An arrested
protester looks out the window. He got arrested after the police negotiated
with a woman dressed as a tree to allow people to be peacefully arrested
if they crossed the police line.
I just
got an e-mail:
New
reports of peaceful protesters beaten by police and U.S. Marshals,
denied food and water and stripped of their basic constitutional rights
give the lie to early accounts of police restraint during massive
protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF).
·
Detainees have been denied food, water, toilets, medical attention,
and access to lawyers.
·
One instance was reported of an interrogator posing as a member of
the Midnight Special Legal Collective, the volunteer lawyers representing
the activists.
·
One non-violent protester had 3 ribs broken while he was arrested.
·
Another protester was beaten in the face and then loaded into a patrol
wagon, leaving a pool of blood in the street. A police official told
the drivers not to offload him at the jail but to drive him around
for several hours, and then to drop him off near a hospital.
·
At midnight on Monday, many activists still reported being denied
food and water. Some were arrested at 4 AM, 20 hours earlier. Rachel
Weber, a recent Harvard graduate from Boston, watched as one woman
in her cell, who has hypoglycemia, began to throw up from lack of
food. Police denied repeated requests for food or medical assistance.
·
One group of men was taken into a basement, put into a cage, and told
by a U.S. Marshall, "There are no cameras here. We can do whatever
we want." Anyone who looked up while the Marshall was speaking
was punched in the face.
·
Another activist saw a U.S. Marshalls slam people's faces into a wall.
·
Jennifer Kirby, a housing advocate from Washington D.C., was part
of a group of activists who took over an abandoned home to protest
unfair evictions and social service cuts in the District of Columbia.
"The police came in and dragged us out of the house. As the police
dragged the last person out of the house, one officer was kicking
him and saying 'stop attacking my foot' and then all the police slammed
him against a wall, saying 'stop attacking the wall.' They dragged
him into a six-inch deep puddle and left him in it got five minutes
while they kicked him," said Kirby. Officers also used a variety
of abusive tactics to pit activists in Jail against each other and
to break Jail Solidarity, cooperation between activists designed to
ensure fair treatment by police.
·
Black Echo a spectator at the arraignment of several hundred activists,
heard the presiding commissioner Ringelle imply that if activists
did not cooperate he would place them with the general jail population,
where they they would be raped. "He told us 'For a day or a week
or a month [Jail] is not a pleasant place. People get sodomized. The
inmates run the D.C. Prison. In the prison, the weak are preyed upon,'"
said Black Echo.
·
Another group of activists was also threatened with incarceration
with the general population, and told 'they love to kill white boys
over there, you pussy-faggot protesters.'
·
Detainees are taken into solitary confinement and lied to, told that
they are the last ones in jail, that they won't be released before
their court date in July, that they have no rights.
The Midnight
Special Law Collective is asking all concerned to call as many of
the following numbers to help them in their efforts to gain justice
for the remaining 200 IMF/WB detainees. Giving no names, express concern
that detainees are being abused, and demand their immediate release.
All area
codes are 202.
DC
Mayors office: 727-2980
DC Chief of Staff: 727-2643
DC Public Advocate: 673-4421
Dept. of Correction: 673-7316
DC Chief Judge: 879-2770
DC Executive Officer Ulysses Hammond: 879-1700
Police Academy: 645-0055 (detainees held here)
Central Holding: 727-2894
1st Dist. Substation: 727-4655
Superior Court Chief Judge Eugene Hamilton: 879-1600
Clerk of the Court: 879-1401
US Atty. For DC: 514-2000 (insist on an investigation and prosecution
on abuses, civil rights violations, and homophobia)
Cell Blocks B & C: 727-2392
Please
take a moment to call these numbers.
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