In an series of hostile and irrational actions the Czech police ended the Czechtek 2005 freetekno festival. UPDATE: one person died!
Czechtek 2005 is the 12th annual freetek party in open nature. This year’s self-organized freetekno event met unusual hostility from the Czech police. Starting the morning of Friday, 29th July, the first soundsystems and visitors gathered on a legaly rented land near the city of Milec. In the morning hours the police blocked the exits from the higway D5, causing an 8 kilometres long traffic jam. According to eyewitnesses, the police officers were trying to stop people from exiting the highway towards Milec based of their looks. Around 150 people sat on the highway requesting that they are allowed to continue their way to Milec. After 6 hours, following an ultimatum, at 13.00 the Czech police used water-guns and heavy force to clean the blocked highway. Abandoned cars were pulled away. The police continued to block the highway exits, as well as several ways around Milec.
The official police statements said that the legal contract between the owner of the land on which Czechtek 2005 should take place is invalid. The Czech Minister of Justice Frantisek Bublan of the social-democratic party CSSD, stated that the contract is invalid and that the owner of the land revoked it. Later, Friday the contract got into the media, as well as several interviews with the legal owner of the land, confirming his support for the event and the validity of the contract. Following his statement the Czech Senator Jaromír Štětina and the Czech Green Party requested that Minister Buban stops the raid against citizens of Czech republic which have not commited any crime by their gathering on a legaly rented land. Nevertheless police continued to block the area without reason.
During night several thousands of visitors managed to pass the police blockage, leaving their cars behind on the roads. The Czech police was getting reinforcements from Pilsen, coming by vans and buses. Saturday morning the free techno party was having 5000 visitors and around 300 cars that managed to get on the place. The soundsystems started to play music.
The Speaker of the Czech police stated that the visitors damaged neighbouring lands while trying to pass their blockage. The landowners filled a legal complaint against the organizers of Czechtek 2005. The citizens of Újezd pod Přimdou, a small town near the place of CT 2005 signed a petition and handed in to the main Police Commander requesting that the participants are allowed to continue their way. The streets of the city were filled up by cars and people who failed to go through the police street cordons.
The police redirected cars comming from Germany to the border in Rozvadov to other border crossings. According to police statistics 105 out of 249 foreigners were turned back on the borders on the base of “colored old cars, haircuts and tatoos”. The highway D5 was closed on both sides between 128 and 135 km.
At 16.25 the police requested that the 6000+ participants leave the gathering otherwise a police action will follow. The assault started at 16.30 supported by around thousand riot cops massively using tear gas and trying to push the visitors out from the place. The assault was answered by throwing of various object at the police cordon and people shouting “gestapo” at the policemen. According to eyewitnesses the police used water to damage the soundsystems and unconfirmed messages speak about the usage of gum projectiles and frequency jammers to disprupt the mobile networks in the area. The “shadow minister” Ivan Langer sharply criticizes the police assault saying that it’s a political decision imposed by the Prime-Minister Jiří Paroubek (CSSD). On the weblog of Czechtek a request for solidarity was posted asking people to join a demonstration in Prague at 19.00 in front of the Ministery of Justice. The police assault ended around 19.20 (before the evening news) resulting in 50 injured people both on the sides of police and the participants. The organizers of Czechtek 2005 stated that they are going to appeal to European Court for Human Rights in Strassbourg.
The second wave of police assault started around 21.00 with the goal of pushing out the remaining people. The brutal and irrational assault and police hostility are attributed to the government leading party, CSSD (social democrats), and are viewed as a residuum of Communist thinking as well as a populist attempt to get some attention before the coming elections. The so-called democracy in the Czech Republic as well as a “borderless” vision of the EU manifested itself in a xenophobic attempt to supress a manifestation of a freetekno subculture.
official page of Czechtek 2005:
http://czechtek.freetekno.org/
Photos from the highway blockage
http://czechtek.muzika.cz/foto/
Idnes news timeline (czech)
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/db_online.asp?online=1001999&strana=1
Photos from the demonstration in Prague
http://czechtek.muzika.cz/foto/fotky050730mvcr.php
source of article:
http://indymedia.h-k.sk/newswire/display/84/index.php
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4 responses to “Czech freetekno party ended by police assault”
freetekno.cz : Indymedia : PoliceState
POLICE BRUTALITY CAUSED DEATH ON MUSIC FESTIVAL CZECHTEK
01. 08. 2005 03:30
Czechtek is open-air international and multicultural music festival with 12 year tradition. Not only different genres of music, but also videoart and other art performances take place on this unique event of free culture.
In all history of festival there were no significant damages or problems, participants while leaving clean the land and take responsibility for their action.
Contract with the owner of grass plain was clearly shown to police. There is no indicaion that festival was in any way illegal, every aspect was according to law of Czech Republic.
Although police stated throughout friday 29th several different reasons for blockage of access to the place of festival, all were later shown as lies or desinformation. The final reason for brute attack was “threat of damaging the surrounding private pieces of land”.
The presence of attending young people on surrounding land was caused by police blockage of all roads and the police action was not taken against this people, but against the people on legally borrowed property.
Woman from near willage, owner of adjoining land, said she had been woken up by police friday morning, long before people began to arrive, taken to police station and by false arguments encouraged to sign complaint.
Most of the people did not hear any appeal to leave the place, many of them had drunk alcohol-containing beverages and could not go away with cars, many of them believed that by taking part on legally organized festival they cannot be targeted by police.
The first police action on saturday 30, 16:30PM took several hours and was badly coordinated. On the place was 1000 policemen, water cannon, armoured tank and low-flying helicopter.
The second night attack at 22PM was led with extreme brutality.
Police in heavy suits without identifying numbers refused to give identifying information, information about their command and information about first aid location.
Police used massive amounts of tear gas and desorientation grenades, in many cases they threw tear gas granade into a car and did not let people inside for long time get out, in other cases they broke car windows by iron bars, threw grenade in and forced people to get out.
All people were beaten up, including teenage girls, which cried in pain. Witnesses described attack on lone staing girl, who was pulled down by her hair and kicked on the ground by four policemen.
There were hundreds of injuries, including cuts, bruises, burnings, broken arms, shock. Many people were in shock still the next day afternoon with red faces from tear gas.
Police intentionally damaged cars, electronic equipment and other property. Attack was led with clear intention to cause injuries.
People were forced to go to near highway, which was closed several hours and then the waiting trucks were allowed to go dangerously among the desoriented people. Police confirmed death of young man attending the festival. Reportedly he was killed by truck which left. The reason of this death can be manipulated by police, no wittnesses were found to confirm police statement.
Police brutality continued on scattered people till the sunday morning.
Czech state television Czech TV did not inform about the night attack, it’s news were not balanced, mainly repeating police statements. Czech TV in its news also under estimated political value of call of freedom and resignation of minister of interior on sunday’s demonstration in Prague, reporting briefly about techno-goers.
This is a call to foreing media to publish information about unlawful police brutality and state of democracy and human rights in Czech Republic.
the young man was killed by a truck whilst walking on a local road trying to get to czechtek05. he was not even at the party.
http://zpravodajstvi.centrum.cz/domov/clanek.phtml?id=381403
…he was probably killed by a truck….
The same thing just happened in utah!
There was a big jungle/dnb party in Salt Lake City, Utah this weekend that got raided with guys in combat fatigues. They used tazers, attack dogs, physical violence, tear gas, everything. People had AK-47s pressed to their heads. The promoters had gone out of their way to do this party legit with permits, fees, security staff, drug searches, etcetera, but none of that mattered.
There is plenty of word going round on the utah messagebaord: http://www.utrave.org
Knick of Evol Intent was there. Here is his account of what happened:
http://www.404audio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14814
Though they confiscated most of the cameras to cover their tracks, here is some video footage that got loose:
http://homepage.mac.com/apexgrin/FileSharing2.html
People are posting their stories on this thread at utrave:
http://forums.utrave.org/showthread.php?t=20020