freedom of expression and political debate.

The usual strategy is to attack individuals in order to hinder collective initiative. Governements justify this policy by emphasizing violence, which they provoke or harness. This enables them to create a distinctions between "good" and "bad" demonstrators; between "good" and "bad" deprivation; and to enhance their arsenal of repressive measures and security equipment. We reject the distinction between those of us perceived as "good" or "bad". Any justification of our actions, within the context of a debate hamstrung by such imposed criteria, will inevitably generate arguments in favour of repression.

Activists and trade unionists are not the only targets. Surveillance and repression also targets social groups (poor people, immigrants, the unemployed) and territories (working-class neighourhoods) labelled dangerous. Most media obsequiously relay government agendas which prioritize "the fight against insecurity".

There is no limit to the means afforded the implementation of repression, the criminalization and stigmatization of activists. Constant police presence and intervention is designed to provoke. Armies and private militias are brought in. Local security contracts are agreed with private security firms.

The fact is that the media, in their majority, are objective accomplices of repression. They endorse an ideology of repression.

The mask is permissive, liberal, charming. But Social Democracy, like the right, serves the ownership class. Its new creed is "let the market decide", let the victims be unheard, criminalize the opposition.

Assocations, activist groups, trade unions and individuals are pressing for convergence to increase the efficiency of our worldwide struggle against a capitalist dictatorship; against the arsenal of repressive measures and security policies that inevitably go with it.

We are appealing for a broad coalition against these policies. We want the means to collate, share and publish our information, our experience and the details of our action, in order the shatter the isolation of victims of repression and social control; in order to warn the population as a whole against the dangers of an all-encompassing security policy.

An international collective has been constituted, called CRISE, which aims to bring all this information together in order to show the extent of police manoeuvring and data base manipulation that occurs every time global days of action occur.

to sign the appeal or to keep informations, contact : crise@free.fr