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Spanish state

Police intimidate international youth camp

No to the criminalization of the social movements!

Wednesday 6 August 2008, by Izquierda Anticapitalista

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Espacio Alternativo, the Fourth International’s section in the Spanish State, has denounced the police for stopping coaches leaving our international youth camp and recording the details of the attendees.

In a communique on its website, the comrades explained that at the end of the camp "the buses of the different delegations began to leave to Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Madrid, Andalusia, etc. Not very far from the place where the camping took place, a Portuguese bus with young people from there and the Spanish State was stopped by an inspection by the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra. The Mossos entered within the bus and demanded that all the passengers put the hands in the head."

Our comrades’ identification papers were taken from the bus and returned to them after a long delay. Some comrades were made to leave the bus and open their luggage. The Civil Guard repeated this intimidation by stopping other buses at the French border, noting the identifies of our comrades travelling to Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Italy and The Netherlands. Buses which later left the camp for Madrid, Toulouse and Barcelona were not stopped.

The communique explains that the action of the Mossos and the Civil Guard is a clear example of criminalization of the social movements and the anticapitalist left by the Catalan Autonomous Government directed by Joan Saura, who already has carried out successive episodes of repression and criminalization of the social movements, in the service of business interests and big capital.