Comment by anon4711 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon4711 | Hacker News Reader

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(I don't mind drifting for a bit)

A considerable part of their actions is very disruptive, seeking to, in the view of the protesters, I imagine, annoy everybody involved in the transport of nuclear waste to such an extent that they'll give up, while in actuality just causing a financial burden for the taxpayer (17000(!) policemen were in service during the protest you linked to according to [1]). That includes the traditional "Schottern" (the "[removal of] gravel from the bed of the train tracks to stop the train" as the article calls it), see also [2].

Even encouraging others to go "Schottern" on the internet is punishable[3] (sorry, again only in German) and punished, though.

And with respect to physical attacks, I think those protesters are rather harmless. I believe not a single policeman was injured in the aforementioned protests, even though thousands of protests were there (1500 at some point, 5000 at another point in time).

[1] http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2010-11/castor-gorleb... [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schottern [3] http://www.oberlandesgericht-celle.niedersachsen.de/portal/l...

Actually I thought dozens of policemen were also injured, and police cars torched. Also a couple of paramedics were attacked if I got this right (I'm not native German).

http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/atomausstieg/castor-...

Anyway, I think that based on this it is not entirely unreasonable that the police does keep an eye on the protesters.

However, I'm quite doubtful about the wisdom of the "Trojan" plan:

http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-to-use-trojan-spyware...

It says nowhere how the police got injured (attacked by the protesters, tripped and fell, got a dose of their own pepper spray, accidentally struck by a college when they used force on protesters). It does not say if the paramedics were attacked or if the injuries were just accidents. It also says nowhere that any police vehicles were torched, just that some police vehicles were somehow damaged.

If I recall correctly (well, this is from 2011), the majority of injured police was not at the hands of protesters but accidents, exhaustion and "friendly fire" - but a very few police got attacked or were injured in brawls and suffered minor injuries - the paramedics were mistakenly pepper sprayed by the police, and the police vehicles mostly had accidents where they drove into ditches and such, but a one or two were e.g. scrapped or damaged by people throwing train track gravel at it. Both injuries and damage (to police property), were aggravated by heavy rain and storm and the events taking place in rural areas and/or on gravel train tracks.

According to the police itself, most protesters were strictly peaceful and caused property damage to the train tracks at most ("Schottern").

So you got it mostly wrong, I'm afraid.

I do think it is extremely unreasonable and actually harmful to democracy for the police to track lawful, non-violent peaceful protesters exercising their basic rights (Grundgesetz) of free speech and freedom of assembly, or sanction or discourage them otherwise. This does not include violent people or people breaking the laws by e.g. willfully causing property damage, of course.

I also think it's very wrong to sanction people who you claim to be racist. If they are found to be unlawfully racist by an actual court, or demonstratively found to spread racist garbage as a teacher at a school, then again, that's a different matter.

If dozens of policemen are injured and a couple of police cars burn in a demonstration, and the demonstrators had nothing to do with it, I must say that this a very remarkable coincidence. The police don't trip over like that and get careless with their matches anywhere else, to such a degree.

My understanding of the demonstrations is that they were not intended as lawful, non-violent peaceful protests. The organizers wanted to make criminal damage (the "Shottern"), and some of the group were also very intent on violence.

The problem here is that anyone who was participating surely must have known what they're about to participate, even if many have themselves only wanted to not damage or hit anyone themselves. Just create a crowd where this can be done. And it is indeed hard to decide what level of surveillance is necessary and appropriate to prevent violence and large-scale damage.

The focus is a tabloid paper that belongs to the right of the political spectrum, they're rather fond of taking the police report at face value. And it's like the parent says: The police counts scratches and paint bags as "damage" (note: it's not a dozen police cars burned) as well as ankle injuries as "injured" (1). There are some clashes between the police and the protesters at the castor demos, but the demonstrations are not violent. The overwhelming majority is peaceful.

(1) That's fair to do, but something to keep in mind when interpreting the numbers.

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