By Ville Sarell | mikseri.net

Picture by: Tarmo Pekola

9th September was the date for the big demonstration called Helsinki 2006. However this article is about the smaller demonstration called Smash ASEM (ASEM = Asia-Europe Meeting at Helsinki, Finland). This was held after the main demonstration in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art called KIASMA. The organisers of the demonstration informed the police about their route. They called themselves anarchists. However, there were a lot of outsiders, curious people, news-reporters, photographers in the area. Roughly about 150-200 people. The demonstration was supposed to have (according to the flyer) music and solidarity to the people of China. The flyer we got did not show any violent intentions. Some flyers promised "trouble to the streets", but we had no idea of that.

Before the demonstration had started we noticed that we have just been surrounded by hundreds of riot-polices and a helicopter! The Police outnumbered the demonstrators and other people by at least 2 to 1 if not more. It was surreal, but we thought we could walk out of there. But the "orders from the top" did not let us go through. So we were held as hostages, totally no way out. Authorities were bullhorning occasionally, but the strong wind made it impossible to hear. Some news reports said they were saying that there's a little corridor between the polices to go out, but we saw none and the police were silent when we asked how to go out. No communication whatsoever.

There were many reporters and photographers inside taking pictures and outside the Mannerheim street was full of polices, policecars, police busses etc. The street was closed and many people outside felt compassion towards our captivity. We were yelling "HELP!", "LET US OUT OF HERE!" in finnish, but obviously without luck. Some anarchists and/or frustrated people threw some bottles towards the police. The Police did use quite harsh means to carry some of the protesters (those who provocated) to police busses and cars from the captivity-circle. One bottle almost hit us. There were obviously some very stupid people inside and we did not have any sort of protection as the police did not let us out. Many were arrested to the busses for provocating the police, attacking the police or simply yelling. Also totally innocent people were arrested.

There was one little boy with his dad inside and what I heard the father of the boy will face charges of bringing the child to the demonstration. I also heard and read that the whole police force came from all around the Finland + additional forces from Sweden and even some help from the japanese police(!). Do we really need that? 20 cops could have handled the anarchists and let the rest of the people out.

After over 2,5 hours later they let us out one by one. Some stayed and they were arrested. They took pictures and our names to the database. First the news reported that police will keep the records, but afterwards they promised to keep them only during the investigations or if foreign officials asks them. Everything was surreal: we have not used to this kind of police state mentality before.

This was certainly planned years ahead. On a positive note, I had my demonstration sign with me as I did attend to the mass-demonstration held previously and the biggest nightly news cameraman filmed the sign. It said: "The war on terrorism is based on LIES!! WAKE UP!!! WWW.INFOWARS.COM". And it was clearly shown to at least a million people. So I did get the message out. I was also wearing a TYRANNY RESPONSE TEAM shirt and it fit perfectly to the situation as we were clearly facing tyrannical attitude. It's sad to see this all happening, but gladly the truth about 9/11 is coming out all over the world and the tide has already turned.

Article by Ville Sarell. Email. tripper at cubicle dot fi
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Article from http://cubicle.fi/~tripper/stufff/Cubicle/%5bUnheard%5d/
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