Gipfelsoli

Matthias Monroy is working with Gipfelsoli since its beginning. One focus is the networking of european police forces, their agreements, new technics and tactics. They are often trained (together with military) at "large events", such as summit protests, and help the doctrine of "Homeland Security" to be established in Europe. The Gipfelsoli Infogroup exists since the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. After hundreds of protesters were arrested and mistreated, some having to endure weeks in prison, a support group formed in Berlin. When the support group ceased to exist, the Gipfelsoli Infogroup took on the administration of the email lists which disseminated relevant information for the evaluation of the Italian G8 and for continued solidarity work. A second anchor of our work was Gothenburg: After confrontations during the EU summit a few weeks before the summit in Genoa, the police used fire arms against protesters. Courts imposed on average 2 year prison sentences. Exemplary was the conviction of members of a group that had used SMS to draw attention to police measures: they were sentenced to up to 4 years imprisonment. In Germany a few months later there were house searches and even charges in German courts relating to the events in Sweden. The Infogroup published and distributed a regular newsletter with information about the court cases and the associated political conflicts. Together with others the Gipfelsoli Infogroup organised international legal support gatherings for people affected to help. Now the group is also involved in analyzing and protesting against the "european security architecture". Together with other civil rights groups, lawyers and activists, Gipfelsoli is campaigning against the signing of the next 5 years program on inner security, that european ministers of interior prior to sign in november 2009. Large changes are foreseen, e.g. concerning migration politics, the sharing of databases and the logical search and processing within this "data-tsunami" by police authorities, military and secret service all over europe (real time data video, satellite, biometrics, fuzzy search).