28 or more injured at police raid against ravers in France

At least 25 ravers have been injured, four of them seriously, when more than 1000 policemen busted a rave in central Bretagne in France.

UPDATE: FULL STORY by paris.indymedia.org

After about 20 soundsystems had been confiscated Friday night, several thousand visitors of the rave started throwing bottles and stones on them. The police responded with tear gas and offensive grenades.

Background is a French law similar to the British Criminal Justice Act that outlaws raves. A party, even on private grounds, has to be approved by the district mayor, otherwise promoters face the confiscation of their equipment, a 7500 euro fine and 6 months jail. District officials are often uncooperative and impose security restrictions that make the event impossible.

The Fuckparade is against any criminalization of ravers and party organizers! No party is illegal! No sticks and grenades against dancing young people, not in France or anywhere!

Trauma XP

http://www.fuckparade.org

note: widerstand.org also strongly condemns this kind of fierce oppression against people who want to party and listen to music – PROTEST NOW – call your local french embassy!

this is a real shame!

more links:

http://de.news.yahoo.com/030719/286/3jors.html

http://www.freetekno.fr/root.php?id=4&news_type=2

http://www.network23.org/features/frrepression.htm

http://vner.land.free.fr/engsummary.htm

http://vner.land.free.fr/secu.htm

http://vdzcrkl.free.fr/doc/doc.htm

http://coll-soundz.fr.st

more info on the grenades shot at ravers:

http://www.ssi-media.com/pigbrother/Report2003Part2.htm#8

FULL TEXT – translated by signal² in Paris – taken from indymedia Paris:

——-

Everything began when members of CGT (the biggest labour syndicate) sent a message on raver’s infoline network telling that the Teknival will be thrown on “Vieilles Charrues” festival’s spot in support to its artistic/technical workers (people working in art industry in france have a special status that is actually changed by the governement, to explain it quickly: people like Depardieu or Johnny Halliday are “indemized” by social services in addition to their already huge rewarding, and goverenement changed it making it harder to have this status, so they took the money to people who already are in difficulty…. so actually there’s a big social movement about it). But the CGT told it wasn’t them who did that. This point is quite obscure.

The party was forbidden by the use of a prefectorial decrete, a thousand policemen were mobilized.

Then on thursday, a hide & seek game began with the authorities that finished in Plouray during a big part of the night and day.

About ten partypeople’s vehicles took part on friday in a blocking operation at about ten kilometres of Rostrenen (Côtes d’Armor) on the road to Carhaix where the official festival took place.

On friday night, party people went to a cul-de-sac “St Barbe’s vault” located in Faouet, a 2/3 kilometers road surrounded by fields ending on two lage ones.

At about 9pm policemen seeing upcoming difficulties, the continuous flood of cars arriving from everywhere and partypeople doing a sit-in blocking the only way to the fields, began to get a little more irritated.

At this time, everything was very peacefull, slogans were “Give our sound back!” or “Let us party!” and such… it lasted quite a while.

Faouet’s war

————————————

Surrounded by policemen, some began to throw stones. The Morbihan’s prefect, Elisabeth Allaire, having reaffirmed that it was “out of question to grant ravers an exeption”, gave order to assault and to use all means necessary to disperse the ravers. Quickly a rain of tear gas grenades fell on the sitting partypeople.

Partypeople answered by “stoning” police’s vehicles (and policemen obviously), that were about ten at this time.

More and more partypeople were arriving to defend the road’s entry, attracted by the noise of grenades, always throwing stones. Policemen feeling in inferiority and in danger didn’t hesitate to use great means: these so called OFFENSIVE GRENADES !

(info: http://www.ssi-media.com/pigbrother/Report2003Part2.htm#8 )

That’s when everything began to get really nasty, all the partypeople agree saying that one would have believed oneself in war, “a true blood bath” “a butchery” “a carnage”…

First wounded raver received an offensive grenade on his thorax (he’s been very lucky), 4 broken “thorax bones” and multiple open wounds on all the body, everybody thought he was dead. The problem was that policemen were still firing offensive grenades (about 70 grenades were thrown ! ). No way to get (him) out of it, firemen couldn’t come in, partypeople couldn’t come out ! Another one had a hand bursted by a grenade that exploded at few centimeters away of him in the air…

In fact, 25 wounded people have been sent to the hospital or have been healed by firemen’s emergency services, but uncounted wounded people’s number is huge. 7 people were hospitalized.

An old woman that has been saved by partypeople has been interviewed on TV (only on 1pm news, it’s strange that that infomation disapeared on 8pm news – to broadcast only the part when she shows her wasted house). partypeople took her to a safe place while policemen were firing grenades everywhere, including houses of the residents (many broken windows), and present residents.

The residents asked the cops to let ravers pass as they were already many there anyways, but no way for them to be heard. Residents understood the partypeople’s distress, obliged to defend against cop’s violent attack.

Burning barricades have been set almost everywhere on the road and the bridge leading to the place where a few sound-systems managed to take place (2, 3 or 5 according to the testimonys)

Another testimony: “12 CRS (crowd control police unit) with support of the army, motorbikes and trucks… the hill was on fire with many burning barricades and a few wooden gates”

Everything lasted about 6 hours ! 6 hours of war to take the right to throw a TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone)

Some partypeople were in quite critical state and spent two days in the hospital.

The cops were firing grenades, partypeople were moving back a few meters then assault with stones, breeze blocks and such. Prefect tells about molotov cocktails but this is not confirmed by any witness.

It ended when partypeople decided to stop fleeing the cops assaults and began to all stand in front of the cops and their grenades, getting closer and closer to them without moving back.

Fortunately the cops stopped their butchery and all went away, freeing the spot’s access. A “victory” but at which price ?…

The rave passes on

————————————————

Morbihan’s prefect justified public force use, including using offensive grenades, telling that “It wasn’t a youth gathering but a real riot”. She also told that it wasn’t a rave “as there were no sound-systems present”, that is an obvious bullshit, every sound-system being seized by policemen.

AFP: “The 1000 policemen spread in all central britany proceeded since friday to 27 sound-systems seizures…”

After the fight the policemen just completely went away, without any will to “securize” the place. Not even an emergency call number was available. Lastly it seems municipality was almost absent, Saturday afternoon, the residents only received a simple phone call from the mayor. No visit on the spot. For some of them, even victims, the fault is to the authorities that tried stopping things too late and ill-advised, as many ravers were arrived in the city, they shouldn’t have take the risk of the confrontation.

58 people were challenged for narcotic detention. The next day, two of them were sent to prison for a year (No reason supplied).

AFP: “Many ravers joined those already installed on St Barbe’s vault’s spot during the night, taking the number of present people to about 10000 – according to police”

On sunday morning about 8 000 young people were still in Faouet,concentrated on a hill at the end of a road located just near the borought.

Saturday to Sunday’s night have been quiet. Prefecture maintened filtering the roads around Faouet to prevent sound-systems from getting to St Barbe. It couldn’t avoid that a small part arrived at destination, dismounted in separate elements for more conceability.

Ravers ended by proceeding to the spot’s cleaning (seen on TV). Everybody participated, with trash bags distributed by firemen. Testimony: “At the end the spot was really clean, trash bags were all grouped along the road, even capsules and cigarettes ends have been took away in some places”

Whose fault?

——————————————————

The wrongs are shared.

To the “organizers” that apparently didn’t organize much, and are surely not the ones that paid the full price for this night of hell. But if these people have a part o responsibility, it surely wasn’t to the ravers “mass” to undergo the consequences for them. Even less, it was the resident’s. The Tekno comunity see the people responsible for this waste with evil eyes.

The fact that there has been a minority of rioters and breakers in the partypeople crowd is very probable. But police’s reaction was apparently (voluntarly?) disproportionned. Partypeople’s image has been more degraded – that is a good deal for the governement.

Lastly, and mostly, prefect and public forces didn’t hesitate to knowingly create a confrontation situation, pertinently knowing that with or without authorization, thousands of young people would converge toward Carhaix. The State once more led to a foreseeable confrontation, to make tekno movement’s reputation worse, in spite of the structuring attempts of associations such as Le Silence Tue, Sound-systems collective… These efforts towards a dialog are highly in question, that could lead to others serious tensions and/or confrontations, in continuity of the systematically repressive logic of the government…

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

Text translated by Signal² / Paris/France – text taken from:

http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=5588

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

for images of the grenade-wounded ravers go to the widerstand.org forum and see the article there (only for registered users)