Sir, - Media reports about the events surrounding the recent EU leaders' summit in Gothenburg concentrated on some hundreds of balaclava-clad demonstrators throwing stones and smashing shopfronts despite the tens of thousands of people who held peaceful and disciplined protests over three days.
I was an eyewitness to some events. From personal observation and from detailed accounts from some of the main organisers of the protest marches, I am not prepared to allow the general verdict stand that the violence was simply the planned and premeditated action of a hard core of anarchists. The reality is much more complex and more sinister.
My conclusion is that such violence as happened was directly linked to repeated police actions that were deliberately and calculatedly provocative, and merit a genuinely independent investigation.
Before any trouble whatever, police action began at the Hvitfeldska School. Gothenburg City Council had given the school over to Gothenburg Action 2001, the network which organised the main demonstrations and which included groups such as Friends of the Earth, trade unions and left-wing political parties. The school was used as an information centre, a medical centre, a venue for the "Counter-Summit" and also as an accommodation area.
On Thursday, June 14th, the same day as a peaceful 15,000 strong demonstration was being held nearby against President Bush, the police surrounded this school with a solid wall of up to 100 steel containers brought in by trucks. Riot police with dogs and horses then invaded the building, questioning and searching all occupants and detaining them for hours. The flimsy pretext was that "violence was being planned".
The hardware to build an iron curtain like this isn't assembled in a few hours. The action had obviously been planned weeks in advance and was the beginning of a repeated pattern of gratuitous harassment.
On Friday, June 15th, an "anti-capitalist" march of about 2,000 people left Gotaplatsen and, by previous agreement with the police, went peacefully to a nearby street closer to the Svenska Massan where the EU Summit was about to begin.
Without warning, and in breach of the previous agreement, hundreds of heavily armoured riot police with dogs and horses split the march in two and isolated the "Black Bloc" of about 300 anarchists who were at that time participating peacefully and bringing up the rear. This was the catalyst for the most serious fighting between this group and the police which spilled down through Kungsportsavenyn.
Stone-throwing and smashing up a street are not the correct way to respond to police provocation or to defend a peaceful march from attack by police and their vicious dogs, but there is no question that this violence with the anarchists would not have happened if the police had not provoked it. Later that day at Vasaparken the police incredibly shot three protesters with live bullets, Israeli Army style.
The events in Gothenburg raise the most serious issues about the attitude of the EU to the democratic rights of those who are opposed to its policies. These are questions for the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, as much as for Swedish Prime Minister Persson and the other EU leaders.
Do they endorse the provocative, commando-style tactics of the Swedish police? Is the contempt which EU leaders have shown for the Irish electorate's rejection of the Nice Treaty to be extended to all citizens in the EU who oppose their policies? Is there a strategy to deliberately provoke a violent reaction from an identifiable, volatile minority to discredit the massive and growing movements of those who turn out to protest peacefully at policies such as multinational domination of the EU, privatisation and militarisation? These are questions I am putting to the Taoiseach in the Dail and to the Swedish ambassador and government. - Yours, etc.,
Joe Higgins TD, (Socialist Party) Dail Eireann, Dublin 2.