Police State Finland 2006
9th September was the date for the big demonstration called Helsinki 2006. However this
article is about the smaller demonstration called Smash ASEM (ASEM = Asia-Europe Meeting at Helsinki,
Finland). This was held after the main demonstration in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art called
KIASMA. The organisers of the demonstration informed the police about their route. They
called themselves anarchists. However, there were a lot of outsiders, curious people,
news-reporters, photographers in the area. Roughly about 150-200 people. The demonstration was
supposed to have (according to the flyer) music and solidarity to the people of China. The
flyer we got did not show any violent intentions. Some flyers promised "trouble to the streets",
but we had no idea of that.
Before the demonstration had started we
noticed that we have just been surrounded by hundreds of riot-polices and a helicopter! The Police
outnumbered the demonstrators and other people by at least 2 to 1 if not more. It was surreal, but we
thought we could walk out of there. But the "orders from the top" did not let us go through.
So we were held as hostages, totally no way out. Authorities were bullhorning occasionally, but
the strong wind made it impossible to hear. Some news reports said they were saying that
there's a little corridor between the polices to go out, but we saw none and the police
were silent when we asked how to go out. No communication whatsoever.
There were many reporters
and photographers inside taking pictures and outside the Mannerheim street was full of polices,
policecars, police busses etc. The street was closed and many people outside felt compassion
towards our captivity. We were yelling "HELP!", "LET US OUT OF HERE!" in finnish, but obviously
without luck. Some anarchists and/or frustrated people threw some bottles towards the police. The
Police did use quite harsh means to carry some of the protesters (those who provocated) to police busses and cars from the captivity-circle.
One bottle almost hit us. There were obviously some very stupid people inside and we did not have
any sort of protection as the police did not let us out. Many
were arrested to the busses for provocating the police, attacking the police or simply yelling. Also totally innocent people were arrested.
There was one little boy with his dad inside and what I heard the
father of the boy will face charges of bringing the child to the demonstration. I also heard and
read that the whole police force came from all around the Finland + additional forces from Sweden and even some help
from the japanese police(!). Do we really need that? 20 cops could have handled the anarchists and let
the rest of the people out.
After over 2,5 hours later they let us out one by one. Some stayed and they were arrested. They took pictures and our names to the
database. First the news reported that police will keep the records, but afterwards they
promised to keep them only during the investigations or if foreign officials asks them. Everything was surreal: we have
not used to this kind of police state mentality before.
This was certainly planned years ahead.
On a positive note, I had my demonstration sign with me as I did attend to the mass-demonstration
held previously and the biggest nightly news cameraman filmed the sign. It said: "The war on
terrorism is based on LIES!! WAKE UP!!! WWW.INFOWARS.COM". And it was clearly shown to at least a million
people. So I did get the message out. I was also wearing a TYRANNY RESPONSE TEAM shirt and
it fit perfectly to the situation as we were clearly facing tyrannical attitude. It's sad to
see this all happening, but gladly the truth about 9/11 is coming out all over the world
and the tide has already turned.
Article by Ville Sarell. Email. tripper at cubicle dot fi
WWW
Picture by: Tarmo Pekola
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Pictures & videolink
You can find more videos from youtube. Just search "Smash ASEM".