THE HYPOCRISIS IN GOTHENBURG

The EU-meeting in Gothenburg in the summer of 2001 has given us surprising results. Ahead of the European policy, Sweden fully experimented. There were more policemen in the streets, something the older generation has demanded for years. Also the center was made car-free by putting large sea-containers across the roads, which pleased the environmental activists.

Demonstrators performed free theatre where an old conflict - the oppressors versus the oppressed - from the stone age was acted out. That this didn't fall on good ground was shown by the fact that the police, who had had only a few hours of night's rest, started throwing the stones back. Ignorant of the ethics of confrontation, they even started to hit with their batons, and shot in panic at individuals who stood twenty meters away with stones in their hands. Because the rebelling youth had to be dealt with harshly.

Nobody in the press took side with those 'terrorists', as they soon were called. In the trams and busses you could hear how some people hoped a severely wounded activist would die. Cries of distress demanded the return of the water cannon together with harsh measures to avoid retaliation. Not by the police but by the guarding citizen who had to come up with another way of passing time as the shops were closed.

On Saturday, the last day of the EU-meeting, raids took place in the whole inner city. The fully equipped riot police, who again had only slept for two hours, were looking for three 'heavily armed' men from Germany. Every group that consisted of three individuals and where at least one was wearing a black piece of clothing was smacked against the wall. At one school, where demonstrators could spend the night after paying a fee, one of those raids turned into a nightmare.

 When entering, the police immediately turned off the light and commanded the  screaming kids to lie on the floor. Then they were forced to lie in the same  horizontal position outside on the wet schoolyard for almost two hours, without  being informed what was going on. Unfortunately the suspects were not there, and  unfortunately they weren't in the hotel where the EU representatives stayed over  either.

 During the visit of Bush it was talked about how unjust America's death penalty is,  while trying to execute vandals here only a day later. The literary lynching, taking  place in the written press, was equally disgraceful. Hopefully the boy recovers  because I would rather see a thousand broken windows than one man dead.

 © 2001 Dennis Rodie

 The original Dutch version appeared in Kleintje Muurkrant, July 2001