Report on violence (Prague 2000)

Dit is het finale rapport, samengesteld door de OPH of het Legal Team dat actief was tijdens de acties in Praag. Dit document is werkelijk het lezen waard : zowel om 'historische' redenen (wat is er nu precies gebeurt?), maar ook voor iedereen die in de toekomst acties plant.

Uit dit document blijkt dat het geweld voornamelijk uit 2 hoeken komt: 1) door de politie binnen de gevangenismuren 2) door bepaalde autonome actiegroepen. Bovendien staat in het document dat het niet uitgesloten is dat de politie provocatietechnieken heeft toegepast. Vooral getuigenissen van "hit and run- acties" van activisten, die ongestraft achter de politielinies konden verdwijnen, waarna vreedzame betogers en voorbijgangers werden opgepakt, versterkt dit vermoeden.
"Here it is necessary to mention the great mystery, documented by journalists who were present, of the recurrence of "demonstrators" who, in comparison to other people in the streets, passed through the police cordons without any problem, committed violence against property and threw stones while at the same time confiscating people’s film and then arresting passersby at the conclusion of the protests. In light of what has been ascertained it is definitely possible to doubt the trustworthiness of the assertions of the security bodies that no police provocateurs were deployed in the streets."

Report on violence
Jiøí Kopal, Martin Prokop, Marek Veselý

Activities of the Civic Legal Observers Project (Obcanske pravni hlidky – OPH) concerning the Annual Meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Prague, September 2000

Why the Civic Legal Observers Project (OPH)?
1. Preparatory phase
1. 1 Gathering information and experience, recruitment of volunteers
1. 2 Publication of materials
1. 3 Organizing training for OPH volunteers
1. 4 Negotiations with state bodies
2. To action...
2.1 Legal observers in the field
a) The anticipation phase – the face of the enemy presents itself
b) The calming phase – the nonviolent demonstrators arrive
c) The surprise phase – September 26, 2000
d) The arrest phase – who actually ended up in the police cells?
e) The revenge phase – behind the walls of the police stations
2. 2 The OPH coordinating center
2. 3 The legal assistance center
3. OPH media work
3. 1 Media strategy – goals of OPH’s media work
3. 2 A brief overview of approaches to the media
4. Follow-up activities
4. 1 Keep it from „fizzling out“
4. 2 When the police investigate the police
5. Conclusion

Why the Civic Legal Observers Project (OPH)?
This project of the Environmental Law Service (Ekologicky pravni servis – EPS) and the specially created institution of the Civic Legal Observers Project (OPH) is intended to resemble legal observer groups as they are known especially in Anglo Saxon countries. Legal observers are established by various groups, the majority of them nonprofit organizations focused on human rights problems. Their activities are often very diverse as well. However, taken together they can all be characterized as observers who focus on following a situation in which citizens expressing their opinions and convictions in open, public spaces come into contact with forces of the state apparatus (the police).
We conceived of the legal observers as having the following goals:
a) Impartial documentation of events (see section 2)
The main goal of OPH was to monitor the situation during the protests against the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, to record critical moments with various kinds of equipment, and to get personal testimonies for the purpose of eventually evaluating the adequacy of the Police intervention as well as investigating the protesters’ behavior. This goal was OPH’s monitoring function.
b) Preventing the escalation of violence at the places of protest (see sections 1. 4, 2. 1)
Once OPH had sufficiently publicized its mission, the observers could, through their presence (as witnesses) prevent violence from the side of the Police or the demonstrators. As the Police themselves later admitted, this goal was reached. Exceptions were the police stations, to which OPH was prohibited access, and the behavior of a small number of the most militant protesters, which was practically impossible to change. We were at least able to fulfill this preventive function as protectors of the human rights of those detained at the police stations after the fact, through our efforts to investigate and publicize the violence at the police stations (see section 4).
c) Providing legal information, free legal aid (see sections 1. 2 and 2. 3).
The informational and advocacy functions of OPH were fulfilled through publishing 20,000 leaflets in four languages and establishing a Legal Center, which on the one hand answered inquiries and on the other hand provided legal aid at the border crossings. In this way OPH tried to fulfill the "legal" part of the "legal observer" concept.
d) In cases of necessity, to facilitate communication between both sides of a conflict and to interpret (see section 2)
It was evident that due to the low level of linguistic skills of the members of the Czech Police, the mediating function of OPH – help during negotiations and interpreting between the leaders of the intervening police units and the protesters – could be a critical circumstance which could influence the situation in the streets (e.g., avert unnecessary police interventions).
The implementation of the Civic Legal Observers Project was divided into several phases, and for the sake of clarity we have organized this concluding report accordingly. Of course, some topics occurred during all the phases of implementation, and therefore, although it is a simplification, we have mentioned them under that phase where they were of critical importance (e. g., negotiations with state bodies) unless they are so important as to merit their own section (e. g., media work).

1. The Preparatory Phase
1. 1. Gathering information and experience, recruiting OPH volunteers
Intensive work to start the whole project was already underway by June 2000. During this period we concentrated especially on communicating with organizations and individuals beyond our borders who had experience in organizing and being legal observers. We gradually came into contact with organizations from Germany, Great Britain and especially the USA, which gave us a great deal of information and shared their practical experience gained in organizing similar groups of independent observers. The organization with which we had the most intensive exchange of information was the American National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a professional organization of lawyers interested in human rights protection. At the end of June 2000, two members of a similar Czech organization, the Movement for Civic Solidarity and Tolerance (Hnuti obcanske solidarity a tolerance – HOST) also joined the OPH project. On June 28 there was a coordinating meeting of all potential organizers, at which a joint approach and means of cooperation was agreed on. From that point forward the project was presented as the "joint" project of EPS and HOST.
More than 150 people participated in the course of the entire implementation of the project. There were organizations and individual people involved with human rights, professionally defined groups (lawyers, translators, graphic artists, web page designers, photographers and videographers, psychologists, law students and journalists) and several commercial companies, e.g. the Mironet firm, which loaned OPH computers and similar equipment. But the main weight of the project rested on the large group of trained observer "patrols," people operating on foot directly at the protest sites.
The "recruiting" of OPH volunteers took place in several different phases. In June informational leaflets with our proposal were posted at the law (and other) college faculties in Brno and Prague; those who were interested contacted EPS through email and written applications. Many future OPH volunteers came forward after OPH began its media campaign with a press conference August 1. OPH also ran an ad in the RESPEKT weekly two weeks in a row (August 21 and 28).

During the month of August we put into place:
• An appropriate form of identification. Turquoise vests with the OPH logo were decided upon. The turquoise color was intentionally selected so as not to be confused with the id vests of journalists, traffic police or ambulance workers. Every observer also had an OPH id card.
• A functional means of communication. It was necessary to establish a constant flow of information between OPH, its Coordinating Center and the individual observers – this was a basic condition if the entire team were to function well. Instead of radio transmitters, which proved impractical, we decided to buy and then resell several dozen mobile telephones. This method of communication proved to be very effective, since each individual patrol could make use of its own mobile phone.
• Office spaces. Thanks to the helpfulness of many nonprofit organizations we succeeded in obtaining separate spaces for the function of the OPH Coordinating Center, the Legal Assistance Center, accommodations for those OPH members not from Prague, and several administrative and storage places. Even though EPS is an organization located in Brno, we were able to work full-time in Prague from the beginning of September to the middle of October.

1. 2 Publication of materials
One of the goals which we set for ourselves within the framework of the project was that of making access to information about the legal aspects of public protest and demonstration in the Czech Republic available to as many participants of the September protests as possible. The purpose of this effort was to make sure that those foreign and domestic participants in the protests who did not intend to break the law would not break it out of ignorance. Within the framework of the OPH project several kinds of printed materials were designed for this purpose as well as our own Internet pages. Another necessary condition for OPH’s successful functioning was setting up the work materials (manuals, questionnaires) for OPH’s internal needs.
In connection with these two main goals, two kinds of printed materials were produced during the OPH preparatory phase:
a) Publications and web pages for domestic and foreign demonstration participants
• The most important printed material which was produced by OPH was the leaflet "Legal capacities for participating demonstrators." This came out in four languages – Czech, English, German and French – in a total print run of 20,000 (10,000 in Czech, 6,000 in English, 3,000 in German and 1 000 in French). Professional translators were used. The text of the leaflet was also publicized on the OPH Internet page. The leaflet provides extensive information about the rights and responsibilities of both citizens and the Police during demonstrations. It guides the protest participant through all possible critical points, from the rules for organizing a public gathering, through Police intervention, to the situation at the police stations. A special section was devoted to the position of foreign citizens. Before publication, the text was also brought to the attention of the Czech Ministry of the Interior. Given that the leaflet was intentionally conceived of as a general document, its use is not limited to the September demonstrations and it will be possible to use it for future OPH activities.
• The contact card "OPH Legal Assistance," of which 10,000 were printed especially for the September demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank meeting in Prague, gave contact numbers in Czech, German and English to call for legal aid or consultation. The original purpose of distributing these cards was the result of negotiations with representatives of the Police Presidium. The cards were intended to make it possible for those who were taken to police stations to immediately contact OPH lawyers, who as the authorized representatives of those detained would be able to keep track of Police procedure at the stations and eventually help to either quickly resolve the situation or to contact friends of the detainee. Even though the quick, correct, and transparent treatment of those detained seemed – during our negotiations – to be a point of agreement in the interests of both the Police Presidium representatives and OPH, in practice it turned out that these same contact cards were illegally taken from the detainees or destroyed. There are only two requests for legal aid directly from the police stations in our records, despite the fact that all the contact cards were distributed by OPH patrols in the streets. They were mostly made use of by the friends of the detained, thanks to whom we collected a database of more than 500 people reported missing, which proved to be an effective disruption of the police’s presumably illegal information embargo which occurred at that time.
• is the registered domain of the OPH Internet pages, where we publicized information about OPH in Czech and English (an introduction to the project, our minutes of the negotiations with Police Presidium representatives), legal information (the text "Legal Position of Demonstration Participants" – in Czech, German and French), the full text of selected legal norms (the Constitution of the Czech Republic, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, and the laws on foreigners, assembly and the police, these also in English). Later we also posted a total of 40 OPH press releases, a photo gallery, the testimonies of victims of violence at the police stations, contacts to relevant Internet pages (the Czech Ministry of the Interior, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch). A permanent call for those interested in cooperation is also posted. The pages have been visited by 9,272 people at the time of this report.
b) Materials for OPH internal use:
• The Manual for OPH Patrols is 40 pages long; 100 of them were printed. It was intended for the training of volunteers who wanted to actively join as observers of public gatherings. The manual contained an introduction with a description of the goals of OPH; excerpts from those legal norms which applied to OPH activity, including commentary and recommended behavior for OPH observers in concrete situations; a description of OPH work methods – practical notes on how, when, and what to record, how to protect oneself and one’s equipment, and recommendations on how an OPH observer should equip him or herself for the day; an illustrated part on how to provide first aid; samples of the Form for Witnesses of Police Intervention and the OPH Statutes.
• OPH Statutes. This was one of the texts produced for the internal organization of the project. It contains a brief "ethical code" for OPH observers and as such is an important part of our overall concept. All those interested in cooperating were required to familiarize themselves with its content and to sign that they were committed to observing the code. The code contained the basic rules of behavior as an OPH observer and a solemn declaration that the signatory will respect those rules and also has never been convicted of a violent crime. Signing these statutes and thereby expressing agreement with them was the condition for being accepted into the team of observers.
• A numbered OPH id card with the photograph and signature of the observer was issued as one of the basic identifiers of those cooperating with the project. As such it was regularly respected by the police (without claiming any special privileges for the citizen thus identified). Its main purpose was to prevent the other identifiers of the observers (the turquoise vest or the cap with the logo) from being appropriated and misused by non-OPH members. According to the original agreement with Police Presidium representatives, this card, in combination with a normal Czech identity card, was also supposed to facilitate entrance into police stations for the purpose of providing legal aid to the detained.
• A report on the course of the observed action was produced as the daily record of a patrol’s activity. This text helped to systematize individual pieces of information from recorded events in the field and prevented their being missed in future recordings. At the same time this report facilitated faster orientation within the recorded materials and more effective work during data collection.
• The Form for Witnesses of Police Intervention was similar in purpose to the form used for the daily report. This particular form was used to report situations in which a Police intervention occurred and was therefore much more detailed. OPH also had extra forms available for non-OPH witnesses.

1. 3. Organized training for OPH volunteers
We organized two-day training sessions for those interested in voluntarily cooperating as OPH observers. In order to facilitate the participation of all who were interested, we held the sessions twice, on September 8–9 in Brno and September 15–16 in Prague. Approximately 40 people participated in both trainings. Within the training program we tried to cover all the important aspects of work in the field and teamwork during the time of action.
The participants were also informed of the OPH mission and its approach to preparing the project (contact with the media, negotiations with state bodies, the state of technological preparations). We trained the patrols in detail on the legal aspects of the situations which they as OPH observers could expect to witness, not only through theoretical lectures but also in interactive form – the instructors role-played different scenarios with the participants which simulated actual situations that might occur during the OPH activities (e.g., transfer of patrols to a police station, confiscation of their film by the police and similar scenarios).
The participants also underwent psychological tests for a tendency to aggressive behavior, which were evaluated by psychologist Dr. Svetlana Skalova of the Psychiatric Department of the Brno Faculty Hospital in Bohunice. The goal was to reject those interested who had a high potential for verbal and physical aggression and to therefore prevent possible problems in critical situations. Psychologist Dr. Jan Jilek prepared patrol members for their own internal coping with stressful situations, again through the interactive method, by role-playing critical moments with a focus on possible individual reactions during surprise or stress and how team members can mutually support one another. A lecture on practical experience in monitoring demonstrations included video clips from several gatherings and police interventions, instruction in "security work" in the streets, and practical advice concerning the appropriate equipment to bring and clothing to wear to protect against tear gas or flying rocks.
First aid instruction with practical demonstrations and rehearsal of "standard situations" (resuscitation, artificial respiration, helping the injured into a stabilized position) was also included so that OPH members would know how to conduct such operations and would not hesitate to use them in practice, as well as an introduction to the basics of photography and video. Time for journalists was included at both trainings and small press conferences were conducted. In Brno and in Prague this was the result of several reports in the press and a short piece on tv news; an extensive article about the Brno training session also came out in the magazine Reflex. Groups of journalists visited the training sessions and informed the public about the preparations of our project.

1. 4. Negotiations with state bodies
In contrast to similar groups abroad, the creators of this project decided to immediately communicate to the greatest possible extent with state bodies – primarily the Czech Interior Ministry and the Czech Police – at the highest level. The reason for this was precisely the absence of any history or experience with civic initiatives of this kind in our country, and our concern that the role of OPH would not be understood, which could then lead to the intervening police directly attacking legal observers in the streets. It is necessary to note that despite all problems and incidents which occurred during communication and contact with the police, there were no sweeping instances of police attacking OPH observers.
As soon as the overall concept was settled and the schedule for completing the various goals of the project was in place, presentation materials were gradually sent to the interested parties. The first person with whom we negotiated in the middle of June was government human rights representative Petr Uhl. Through his office the government representative for the preparation of the Annual Meeting of the IMF and World Bank, Zdenek Hruby, was informed of our project; this person included information about OPH in his report on the state of preparations for the Annual Meeting. In its resolution of July 26, 2000 the government officially charged "the Interior Minister with informing the government how to make use of the Legal Observers Project organized by non-state, nonprofit organizations." At that time Interior Minister Stanislav Gross already had our presentation materials on the project at his disposal. There was then an introductory meeting at the office of the first Deputy Interior Minister Peter Ibl, at which the Interior Minister was himself present. The meeting turned out to be of a declaratory nature. A written version of the official standpoint of the Czech Interior Ministry was issued on August 4, 2000.
On August 7, 2000 the first short informational meeting with government representative Zdenek Hruby took place, once again in the form of a brief introduction, explication of positions and establishment of contacts. After this there were two more meetings with this government representative for the meeting preparations – who, from the point of view of his job description, was not the appropriate person for negotiation on the OPH project – and these meetings again were of an informational nature.
OPH representatives also participated in similar informational meetings at Prague Castle at the invitation of officials of the Office of the President of the Republic. The first such meeting took place on August 10, 2000, and another after the protest actions were finished. OPH representatives were in regular contact with officials of the President’s Office in the interim. But most essential were the negotiations with representatives of the department whose work directly concerned OPH activity, the Czech Interior Ministry and its Police Presidium.
The first meeting, during which the main themes for future negotiations between the state bodies and OPH were established, took place at the level of the Director of the Czech Interior Ministry’s Security Policy Department. At the next meetings, where representatives of the Police Presidium were present, several points were clarified, it was agreed that the policy part of the negotiations was basically over, and the main burden for continuing with the negotiations was shifted to the Police Presidium. The guarantor of an agreement from the side of the state was at that point the Czech Police’s Vice President for Plainclothes Police, Vaclav Jakubik.
In general, there seemed to be a connection between the concreteness of the negotiations and their difficulty. While the Czech Interior Ministry often gave OPH representatives surprisingly positive policy reactions and statements (from which they made a 180 degree turn after September 27, 2000, when OPH began to publicize the results of its investigations) the negotiations at the Police Presidium were characterized by great difficulty in establishing positions.
The first meeting at the Police Presidium took place on August 30, 2000 and as a result, OPH representatives were invited to a training session (accessible to the media) for riot units at the military training grounds in Milovice. But the most essential meeting was the almost four-hour negotiation with Vice President Jakubik, Police Presidium Director of Public Order Services Colonel Lubomir Kvicala, and Major Iva Hrebikova from the Administration of Foreign and Border Police Services, which took place on September 8, 2000. The minutes of these negotiations express in far greater detail than any other document from that time the agreed relationship of the Police and OPH, and were publicized (with the agreement of both sides) in an effort to make the project transparent.
OPH obtained very specific pledges from the Police, and therefore we expected, based on these negotiations, that the Police would behave consistently and would not try to avoid or directly break this gentlemen’s agreement (which was concluded at the highest level, confirmed by signatures, and accordingly publicized). The subsequent behavior of the Police at the first available opportunity says a lot about the trustworthiness of the highest representatives of the state security apparatus. While we were not trying to gain any rights other than those stemming from the Czech legal system, unfortunately, from the side of the police many of the "recorded results of the negotiations" (both sides agreed this was not a formal agreement) were merely formally promised, but not implemented at all in practice (such as, for example, access to the police stations or the possibility of representing the detained through lawyers on the basis of a power of attorney), or were only formally implemented, without practical results.
What, then, were the key themes of the negotiations between the OPH representatives, the Czech Interior Ministry, and the Police Presidium?

1. Identifying members of the Police by numbers on their uniforms. Law 283/1991 Sb. on the Police of the Czech Republic regulates the identification of members of the Police. This law charges the Police with establishing identification of police officers through identification numbers on their uniforms. While the ordinary service uniform for police officers has included this identification number since the beginning of the 1990s, the riot police uniforms have not included them until now, so it was not possible to identify individual police officers. During our negotiations we objected to this contradiction of the law and we succeeded in having the Czech Police leadership issue a new internal regulation which arranged for the identification of police officers in riot units. The service number of the police officer was sewn in black on a 12×3.5 cm piece of yellow fabric, which was then attached to the front of the police officer’s uniform by means of Velcro.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
We consider the fact that we achieved the obligatory identification of members of the riot units to be one of the most significant successes of OPH, since this contradiction between the law and actual practice had been observed for several years both by organizations of the nonprofit sector and, for example, by the government Human Rights Representative (e. g., in document form as the Resolution of the Government Human Rights Council of May 5, 2000). This point was fulfilled; since mid-September 2000 police officers also have their identification numbers on their riot uniforms in the dimensions of 12×3.5 cm.
In addition to this, we tried to obtain visible identification of the police officers on the front of their helmets, since the number on this side is not visible – especially not behind the riot shields, in crowds and during interventions. OPH was willing to contribute to the technical and financial solutions to this problem, but the Police refused (citing lack of time and technical difficulties).

2. The presence of legal observers in otherwise closed spaces, legal aid to the detained on the basis of a power of attorney.
We were especially concerned about places to which the Police can refuse admittance, according to the Law on Police, i. e., any so-called "police area" marked by red and white tape; service vehicles intended for transporting people as prescribed by the Law on the Police of the CR; and finally about access to those places which later proved to be the most fateful – the police stations. After our unfortunate experiences with the Police approach at police stations during similar events in past years (Velka Pardubicka 1993, the intervention at the Propast Club in 1996, the Global Street Party 1998, May First 1999 and other cases known from the daily work of lawyers and human rights organizations) we suggested our presence mainly to prevent the events which in fact ended up occurring and about which we say more below. Sources abroad also warned us of an unfortunate pre-existing model of human rights violations against those detained at police stations. For example, in materials from Amnesty International this phenomenon is mentioned as the most typical kind of human rights violation in the so-called "highly developed democracies." This particular kind of violation relies on an absolute lack of evidence stemming from the inaccessibility of the police stations and other facilities of this kind, each of which has its own regime for dealing with any potential witnesses. During the negotiations, OPH warned that the mere existence of a non-transparent process at the police stations (lack of interpreters, no possibility to contact a lawyer) could lead to misinterpretation of the police operation and the development of problematic situations (not to mention dubious behavior by the police). Therefore, our presence was to serve, in addition to a monitoring function, a mediating function, as described in the introduction to these materials.
The Police agreed with the presence of OPH members at the police stations as general representatives as long as they were requested by the detained persons. According to the agreement, an OPH member could be present at police stations where the waiting room was open to the public in the event that one of the detained would request his or her services as a general representative, about which request the Police were to inform us through the direct information channel – the Contact Group of the Police Presidium. It is necessary to emphasize that the right for legal aid stems from Article 37 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedom, or, for example, from the judicature of the Constitutional Court.
As far as the distribution of the detained was concerned, the Police promised to avoid accumulating the detainees at individual police stations and also that it would only give preference to the strategy of distributing the detainees outside of Prague once all the Prague stations were completely full. According to the agreement, the Police were also to inform OPH of the transfer of the detained from Prague through the Contact Group of the Police Presidium.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
In contradiction of this agreement, and also of the law, the Police did not facilitate contact between the detained and OPH, and did not inform us when the detained requested legal aid – police officers even confiscated and destroyed the cards with telephone numbers which OPH had distributed during the protests. Legal representation by an OPH lawyer was made possible in only one case (and that not at a police station, but at the Interrogation Office). In those cases where OPH lawyers tried to access the police stations, they were either not allowed in at all (e. g., at the Foreign Police Department in Olsanska street or the Bartolomejska police station) or they were ordered out of the space intended for the public after their first attempt at establishing contact with the detained (e. g., at the Praha-Holesovice police station).

3. The police obligation not to consider the visibly and clearly marked OPH patrols as protest participants.
An absolutely basic condition for the legal observers to function was their immunity during police interventions. Otherwise the Police could detain them under certain conditions and therefore "take them out of commission" at key moments. The Police committed themselves to not treating the visibly and clearly marked OPH patrols as protesters.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
This goal was successfully achieved. The Police officially provided information to police officers about the existence, position and identification of OPH and basically respected the position of OPH (with the exception of a single instance of excesses, when police officers during the evening hours of September 26 beat members of an OPH patrol on Vinohradska Avenue).

4. Establishing direct contact with the Police Presidium body.
Direct contact with the body of the Czech Interior Ministry which handles suggestions and complaints about Police actions was essential primarily in the case of operational contact while gathering actual testimony about relevant infractions of the law committed by members of the Police, as well as the eventual need to gain information, etc. Therefore, this basically concerned an attempt to create the institution of a "contact officer" at the Police operations center who would be entrusted with communicating with the coordinators of the legal observer patrols during the time of the protests.
The Police and OPH agreed to create this direct information channel between the Legal and Coordinating Centers of OPH and the Contact Group of the Police Presidium (which was also supposed to arrange contact with embassies). This went as far as exchanging telephone numbers and other contacts between OPH and the Police.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
In reality this information channel, through the fault of the Police, basically did not function even minimally from September 26, and that not only in relation to OPH, but also – as we later determined – in relation to other organizations, e.g., in relation to the Office of the President of the Republic or even in relation to several Embassies. The Contact Group at the Police Presidium was formally in contact – that is, they answered the phone – but they actually sabotaged any kind of cooperation for alleged reasons of "insufficient jurisdiction," or "inability to intervene in the given affair."

5. The problem of refusing entrance to foreigners.
OPH put on the table the subject of the possible groundless ("preventive") refusal of entrance to people, who were evidently coming to Prague to demonstrate, but were not on the list of unwanted persons. The Police promised that foreigners not listed in the list of unwanted persons would only be refused entrance if there were grounds to suspect that the foreigner was going to call for violence.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
In practice, the non-transparent denial of entrance to the Czech Republic did occur at the border crossings; the underlying reason seems to have been proven participation in preparing the September gathering in Prague. This practice had the absurd result of not permitting into the country some of the official, nonviolent organizers of the demonstrations, which contributed to the already significant organizational chaos on the part of the demonstrators, while militant groups or individuals who came to Prague to participate in violent protest got into the Czech Republic without any problems and were never apprehended.

6. Rules for terminating the residence of foreigners.
The Police committed to enforcing the termination of residence on the basis of intentional disturbance of public order with the proviso that, since the definition of this concept is unclear, they would enforce it consistently and would always proceed individually.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
In practice the Police did exactly the opposite. Not only were the protesters detained without having committed any kind of misdemeanor, which applies to the majority of those detained September 27 and 28 after the violence, but worst of all the Police terminated residence en masse, on the basis of a blanket decision with a uniform explanation (viz. the explanation of the decision: "According to the information at the disposal of this department. the above-named foreigner is supposed to have participated in the protest actions in Prague districts 1, 2 and 4 on September 26, 2000 directed especially against the occasion of the IMF meeting and through his/her behavior is supposed to have disturbed the public order in a serious way..." By taking this approach the Police have broken, on a massive scale, Protocol number 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the administrative regulations regarding the process for terminating residence of foreigners.

7. Informing OPH as to the location of individual detainees or their transfer to the Balkova and Postorna deportation camps. A specific feature of the September demonstrations was their international character and OPH warned that in such a case it was very probable that, for example, the mere lack of information about an actual person could lead to the impression that this person had gone "missing" and, with regard to possible agitation abroad in such cases, even to international problems. Considering its role, OPH could fulfill the function of an information channel between the Police and those close to those detained (which to a certain extent was achieved). The Police recognized the validity of this argument and expressly promised, on request, to inform OPH about the transfer of foreigners to deportation camps.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
The agreement was not fulfilled in this area either – the Police did not inform OPH of the transfer of foreigners to the deportation camps, so we found out about the transfer of foreigners to the camp at Balkova, for example, through very obscure means, such as an "SMS" text message sent by a detained foreigner who succeeded in hiding his mobile phone from the police.

8. The use of special means of coercion.
The Police promised to try to limit the use of detonators to such an extent that they would not have to be used at all. They also made OPH aware of the composition of the tear gases at their disposal and their attendant health consequences.
How was this agreement fulfilled?
According to OPH observations and recordings, the usage of means of coercion by the police during the protests was adequate, but at the same time only just sufficient. In several cases OPH recorded the use of technologies other than those prescribed by law (e.g., armored carriers), but mainly we recorded the police’s lack of experience with some of the less frequently used means of coercion. For example, in OPH video recordings one can repeatedly see examples of the absolutely ineffective use of so-called water cannon, which during appropriate use (as in part of the police intervention in Lumirova street September 26) proved to be very effective in limiting the approach of militant attackers to the police cordon.
The discussion about legalizing harsher means of coercion which was initiated by representatives of the Czech Interior Ministry immediately after "S26" is, from this point of view, unprecedented, and should not be considered until such time as the Police can actually control their already-existing arsenal. Moreover, OPH is of the opinion that it is precisely thanks to the fact that so-called "non-lethal weapons" such as rubber or Kevlar bullets were not available that there were not very many demonstrators or journalists injured unnecessarily in the streets.
Further negotiations with security unit representatives did not take place until October 5, 2000, in a completely different atmosphere and under completely different circumstances (described below) than the previous negotiations. Further contact with Czech Interior Ministry bodies was transferred to the level of a meeting with the Interior Ministry Inspectorate and the Complaints and Discipline Department at the Police Presidium.

2. 1. Legal observers in the field
During the September actions almost 100 OPH observers were on the move in the streets of Prague at various times. From their records during the week of September 22–29 we have compiled an archive of more than 120 texts. These are written records of the actions followed; testimonies from witnesses of police interventions and of those taken into custody or detained at police stations; descriptions of photo and video documentation, etc. OPH volunteers were, insofar as it was possible, divided into teams so that there was always at least one photographer present. Each team was equipped with an OPH mobile phone; the interconnectedness of these phones created a relatively very well-functioning network. Considering the high cost of the technology, it was necessary to solve the problem of video recordings by cooperating with several professional as well as amateur videographers, who put their own equipment at our disposal. Some of them had the status of and were identified as OPH observers; others offered their own recordings after the actions to OPH for analysis. OPH has at its disposal recordings from seven video cameras. Patrols in the field fulfilled the observer and informational functions in particular, thanks to which the Coordinating and also the Press Centers were almost immediately informed about actual events in the streets.
In several cases, the patrols then became intermediaries for negotiation between the demonstrators and the police. Although we tried from the beginning not to define the function of OPH as mediators during such negotiations (especially out of concern for too-high expectations of influence from one or the other side and the subsequent reaction in case the negotiations failed) OPH teams got into situations where, while actual violence was not present, there was the threat of conflict in the event of insufficient communication, caused by the language barrier.
For example, when a train of Italian participants arrived at the Horni Dvoriste border crossing, the Police made the entry of the train onto our territory conditional upon the non-entry of four Italians, who, according to unclear Police evidence, might disturb the public order in the Czech Republic. The remaining demonstrators protested against this by blocking the tracks. Several minutes before the arrival of riot units the OPH lawyers, who were the only ones there capable of conversing with the Italians in English, succeeded in resolving the situation so that it did not turn into an intervention using coercive means.
Another example is the police action in the afternoon hours of September 27, 2000, when the Police trapped a crowd of about 500 people by shutting off Anglicka street (beneath Namesti Miru) at either end. OPH patrols – who had anticipated the nearby Police intervention – searched for and after brief negotiations led away from the site people who were random passers-by and one pregnant demonstrator. In several cases, OPH observers helped out with their language capabilities (e.g., the Police intervention on September 26 in Stepanska street); individual OPH volunteers also called ambulances (e.g., during the Police intervention on September 26 at the Vysehrad metro station or again on that same day in Stepanska street).
For the sake of clarity we have drawn together all of the information produced by these extensive OPH archival materials (which we continue to work on) into the form of a narrative. The development of the events around the September meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Prague and the related demonstrations can be divided into five parts:

a) The anticipation phase – the face of the enemy presents itself
Before the protest began, a quiet, mostly unpublicized "war" played itself out for quite some time between the organizers of the protests and state security units. The Police and the state bodies elected a strategy of suppression of the activities of the protest organizers. For example, we include here the groundless detention of those who participated in the Initiative Against Economic Globalization’s (INPEG) August "happenings", the state’s share in influencing commercial entities to break contracts concluded with protest organizers for rental office space or accommodations, forbidding demonstrations, etc. The result of this strategy was actually counterproductive – greater resistance of the demonstration organizers to any sort of negotiations with the Police and the strengthening of the conspiratorial character of the protests, which led to the loss of the possibility for at least basic public control of these preparations. A connected phenomenon was also the failure to permit the activist-organizers onto the territory of the CR and the subsequent delay of the development of firmer organizational structures among the nonviolent demonstrators, as described in the conclusion to section 1. 4.
At a different level, the media played a fundamental role in the preparations for the course of the conflict during the meeting by its strong preference for the subject of violence at the demonstration as opposed to informing the public as to the sources of the ideological conflict or the actual activities of the IMF and World Bank or the organizations protesting them (the IVVM agency’s research documented this in June 2000, for example). Expectations of the coming protests were therefore framed within an image of a conflict between demonstrators and the Police, and it was from within this media frame that the actions of all actors were later interpreted (police preparations, security arrangements in Prague, the INPEG instruction and preparation camp, the concerns of citizens and also state institutions).

b) The calming phase – the nonviolent demonstrators arrive
From the first gatherings on September 20 until the morning of September 26 a gradual calming of the situation was achieved. The media anticipation of violence decreased from that of a certainty to the level of speculation. Thousands of nonviolent demonstrators arrived in Prague who concentrated on symbolic actions – marches, gatherings, "happenings." The demonstrators were fewer than expected and did not behave violently. The single conflict was the attack of several skinheads on an anarchist and antifascist march on Saturday September 23 at the main train station. In this particular case the Police did not manage to react in time, but it can generally be said that police coverage of these actions was conducted at a very good level of professionalism and carried out in a manner appropriate for each situation (escorting marches, locating riot units out of the view of gatherings in case of emergencies and therefore anticipating eventual provocations). Even the organizers of the actions actively tried to stick to the agreed routes, times and places of the gatherings, and agreements made on the spot (e. g., the brief extension for a musical performance at the Humanistic Alliance gathering on Friday September 22) were maintained.

c) The surprise phase – September 26, 2000
While that morning the later development of events was not yet clear, some heretofore unknown or not publicly declared players came onto the scene that day – the so-called "Black Bloc," radical groups from Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Slovenia and also the Czech Republic. Their common denominator was violence, which they considered to be a standard means of expressing their opinion. It is generally known that INPEG itself proclaimed the protests it organized as nonviolent. This does not mean that INPEG activists did not know about the planned presence of "violent" protesters. But they were not capable of preventing their presence, since these autonomous groups ignored all of INPEG’s organizational efforts.
The processions of protesters started to form around 11 am on Namesti Miru in the Prague district of Vinohrady. There were three main streams marked by yellow, blue and pink. Already at that time the "Black Bloc" was clearly different and definable, according to the reports of our patrols. At the meeting place the presence of uniformed police officers was actually symbolic and no conflicts took place, despite the fact that the police were in direct contact with the demonstrators (for example, the procession was preceded by police officers on mopeds).
The police units dispatched in the area of the Congress Center were much more numerous. The main body of the so-called yellow procession was stopped at the Nusle Bridge by a practically impenetrable barricade of armored police vehicles with water cannon, guarded by a cordon equipped with all kinds of defense technology. Here the protests (to the indignation of several other groups) were taken over by the well-organized Italian socialist activist group Ya Basta! Here - more or less under their direction – symbolic clashes (squirting water, throwing tennis balls, etc.) occurred with the police cordon concentrated on the Nusle Bridge. "Blows" with wooden sticks were also employed by Greek union members against the police shields, but with the intention of providing "theater" for the video and still cameras of the journalists who were present. There were no Molotov cocktails, stones or any other kind of weapons used. Of course there were also cases recorded where the preparation of such "munitions" at that point in the demonstration was prevented by the nonviolent activists themselves.
Thanks to the location of the place, the effective distribution of the police officers and technology, and the symbolic form of the clash, the police roadblock was not and could not have been broken. These activities on the Nusle Bridge lasted roughly from 1130 –1530. A large part of the demonstrating groups was concentrated here.
In contrast, the so-called blue procession, whose leaders and goals seemed to be unclear from the recordings (which show hesitation and consultation directly on the procession route) achieved the first significant display of violence by 1230, when stones were thrown from the procession at the building of the Ministry of Justice. After arriving in the Nusle Valley the procession stopped in the area of Slavojova street and set off again after 5–10 minutes; before 1300 the "hard core" of the procession, concentrated in the first rows, had directly attacked the police officers with stones and Molotov cocktails at the intersection of Lumirova and Krokova streets. The attack was conducted with immeasurable ruthlessness, as evidence of which there were several injured police officers, shields broken by stones, etc.
In the Nusle Valley beneath Vysehrad harsh clashes were carried out between the demonstrators and the police until approximately 1630 and isolated events occurred until almost 1800. The militant part of the demonstrators (according to the estimates of the OPH patrols present, only one-tenth of the entire 2,000 participants of the procession took part in the violence) primarily used cobblestones torn up from the area of Vysehradska and Vnislavova streets and in the streets where the main clashes occurred. In the beginning phase of the clash Molotov cocktails were used here. Isolated groups created barricades from various materials, most often from containers and garbage cans, some of which were set on fire. The Police used all of the "standard" means of coercion as prescribed by law, including water cannon, tear gas and detonators. The Police did not use the threat of gunfire, warning shots, dogs or officers on horseback.
By using the water cannon, the Police defied the aggressive head of the procession and also forced members of the "Black Bloc" and nonviolent participants at the end of the clashes away from the streets beneath Vysehrad to the railroad viaduct between Horska, Na Slupi and Premyslova streets. Here further clashes took place in the afternoon hours, after which the Police forced the militants into the area of Svobodova street in the direction of the Vltava. Here the remaining small groups of about 100–150 people total gathered and marched along the Podoli Embankment through Sinkulova and Na Topolce streets onto Mikulas z Husi street. There – in view of the Congress Center – they again attacked a police cordon of about 20 police officers with stones. This cordon was not equipped with either shields or helmets and the militants forced them to flee; the militants were then attacked by a cordon of completely equipped police officers who dispersed them by means of water cannon. That was the end of the rest of the "hard core" of the blue procession, which turned around and headed in the direction of the center of town as small groups and individuals.
The activities of the so-called pink procession, accompanied by a marching band in which a great number of the participants wore carnival masks, for the most part had the nature of a street celebration and did not take on the nature of a conflict until relatively late, at 1445 at the corner of Marie Cibulkova and Mikulas z Husi streets. This conflict was provoked by a group of militants dressed in black. During the course of the conflict there was an evident effort of some of the original "pink" demonstrators to calm the conflict when they dragged away police barriers and placed them in front of the head of the crowd. At the beginning there was only one unit of police officers without any means of protection in the street, but this unit was reinforced after several minutes by riot units in white helmets. The entire conflict, including breaks, lasted about 20 minutes; however, thanks to the presence of television cameras, this was presented on the evening news as one of the harshest conflicts. Here the militants used primarily wooden sticks; there were relatively few stones torn up. However, it was one of the more dangerous clashes considering the absence of protective equipment for the police officers (not even the riot unit had shields here). The police officers used detonators and water cannon – in this case, very ineffectively, as can be seen on the video recordings. The crowd was then forced even further down Marie Cibulkova street, where around 1630 the "common" activities of the pink procession evidently ended.
However, further actions occurred throughout the area around the Congress Center until 1830. At approximately 1700 the vast majority of violent and nonviolent demonstrators reached the Vysehrad metro station, from which they were forced back after roughly half an hour. During the whole early evening there were dozens of cases of contact with police officers recorded in this area, from conflicts and violent acts against people and property (such as, for example, throwing cobblestones at the windows of the Hotel Corinthia-Forum and skirmishes with the police in the street at the corner of Vitezna plan and Petra Rezka) to a passive gathering in the nature of a blockade (e. g., the large, nonviolent blockade in the early evening of the North-South arterial road at 5. kvetna street in front of the Congress Center, which ended in an agreement between the Police and the demonstrators, after which the activists peacefully left the road), to a situation where the demonstrators on Na bitevni plani street spent an hour together with the police without any sort of incident and afterwards cleaned up after themselves in the area, for which the police officers applauded them.
At approximately 1700, the vast majority of protesters regrouped by the building of the State Opera House. The larger part of them set off for the Holesovice fairgrounds (where a nonviolent demonstration took place against the reception arranged there for participants of the IMF and World Bank meeting), and part of them remained on Wenceslas Square. Here a crowd of approximately 150 militant protesters attacked several members of the Police who were in plainclothes, and around 2000 the crowd smashed up the display windows and facilities of a McDonalds restaurant and attacked several uniformed police officers who did not have protective equipment and therefore had no way to intervene. Next the violent protesters moved to the KFC restaurant, where several individuals smashed in the display windows (but did not succeed in getting inside). They attacked several branches of the IPB bank in a similar fashion. Not until 2030 were units equipped with shields and helmets deployed, units which had been situated until that time in the lower part of Wenceslas Square; after about 15 minutes of skirmishes the militants were forced out of the area of Wenceslas Square in the direction of Vinohradska Avenue.
Meanwhile, the Police started to close off Wenceslas Square from both ends; of course, the militants had just been forced out, so at that time, besides the remaining demonstrators, there were only random passers-by and tourists present on the Square; at around 2200 these people were all forced into Stepanska street, detained there and taken to the police stations. Thus arose the unhappy situation in which the police detained a mixture of people, present on Wenceslas Square, which included, in addition to protest participants, people who in many cases had only come to look at the protests (the "curious" who are normally present at such actions) and random passers-by, who had nothing to do with the protests whatsoever. These people became the victims of the most brutal violence at the police stations.
The actions on September 27–28 once again took place in the style familiar from Tuesday morning, i. e., peacefully and without violent conflicts.

d) The arrest phase – who actually ended up in the police cells?
The time sequence of the individual outbreaks of violence towards the Police and property documented by OPH unequivocally testifies to the fact that the number of militants was, compared to the total number of demonstrators (approximately 12,000 people) relatively small. The CTK Agency reported 200 violent demonstrators, the highest estimates speak of 500, and the OPH estimate ranges between 300–400 people. However, small groups of militants moved from place to place during the course of the day and instigated further clashes.
The arrest phase started in the evening hours of September 26. However, from the legal observer recordings it can be stated that only a minimum number of the eventual 949 detained or arrested persons were detained by police at the time of the harshest clashes. We can infer the composition of the separately detained groups from the tactics used by the Police at the places where there was violence as opposed to those used where there was no violence. In the places of violent conflict, police officers arrested people as a rule only after the police cordon had forced the violent demonstrators away from the area of conflict. Therefore, during this time, those who belonged to the aggressive front of the processions fled, as a rule, faithful to their "hit and run" tactics.
On the other hand, the Police detained the largest number of people at seated blockades and other demonstrations of passive resistance. Many of these were also detained on suspicion of "participating in a demonstration" during the mass identity checks which began September 27, by which point the Police were unable to maintain either professional detachment or calm. It is not necessary to explain that the criterion "suspected of participating in a demonstration" is, despite the violence which had taken place the preceding day (and precisely because of the limited number of groups which had participated in it) a significantly questionable one, not to mention the fact that people were, as a rule, judged according to their age, their clothing style, or their language, which is in and of itself very dubious, and not only from the legal point of view.
Here it is necessary to mention the great mystery, documented by journalists who were present, of the recurrence of "demonstrators" who, in comparison to other people in the streets, passed through the police cordons without any problem, committed violence against property and threw stones while at the same time confiscating people’s film and then arresting passersby at the conclusion of the protests. In light of what has been ascertained it is definitely possible to doubt the trustworthiness of the assertions of the security bodies that no police provocateurs were deployed in the streets.

e) The revenge phase – behind the walls of the police stations
Information about the mass transfer and arrest of demonstrators and random passersby started to come in to the Legal Assistance Center in the afternoon hours of September 26. During this day and those that followed the OPH Legal Center succeeded, with the help of dozens of human rights activists and interpreters from the whole world to compile a database of more than 500 names of detained persons, including information about their present location, according to the testimony of those who had just been released from the same places. More than 70 of them were then either personally interviewed by OPH workers, or sent OPH written testimony which described police officers breaking the law. Several foreign citizens as well as those less timid Czech citizens personally provided further confirmation of this information.
According to the available facts and the testimony of those taken to the stations, the most brutal treatment of the detained took place during the night of September 26–27. But other persons taken to the stations who were "lucky" enough to not be caught until September 27 speak, independently of one another, of similar illegalities committed by the police, if at a lower level of intensity.
It is necessary to emphasize that in the vast majority of cases the police officers did not have any evidence at their disposal as to whether one or another detained suspect had actually committed acts of violence, and the police officers working at the stations were not the same as those who had faced the "stone-throwers" in the streets. As described above, among those detained the vast majority were "nonviolent" demonstrators, who did not flee the police, and also random passers-by. The revenge was thus institutional – "police officers" vs. "rioters" – rather than personal (which some consider more excusable). This can be seen in the very nature of the officers’ behavior, where in addition to expressly brutal behavior we very often find elements of chicanery and quite sophisticated methods of humiliating those detained.
It is necessary to note that even though OPH referred exclusively to the testimony of those detained, we used the method of comparing the individual testimonies of people who, independently of one another, had become witnesses to the events at the stations (e. g., in the situation where a British citizen described the situation at a certain station and also stated that a young Greek and two Italians were there with him, we subsequently found a Greek who stated that his witnesses were a British person and two Italians, etc.) If the testimonies of people who found themselves in the same station at the same time match, it is not because of some agreement among them, but because they all experienced the same thing.
What, then, happened at the police stations? According to the testimonies in our archive, the police officers beat the detained in the most sensitive places (belly, genitals, kidneys); treated them cruelly (e. g., forced them to stand or kneel for long periods of time in unnatural positions); terrorized them; swore at them; refused them food and drink. They refused them their right to legal aid and forced them to sign documents without the presence of an interpreter or with incorrect and misleading interpretation. Those taken to the stations who were injured as a result of the harsh police interventions were in several cases not given any medical attention whatsoever or only given it after a long time had elapsed. Numerous testimonies mention the illegal destruction of film, videotape, video and still cameras, and mobile phones.
As an example, we cite several actual cases below; we then compare our findings with the approach of the Interior

Ministry Inspectorate during the investigation of our claims:

1. At the Lupacova police station in Zizkov during the night of September 26–27 there were 8–10 people detained, including two Czech citizens. According to the testimonies, all of the citizens present were beaten and ill-treated by the police officers. The most serious case, also covered by the Czech media, was that of the Israeli citizen Yehoshua Tzarfati, whose face was beaten by several policemen for dozens of minutes and who was kicked all over his body, including his genitals, and dragged along the ground by his hair. According to both Czech witnesses (who were beaten the least, as later proved typical for the situation at all the stations) the police officers most frequently called him a "black pig" or "black slime." The bruises under his eyes and an undeniably swollen left leg, which caused a distinct limp, were still visible for several days afterward. After he was beaten, it was the turn of all the others. Tadzio Mueller, a German citizen living in Sweden, left the station having received not only dozens of kicks and punches, but a broken ear drum, as stated in his medical report. The Dutch citizen Rodrigo Fernandez, whose testimony OPH also succeeded in obtaining, was also witness to and victim of this violence.
What did the Interior Ministry Inspectorate find in this case?
OPH filed criminal charges with the Interior Ministry Inspectorate which were substantiated by the testimony of the Czech and foreign witnesses taken to this station, a videotape, Tadzio Mueller’s medical report, and contact information for the main foreign witnesses. The Inspectorate did not interview any of the foreign witnesses, only the two Czech ones. In the end the Inspectorate reported that it was clear that a crime had been committed at the police station (!), but it refused to investigate further, claiming that it was not clear who had committed the crime.

2. At the Ocelarska street station in the Vysocany district the Polish citizen Arkadius Zajczkowskij was, along with others, intermittently beaten practically all night. The police officers called him a "Polish swine" and promised him that he wouldn’t get out alive. The blows to his face injured him such that he bled and part of a tooth was broken. After the beating the police officers had Zajazckowskij sign a declaration that the Police had committed no violence against him, which he signed out of fear that he would be beaten further. The others who were taken in were treated slightly better, but nevertheless the majority received several gratuitous blows to the face and various parts of the body on arrival; one French citizen, Remy F. S., was, according to the testimony of the others, forced to kneel the whole night and was beaten by the police officers every time he fell over – this treatment can be classified without any exaggeration under the facts of the case as torture. Several foreign and Czech citizens witnessed the above behavior (e. g., J. B., who described the beating of the detained Pole in the Czech newspaper Lidove noviny) and provided their testimonies to OPH.
What did the Interior Ministry Inspectorate find in this case?
OPH did everything in its power for the investigation of the "Ocelarska" case within the actually existing possibilities for these otherwise unprivileged citizens. We immediately filed criminal charges against an unknown assailant in the case one week after the event, October 3, 2000. The testimony of the Czech citizens that a person was beaten and cursed as a "Polish swine" proved to be in accordance with the testimony of the only Polish citizen detained at this station – Arkadius Zajackowsky. In the matter of his questioning, the Inspectorate turned to Interpol, which informed them that it wasn’t possible to ascertain Zajackowcky’s whereabouts as he was evidently in the USA. Upon hearing that Zajaczkowsky was staying in the USA, OPH immediately took it upon ourselves to contact Polish journalists at the daily Gazeta Wyborcza, who found Zajackowsky in one day! We then immediately telephoned this information to Deputy Director Zabrodsky of the Interior Ministry Inspectorate. However, none of the Gazeta Wyborcza editors were ever contacted by the Inspectorate about this matter. OPH once again contacted the Gazeta and obtained Zajaczkowsky’s telephone number. The Czech bodies then contacted him and Zajaczkowsky was questioned in the presence of an EPS lawyer on Thursday, February 8, 2000. The station in Ocelarska street is therefore the only one of these serious cases where an attempt at questioning someone living abroad has been made. This single attempt (other seriously injured foreign persons at other stations who even have medical reports about their injuries have not been contacted at all) is presented by the Inspectorate as the result of a careful investigation on their part.
The Inspectorate’s findings concerning the evidence found at the scene were also original. When drops of blood were found at the scene, Deputy Director Zabrodsky of the Inspectorate shared with the media that "it’s not possible to determine how old they are"; of the piece of tooth that was found, the Inspectorate could not succeed in determining "if it is even human."

3. The station in Arabska street in the district of Vokovice was where police brought Byeongju Jeong, an assistant at the Social Science Faculty of Charles University who was working at the time on a World Bank research project! Byeongju Jeong was randomly detained when he was walking down Stepanska street in the evening hours of September 26. He was detained at the station 24 hours, and tortured by several police officers (punched, beaten with nightsticks, kicked) until he finally urinated on himself. Mr. Jeong was then held in a cell next to the interrogation room. In his testimony he states that he heard how the police officers carried out interrogations and a personal search in the next room, and beat someone in one case for more than half an hour. The American entrepreneur Edward L. Barner also witnessed the brutal behavior at this station; he did not participate in the demonstration and unsuccessfully complained through his Embassy about both his groundless detention and the brutal behavior.
According to the file on the entire case, to which the representing OPH lawyer has access, a total of 26 foreigners were taken to the station. The violence at the station was also confirmed by the Czech citizen JT, on whom the police officers practiced martial arts kicks and punches, kicking him off a chair several times. However, here also, the Czechs tended to be witnesses of violence rather than victims.
What did the Interior Ministry Inspectorate find in this case?
On October 17 an EPS lawyer representing Mr. Jeong filed a criminal complaint, which the Inspectorate investigated by questioning both the injured Byeongju Jeong and two Czech witnesses, then deferring the case with the explanation that no one had complained about the Police’s approach and that "it is not possible on the basis of Mr. Jeong’s testimony alone to conclude that the police officers carried out their duty in an illegal manner when the police officers themselves refuse the charges of violence." At this station, according to the file, there were, according to nationality: 3 Slovaks (Tomas B., Tomas P., Jan P.); 2 Poles (Jaroslaw U., Bogdan H.); 4 Britons (Cara W., Ben D., Sonia H., Iana D.); the Swede Lars J-P; the Italian Armanda B.; the Greek Vangelis K.; 6 Germans (Robert H. S., Christina S., Carlsten H., Oliver B., Christof B., Wonda A.) and the American Edward L. Barner. The Inspectorate has not even attempted to question any of these other 25 foreign witnesses (which could be done by requesting that they be questioned by police bodies in their home countries).

4. At the police station in Hraskeho street in the district of Chodov, an entirely different order of treatment took place. The people transferred here were kicked in sensitive places during personal searches; dragged by their hair; had their heads beaten against a table; were forced to sign documents they didn’t understand; and were forced to lie four to a police cell like animals, during which they were kicked by police officers who were clearly enjoying themselves. Independently of one another, the following persons testified in various degrees of detail to this drastic course of events: Michael van Broekhoeven (from Belgium, who also provided a medical report and photographs); Ingo Bosse (from Germany, who provided a medical report proving a broken rib); Ralf Vogel (from Germany — his arm was broken but the doctor he subsequently visited refused to treat him); Hans-Jeurgen Preuss (a German journalist); Simon Bressendorf and Kima Mollera (from Denmark – besides a brutal beating their video camera and cassettes were intentionally damaged with glue).
What did the Interior Ministry Inspectorate find in this case?
Without any explanation, the Inspectorate transferred this criminal complaint to the Complaints and Discipline Department at the Police Presidium.

5. The Bartolomejska police station was where the police brought the American historian Dr. Matt Price, who works at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin; Dr. Jane Dennet-Thorpe, a British astrophysicist who works in the Netherlands; and the British humanitarian worker Tim Edwards. The groundless beatings of their heads and other body parts began out on the street and continued for several minutes. Dr. Price came away with a broken nose and welts on his forehead, as a medical report and photographs confirm. They likewise received several blows inside the police station, just like the others who had been taken there. Their testimony was independently confirmed by the US citizen Seraphina Whitmann. It is interesting that the police officers took a different approach to the neofascists who were also detained at this station; the neofascists were permitted their basic rights (such as the right to inform someone close to them of their location), and they could even move about the station freely. After their early release their weapons were even returned to them, including baseball bats.
What did the Interior Ministry Inspectorate find in this case?
Without any explanation, the Inspectorate transferred this criminal complaint to the Complaints and Discipline Department at the Police Presidium.

2. 2. The OPH Coordinating Center
In the preparatory phase the OPH project was mostly organized from the office of the Environmental Law Service in Brno. In September OPH opened its own office in the center of Prague, from which the subsequent activities of OPH in the field were coordinated and which also served as an information center for the media.
In the week of September 22–29 there were 3 telephone lines, 2 faxes, a photocopier, 8 computers, 2 printers, 1 modem, 3 television sets and 2 video players set up for the OPH Coordinating and Press Centers. The space of the OPH Coordinating Center housed both the coordinating team (which organized the movement of OPH patrols in the streets, and collected, recorded, preliminarily evaluated and archived the materials) and the OPH Press Department, which provided the information acquired to the media.
What was the daily regime of the OPH Coordinating Center? The observers met here each morning at a predetermined time and in a number appropriate for the expected events of the given day. According to the most recent information they were then divided into individual patrols such that in each team there was at least one photographer or videographer, and each team was given a mobile phone. The individual teams set off on their tasks, and a reserve team waited at the OPH Coordinating Center in case of phone requests for OPH observers to be present at actions of which we had no advance knowledge – such calls were especially frequent after September 26. As many as three "dispatchers" also stayed behind, volunteers whose responsibility it was to answer specific mobile phone numbers, agreed upon in advance, and to take notes of all the reports called in by patrol. Their task was also to react to situations as they arose concerning the organization of the patrols in the field, as well as warning about and supplying relevant information to the Press Department, or, if necessary, consulting with the Legal Assistance Center and thereby providing feedback to the patrols in the streets. After the patrols returned to the Center, their notes were transcribed into the computers and then the tasks were divided up for the next day. The OPH Press Department during this time was composed of two to five volunteers, all of them students of journalism, and the OPH press spokesman. Using the available technology (computers, faxes, telephones and email) the Press Department concentrated on providing a news service to journalists both by directly answering phone calls and by issuing press releases, of which 40 were released. At the same time, an OPH press conference was called in this space almost daily.

2. 3. The Legal Assistance Center
The original task of the Legal Assistance Center was to answer legal questions from protest participants and the public. OPH lawyers were meant to provide representation in those actual cases of detained persons which were controversial from a legal point of view. Understandably, the Legal Center did not intend to represent everyone who called (which considering the massive character of the protests was not possible in any event); lawyers were arranged only for cases where the Police seemed to have broken the law in their treatment of the detained. The ultimate goal of the Legal Center was to analyze the approach of the Police and the behavior of the demonstrators from a legal standpoint, for the purposes of OPH’s reports to the media.
The Legal Assistance Center was located in the Open Society building in the Zizkov district of Prague. It was composed of 10 staff members, most of them from the Environmental Law Service, and we had also arranged for cooperation with several lawyers in advance. At the Center we had several mobile phones and one land line at our disposal; in addition, two internal mobile phones guaranteed connection with the Coordinating Center and another five were used to take outside calls. Thanks to the Open Society we also had a network of eight computers connected to the Internet at our disposal as well as a fax machine.
In addition to the legal groups a translation center was also in operation in the Legal Assistance Center. Our translators were recruited in part from among the foreign nationals living permanently in the Czech Republic; after September 26 there were also foreign human rights activists active at the center until the end of its Prague existence. At the time of the greatest wave of information about the events at the police stations and requests for help there were in operation at the Center "English," "Spanish," "Italian" and "German" mobile phones which were answered 24 hours a day, and we also found Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Greek interpreters as needed.
During the first three days of the protests – i. e., September 22–25, 2000 – the lawyers took turns in pairs and provided basic legal advice to the demonstrators at the three mobile phone numbers which had been distributed on the cards. Trips to the border were very frequent, where OPH lawyers helped to resolve situations concerning the unauthorized refusal of entrance onto the territory of the CR. One example is the successful prevention of a Police intervention against the train carrying activists from the Italian left-wing movement Ya Basta! On a separate number, the Legal Center communicated with OPH patrols in the streets in the event of legal problems (police officers without id numbers, groundless identity checks, etc.) and made note of the first minor instances of incorrect police behavior.
On the morning of September 26 lawyers in groups of four began to have to cover the phones non-stop in shifts, a situation we had not anticipated. During the day it was relatively calm and the lawyers worked on patrols in the streets as well. In the afternoon and evening hours the detentions started and with them the gradual flood of requests for information about the fates of those detained; there was an isolated incident (e. g., where the detained managed to hide a mobile phone from the police) of a request for legal aid. It was at this point that the police broke their agreement with OPH when we tried, unsuccessfully, to enter both the police station in Bartolomejska street and the Foreign Police Center in Olsanska street.
Parallel to this, the Legal Center was struggling with the Contact Group of the Police Presidium, which had practically stopped cooperating and primarily stopped providing us any information whatsoever. The information embargo did not apply only to use, but also, for example, to the Legal Department of the Office of the President of the Republic and to embassies or consulates. OPH tried in vain to ascertain any information whatsoever about the number of those detained, the state of their health, etc. The Contact Group did in fact have the necessary information at its disposal, since in exceptional cases (e. g., when we needed to send medication to one of the detained) it was capable of "finding" the missing person almost instantly.
In this situation the translation center proved to be invaluable, as it provided interpretation for the phone calls of those who had just been released or even the direct calls of foreigners who had been detained (many of whom contacted us directly in bizarre ways, for example, from a hidden mobile phone in the station bathroom), for the questions of foreigners as to the whereabouts of the detained and for reports of the situations at the police station and the police approach there.
This enabled us to gain a fairly precise overview of the number of detainees, the places they were being held, and the approach of the Police toward them, so that during these crucial days we compiled the sole existing list of those missing and at the same time were able to gain information from the first detainees released about the events that took place at the police stations. Therefore, on the evening of September 29, when a group of 129 foreigners was released from the special facility for foreigners at Balkova by Plzen, we were able to immediately start taking testimonies about what had happened at the stations.
At this time we feverishly recorded the key testimonies about the Ocelarska, Lupacova and other police stations in the form of a detailed questionnaire focused on ascertaining what the Police did even though they were not supposed to (beatings, humiliation) or what they didn’t do, which they were supposed to (providing food, drink, legal aid, etc.). If possible, we arranged for photo and video records. By that time, on the basis of our collected interviews with the foreigners and also on the basis of the testimony of Czechs detained in the center of the city on the evening of September 26, we had enough of a basis for publicizing this problem through the OPH Press Department. Considering the many legal mistakes of the Police in the worst cases, which resulted in the torture of those detained, we extended the activities of the Legal Center until October 6.

3. OPH Media Operations

3. 1. Media strategy – the aims of OPH’s media operations
Unlike similar initiatives in other countries OPH’s aims included intensive work with the media in addition to monitoring and strictly legal-analytical activities. One of the reasons why we set up OPH was the development over many months of an almost war-like media image of the forthcoming protests against the IMF and World Bank. The experience of the approach taken by the media in the past towards events in the Czech Republic such as Global Street Party, as well as the presentation of events in Seattle and Washington, indicates the media’s failure to provide objective coverage of such activities.
The natural tendency of the media towards melodrama and negativity in its selection and handling of topics has proven to be very dangerous, particularly in the case of larger or lengthier protests. Here the following process has been evident:

1. The size of events, given the necessity for shorthand descriptions in the media, leads to so-called ‚indexed‘ data processing. This means that a selected detail (such as a burning container) is presented to the public not as a signifier of ‚the whole‘, but as ‚the whole‘ itself.

2. Given the above-mentioned tendency of the media for action, negativity and polarization (good – evil, us – them) in the presentation of stories, the index chosen is generally something which suits these criteria, and which is not necessarily typical of the phenomenon as a whole. If the media cannot find a suitable index, the event does not usually get into the news because of the lack of melodramatic or negative symbols.

3. These facts lead to an unbalanced, unobjective and sometimes even untruthful presentation of situations – news coverage presents them in a far more negative or polarized light than corresponds to reality.

4. In the case of large or protracted protests, when all sides involved are influenced by the media, the media reality becomes the one to which people are liable to react.
These principles can be illustrated by the following scenario: opponents of the activities of the IMF and World Bank embracing the full spectrum of opinion organize a demonstration and a discussion forum. The media don’t have room to cover (or have no interest in covering) the discussion forum, which therefore doesn’t get into the news, while in covering the demonstration, the media focus on conflict between the demonstrators and the police, without devoting any space to the reasons for the demonstration. If any kind of conflict occurs, then regardless of its representativeness (for example, threatening behavior by one person in an otherwise peaceful crowd) it finds its way into the media. We get sweeping allegations and condemnations on the part of the public, and the media stops differentiating, sticking to the ‚successful‘ index.
A typical example was Global Street Party in 1998, which is today remembered only for the ‚stolen salami‘. It is on the basis of media output that the public subsequently reacts, by supporting firm intervention against demonstrators or restrictions to the freedom of assembly, while police officers serving on the streets or at police stations and demonstrators themselves are also under media influence. Particularly when demonstrations last several days, there is the danger that media-hyped conflicts are transmitted back to the streets, this time in the form of real violence.
Being aware of the way this process can operate, the media strategy of OPH had the following aims:
a) To provide information about the project itself
The media was first officially informed about the OPH project at a press conference on August 1st 2000. Until September 8th most media coverage of OPH was informative, describing the aims and practicalities of the project, as well as the negotiations with the Interior Ministry and the police presidium in progress at the time. Over the weekends of September 8th–9th and 15th–16th, when OPH observers were undergoing training, media reports were devoted above all to the organization of volunteers within OPH and described the duties it was anticipated they would perform on the streets.
b) To record and verify information about incidents in particular places during the protests and relay this to the media
From the start of the street actions (i.e. roughly from September 20th) to Tuesday September 26th OPH fulfilled the role of commentator on the situation, although even then the low‚ differentiating capability‘ of the media had become apparent in terms of its grasp of OPH’s role as an independent or ‚commentating‘ institution. Both in news articles and in direct contact with journalists the tendency to pigeon-hole OPH in terms of a conventional system or a structure of categories was evident – to identify with, for and against whom OPH was working. Here the handicap of the long-term absence of such an institution in the Czech Republic was revealed. Paradoxically the vast majority of representatives of the foreign media understood the role of OPH far more clearly and unequivocally than their Czech colleagues, which was apparent from the relevance of the questions asked (about the legal status of public assembly, about the methods and frequency of OPH communications and their availability to journalists and the public, or about OPH’s evaluation of the situation). The domestic media on the other hand concentrated on the degree of conflict between OPH and the police or the demonstrators (i.e., what does OPH criticize, what protests is it organising (?!), whether they are on the side of the police or the demonstrators).
This aim, the most important from the perspective of the fundamental purpose of OPH’s existence, was, in spite of everything, carried out relatively satisfactorily. Thus even before the start of the protests it became clear that its contacts with the police and the demonstrators and the organizational structure of its observers on the streets enabled OPH’s Coordinating Center to amass very up-to-date, accurate and trustworthy information. Unlike the news agencies, our press department was also actively geared towards providing a telephone service to journalists. They thereby had the possibility of instant access to an overview of the current events without having to subsequently qualify the source of information in their reporting. OPH, on the other hand, could influence the coverage of the situation so that issues seen as too ‚arid‘ or ‚long-winded‘ would not be shunted to one side.
c) To force the media to reflect on the process of news-production
In interviews, news output, but above all in personal contacts with journalists during this period, one of the most important themes was the influence of the media and of its methods of presentation. We cited the fear of a media escalation of conflicts as one of the main stimuli for the creation of OPH, whilst particularly in personal contacts with journalists we stressed their responsibility for news-production. One of the observations gained from the experience of OPH is that the majority of journalists are able to acknowledge and reflect on the principle of news-production outlined above as ‚wrong‘, but are not as a rule able to abandon it in their work. They thus relate demonstrations and public gatherings in particular in a style they themselves otherwise label tabloid (polarization, generalization, negativity, stress on action). In several cases, unfortunately, ‚reflection‘ and responsibility for the presentation of information had to take the form of corrections or apologies to OPH (Mladá fronta Dnes newspaper 15.9.00, Czech Television 3 – 28.9.00).
d) To raise the legal awareness of journalists
For the effective media presentation of legal analysis of situations and of subsequent legal initiatives, it was essential that journalists distinguished in their reports between criminal offenses and misdemeanors, and that they acquired at least a minimal knowledge of the appropriate procedures for police interventions. A part of OPH’s media strategy therefore came to be based on the use of precise legal formulations, which in many cases led to more accurate expression by journalists. Legal appendices issued with several of our press releases and statements were also designed to enhance the legal awareness of journalists.
The climax of OPH’s service as a source of up-to-date objective information for journalists came on Tuesday September 26th. Unfortunately by this stage, given the drama of the events which were unfolding, there were already signs of significant media simplifications and hysteria, which was evident, for example, in exaggerated claims about the number and the character of attackers or those criminal offenders, imprecise information about the size, timing and character of demonstrations, the use of words like ‚war, looting‘, etc. Even by Tuesday afternoon, but especially during the days that followed, the media began to assume a polarized stance ‚against‘ the demonstrators and ‚for‘ the police, and the media presentation of events became regrettably black-and-white. As OPH nevertheless continued to follow its stated aims (monitoring public meetings and objectively commenting on the situation, including the conduct of the police) it was assumed to be siding with the demonstrators, for which it was then subjected to criticism from many sides through the media (and by the media itself). At the same time, however, in a great many cases the media actively filtered out those OPH statements which were not negative towards the police, because controversy was a welcome commodity! So we reached the absurd situation where the media tendency to polarize events (evil thugs against good policemen) and report only negative stories prevented OPH for a time from providing balanced accounts (the police handled the situation well on the streets – but were apparently at fault at the police stations), for which it attracted criticism (fortunately not fatal) for lack of balance in its commentary.
A typical example of journalists giving priority to the indexed manipulation of phenomena over truthful reporting of the facts was the police operation on the night of September 26th–27th in Štìpanská Street, when according to the personal (!) testimony of journalists we contacted who were at the scene, there were probably only a tiny percentage of people who had committed any kind of misdemeanor or criminal offense among those detained, the vast majority of whom had been picked up in the street for no reason or even completely by chance. Nevertheless these journalists then ignored this fact in their published reports and spoke only ‚the detention of a huge number of anti-globalisation activists‘ in this police operation. A similar situation arose on Wednesday September 27th, when OPH, essentially at the request of several media outlets, published information on persons who had provoked conflicts and then proceeded without difficulty through areas controlled by the police. Although many journalists themselves pointed to these persons, or to situations when plain-clothes officers evidently broke the law (for example when making arrests), the presentation of this topic in the media mostly omitted such observations (apparently in the interests of ‚professional objectivity and neutrality‘), regardless of the social significance of such goings-on.
The most difficult time for OPH’s media operation came when testimony about infringements of the law at police stations began to appear. OPH and INPEG gave separate accounts of this state of affairs. As a result, the position of the two organizations was often confused, and OPH was pigeon-holed by the media as ‚anti-globalizers working by other means‘ or ‚crypto-anarchists‘ (for example, in the Lidové noviny newspaper’s special insert on the IMF protests). Under these circumstances, the mere fact that OPH’s findings were not dismissed a priori by journalists as lies should be regarded as a success.
With regard to the media coverage of subsequent legal proceedings, OPH had to reconcile itself with the fact that from the end of September the domestic media, one-sidedly inclined towards the police, essentially ignored information about brutality committed at police stations, giving only the briefest of mentions. Above all they were influenced by the media campaign of the Interior Ministry and the Police Presidium, which denied or trivialized facts about police brutality or the role of provocateurs in operations. A positive exception from this trend was the Internet newspaper Britské listy, which continually published all our material (and thus helped publicly legitimize our work even during the awkward October period); other than this only a few articles in the newspapers Lidove noviny and Mlada fronta Dnes represented partial exceptions.

3. 2. Brief overview of media output
At the time this report was compiled, 39 press releases had been issued and about 10 press conferences held within the framework of the OPH project. On Tuesday, September 26th the Environment Minister Miloš Kužvart spoke as a guest at an OPH press conference, and on Sunday, October 1st Government Commissioner for Human Rights Petr Uhl also made a appearance.
Representatives of OPH were invited to appear in the electronic media (‚Events Plus‘ on Czech TV, ‚Breakfast with Nova‘ on TV Nova, TV 3‘s evening news, radio programs on Radio Free Europe, Regina, Radiožurnal, Frekvence 1, Vltava, ÈRo Brno).
In the printed media there was comment and analysis on OPH in LN, Mf Dnes, Britské listy, Rovnost, JM Den, Reflex, Web, Univerzitní noviny and others.
All the main electronic and printed media outlets gave coverage to the project in the period leading up to September (Czech TV, TV Nova, TV Prima, TV 3, Czech Radio, Frekvence 1, Mf Dnes, LN, Právo, HN, Britské listy, Slovo, Metro, Veèerník) as well as during the demonstrations, when they made particular use of OPH’s media service about ongoing events.
OPH reports were taken by the main international press agencies (Reuters, AP, AFP) and so it is very difficult to trace their penetration abroad. OPH had confirmation of coverage in or direct contact with the following: CNN (TV – USA), BBC (TV and radio – UK), Sky (TV – UK), ARD (TV and radio – Germany), ORF (TV – Austria), Markýza (TV – Slovakia), NPR (radio – USA), The New York Times (USA), The Wall Street Journal (USA), Los Angeles Times (USA), Washington Times [Post???] (USA), The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK), The Observer (UK), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Focus (Germany), Salon (USA), Le Monde (France), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) and others.

4. Follow-Up Activities

4. 1. Not Letting it "Fizzle Out"
After spending the first ten days exhausting ourselves gathering information on massive violations of human rights at police stations, we began taking legal steps leading to the investigation of these events. The legal steps that OPH took far exceeded the framework of the original project; one proof of this is the fact that they are not yet complete. On the other hand, such an approach was essential if the collected testimonies and evidence were to amount to anything.
In light of the fact that we finished cooperating with two representatives of HOST halfway through October of 2000, the remaining steps were fully under the wing of EPS and of volunteers who had offered their help over the course of the OPH project. We also cooperated with domestic and foreign institutions, like the Czech government’s Council on Human Rights, the Office of the President of the Czech Republic, and the London center of Amnesty International. We also passed on part of the information to the Czech Helsinki Committee.
By analyzing the facts we found, we reached the conclusion that the Police committed primarily the following criminal acts, which we had to present to the courts in 26 separate filings; nevertheless, the majority of filings accused them of multiple crimes (especially of the first two crimes mentioned below):
Abusing the authority of a public official (§ 158 of the criminal code), Torture and cruel and inhuman treatment (§ 259a of the criminal code), Harm to health (§ 221 of the criminal code), Violence against a group of people and against individuals (§ 196 of the criminal code), Infringing on personal freedoms (§ 231 of the criminal code), Repression (§ 237 of the criminal code), Damaging other persons’ property (§ 257 of the criminal code).

4. 2. When the Police Investigate the Police
"The problem is not in inspectors’ impartiality, but in a lack of evidence." (Mikulas Tomin, head of the Interior Ministry Inspectorate, in an announcement for MF Dnes on November 4th, 2000)
As we described in detail in chapter 2. 2, OPH sent the body legally authorized to investigate police officers’ crimes – the Interior Ministry Inspectorate – a number of concrete pieces of evidence and testimonies that we had gathered during the days and weeks that followed the protests. Making use of the legal tools with which the Czech law system provides us, we took primarily the following legal steps: we submitted criminal accusations in the most serious and well-documented cases; these were generally accusations of unknown perpetrators; we also submitted constitutional complaints, using which we aimed to criticize a state authority’s infringement on the basic rights of the injured parties. In one case, we submitted an administrative suit against the decision of an administrative authority. In other cases where the police overstepped the bounds of law, we filed complaints under government decree no. 158/1950 U. l.

1. Criminal accusations
In the most serious cases, we had to submit criminal accusations, generally against unknown perpetrators from among police at eight concrete police stations. The number of perpetrators climbed as high as 26 (!). Despite the seriousness of the facts we had found, supported by independent testimonies from a number of foreign and Czech persons, in some cases including attached medical confirmation, the investigation authority – Interior Ministry Inspectorate -approached the case in a fashion that can be only be called biased, subjective, and sluggish.
Their pathetic attempts at investigation, as described above in detail for the individual police stations, can be explained by the fact that the Inspectorate must be considered, from the standpoint of their competence under the law on the Police of the Czech Republic and under the Criminal Code, as plainly being a police authority, despite all their proclamations to the contrary.
The Inspectorate’s most common approach on receiving an accusation – one that it used in more than 20 cases of the accusations we submitted – looks as follows: the Inspectorate (immediately!) transfers the accusation to the Monitoring and Complaints Department of the Police Presidium, without justification. The Complaints Department is, however, authorized to investigate only officers’ breaches of discipline. According to information from the lawyers at the Office of the President and from attorneys, this approach was used regularly in past years, when in similar cases criminal accusations were made against unknown officers (the injured persons generally must deal with the problem that officers are not properly marked with identification as required by law, especially those officers who break the law the most) and, just like now, police authorities investigating their own colleagues did not succeed in revealing anything.
Even in cases where the Inspectorate decided to "investigate" (unfortunately, according to the information that we have from all three cases of police stations, they investigated only in the most formal sense of the term), again, no results can be seen. The Inspectorate has already terminated the case of the Ocelarska station and the Arabska station (where Mr. Jeong, a doctorand at Charles University’s College of Social Sciences, was tortured), and has suspended the accusation of events at the Lupacova station, connected with the Israeli Jehoshua Tzarfati. The case of the plainclothes policeman who acted violently demonstrations was also suspended.
However, the cases that the Inspectorate decided on the basis of unknown criteria (they were not explained even to representatives of the Rada vlady CR pro lidska prava (the Czech Government’s Council on Human Rights) not to investigate are often just as serious. For example, unjustifiably and without further explanation, 10 criminal accusations for violent behavior at the Chodov station were passed on to the Monitoring and Complaints Department (the doctor’s report confirms cracked ribs; all eight testimonials mention fractured hands; a minor was brutally beaten, and so on), just like 8 others for the causeless brutal approach against Dr. Matt Price, Dr. Jane Dennett-Thorpe and Timothy Edwards (a fractured nose and other contusions, as confirmed by a physician’s report). OPH sent complaints to the appropriate district attorneys’ departments.
The criterion for the Inspectorate itself to investigate (and not pass the case on to the Monitoring Department) is clear; this passing the buck stinks of abuse of the power of a public official. Only in the "Ocelarska" case, which thanks to the fearlessness of Czech witness Josef Kudlik could be investigated immediately after the events and was referred to repeatedly in the media, did the Inspectorate try to at least appear to investigate thoroughly. Media support was the basis for the investigation of three other cases as well. The tortured Korean doctorand was also referred to several times in the dailies; Tyden magazine published a report on a police officer brutally beating people directly at a demonstration, including photographs.
Hearing witnesses and injured parties is a basic responsibility of investigative authorities. In no case are they relieved of this responsibility by the fact that the injured party comes from another country and his permanent address is outside the territory of the Czech Republic. To this end, the European Convention on Mutual Aid in Criminal Matters (550/1992 Sb., communique by the Czechoslovak Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs; besides European countries, Israel, too, is a party) can be used to demand the hearing of a witness. The party of which the request was made then requests the hearing, in the manner required by its legal code, on the criminal matter sent to it by the judicial authorities of the requesting party, for the purposes of acquiring evidence or transfer of things that are to be used as evidence, of documents, or of papers. The same approach can be used towards citizens of many non-European states; see, for example, the contract between the Czech Republic and the United States of America on mutual legal aid in criminal matters (Communique of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs no. 40/2000 Sb. m. s). According to what we have determined on the basis of interviews with investigators from the Inspectorate and after consulting the records, we can state that no hearings of foreign detainees took place, as would be required to make the situation properly clear, and as international agreements allow. In most cases, there is no sign that the Inspectorate tried to contact foreign detainees.
Likewise, officers are subjected to only the most formal of hearings, and according to these hearings, "nothing happened, nobody even requested a lawyer or other of his rights, let alone there being violence from police officers." The inspectorate in no way tried to confront and compare individual police officers’ testimonies or to seek conflicts between their testimonies, which otherwise is a standard approach when trying to determine the objective truth during investigation. They simply believed the officers’ testimonies, and stopped the investigations on the basis of them. On the other hand, they presented the detainees’ testimonies to the public as overblown and untrustworthy.
On the basis of the facts mentioned above, we can quite responsibly state that in essence, no investigation of the events at police stations took place.

2. Constitutional Complaints
It was already generally known that filing a "mere" criminal accusation against police officers does not, unfortunately, represent in actual practice an effective method for truly achieving justice. Therefore we decided (both for the present situation and for the sake of more effectively applying the law during police action against any Czech citizen in the future) to submit, for the moment, four constitutional complaints, in which we criticize the interference of a public authority (the police) in the basic rights of the injured parties. These are cases of the police taking willful actions during the IMF/World Bank meetings against Czechs and persons living in the Czech Republic: Ing. Ondøej Èapek – doctorand at the VŠE, South Korean Byeongju Jeong – doctorand at the FSV UK, and Tomáš Pergl – OPH member and student at the PrF UK. We took the same approach in the cases of Samantha Iyer, a US citizen and a student of architecture.
In the first two cases above, the following violations of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms: restricting personal freedom, infringing upon human dignity and the right not to be subjected to humiliating treatment, the right to protection from unjustified gathering of information, and the right to protection of one’s private life. In the case of Mr. Jeong, there was also infringement of the right to legal aid and the right not to be tortured and subjected to cruel, inhuman, or humiliating treatment. In the case of Miss Iyer, the rights to legal aid and to an interpreter under Art. 37, paragraphs 2 and 4 of the Charter were denied. In the case of Mr. Pergl, unlawful verification of his identity took place; police officers in the Czech Republic are guilty of this quite often. The police do not have, under the Czech Republic’s legal system, the right to check a person’s identity on the basis of invented and unverifiable reasons, and to copy information at will from national identity documents (which exist in the Czech system) when performing an identity check.

3. The administrative suit
As mentioned above, persons were deported en masse by the foreign police during the IMF and World Bank meetings; the police ended detainees’ right of stay in the country on the basis of a blanket decision with a single, endlessly repeated justification, without it having been proved that the detainee had committed any act that could justify such a decision. Because we concentrated mainly on filing criminal accusations, we could file only a single administrative suit for reasons of our human-resources capacity; however, this suit takes into account the approach of the Foreign Police towards all persons, specifically through the case of Samantha Iyer, a US citizen.

4. Complaints
In cases where we suspected the police had broken the law in a manner not intense enough to be a trestny cin (i. e. not requiring action in a criminal court under Czech law), we submitted more than 10 complaints under decree no. 158/1950 U. l. These primarily concern improper marking of police officers, unlawful identity checks, and unsuitable conditions at the Foreign Police Department on Olsanska street and in the facility for foreigners on Balkova street. Other complaints dealt with the unlawful approach of the police-investigation authorities.

5. The cases of imposing imprisonment and, in some cases, also criminal proceedings against certain persons
In these cases our work was somewhat harder (especially in light of the harmed foreigners’ distrust towards all things connected with the Czech Republic after their experience). However, in cooperation with news reporters, volunteers, and human-rights institutions in Prague (the Office of the President of the CR, the CR Government’s Council on Human Rights), we kept track of the essential matters related to people held in jail without cause in these serious cases as well. Thus in these cases as well, our representatives could comment for those media interested on the complex legal facts and the unclear circumstances of the evidence for most cases. The cases of the two longest-held persons became generally known; these were Polish citizen Kamil Olejnik and Danish citizen Mats Traerup, as well as six Hungarians. In these cases as well, representatives of OPH will continue to monitor the course of the court trials.
Thanks to its lasting efforts during and after the protests, EPS and its OPH project gained the acclaim of human-rights organizations and state institutions at home and abroad, and entered into cooperation with them. On the Czech level, these included primarily the CR Government’s Council on Human Rights and the Office of the President of the CR. For these institutions, we became a trustworthy source of information on the whole situation. Thanks to their trust in our abilities, we hope in the future to cooperate on legislative changes regarding the monitoring and investigation mechanisms for the Police of the Czech Republic, and a new police law. Even president Vaclav Havel expressed support for the continuation of the OPH project in the future during a personal meeting with OPH and the leadership of the Police of the Czech Republic on February 6th, 2001 at the Castle in Prague, his residence.
Of foreign organizations, the ones showing the most interest in the results of the OPH’s work included, among others, the Dutch Embassy, human rights organizations in the US and Spain, and, above all, the London central of Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), based in Paris. Amnesty International informed on the findings of OPH on its web site (http://www.amnesty.org) in its report on police brutality after the end of the protests on March 12th, 2000. The U.S. State Department also informed of the results of OPH’s investigation in its report on the observation of human rights in the CR (a somewhat imprecise report, available at the address http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/eur/index.cfm?docid=733).
In light of the absence of any efforts to investigate serious cases of police brutality on the part of nearly all relevant Czech institutions, we had to advance even to the level of international institutions with our reports. The evidence gathered by the OPH in cooperation with the determined efforts of foreign human-rights activists thus became the basis for a call by MP’s in the European Parliament to the Czech president, prime minister, and minister of interior to properly investigate the whole matter and release persons from jail.
Our other activities from early 2001 include our attempt for the whole case to be sent to the Ombudsman, a public official whose job is to defend citizens’ rights, and our issuing a report to the most important world human-rights institutions – the Committee for the Prevention of Torture established on the basis of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Committee on Torture. Some victims will turn again to the Constitutional Court with several concrete cases of police brutality that were not thoroughly investigated and punished; if necessary, they will then turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

5. Conclusion
"Someone is leading a campaign against the Czech Republic
Minister of the Interior Stanislav Gross is convinced that a well-organized group of people from the Czech Republic and abroad is behind the information on police officers’ brutal treatment of demonstrators at police station that has appeared in the domestic and European press. ‚It is an organized campaign, deliberately aiming to hurt the Czech Republic and its police..‘" (from a report by CTK, the Czech Press Office, on October 2nd, 2000)
"This is a campaign led solely and deliberately for the aim of causing the Police of the Czech Republic to lose the good reputation it has earned in society."
(spokesman for the Police of the Czech Republic in a statement for the Prague free daily Metro, October 5th, 2000) Before summarizing what we have learned from the activities of the Civic Legal Observers Project and attempting to draw general conclusions from what we have learned, we must note the following. The OPH organizers who came from among EPS staff did not have much prior experience with monitoring police officers’ observance of human rights – until OPH, we had focussed primarily on the legal protection of the environment and legal aid to abused women and children. When formulating the project’s goals, police stations were not the only priority site where OPH was to be active (especially in light of the well-known distaste of the forces of order for being monitored by the public), even though it was expected that the worst errors by the police would be at stations. Even for us, however, the reports on the brutal events at Prague police stations became an unexpected shift of our original expectations, just as we were shocked by the lax approach of the Inspectorate of the Interior Ministry. Our conclusions, now matter how harsh they may sound, are thus by no means a campaign of "armchair anarchists" against the Police as such (as they sometimes tend to be interpreted), but rather the indignation of lawyers who encountered a long-term, unsolved phenomenon that was generally ignored by society (and the media): the absence of supervision for one element of the state powers, and its subservience to narrowly-defined political interests, limited by, among other things, the attempt to avoid a reduction in the popularity of the Interior Minister as the person responsible for this element.

We will be glad if these conclusions are viewed in this light.
1. The Police of the CR did good work during the protests against the IMF and the World Bank when maintaining public order and keeping the streets safe around the Congress Center, where the largest conflicts were expected and did occur. The police guessed wrongly, however, when in the late afternoon and evening, it relocated the largest number of security forces to surround the Congress Center and the Exhibition Center (where a gala reception of the meeting’s delegates was taking place), meanwhile leaving only a fraction of its officers, with insufficient equipment, in the vincinity of Vaclavske namesti (Wenceslas Square), so they could not sufficiently counter the militant protestors who had moved there from the Congress Center and demolished the McDonalds restaurant and the windows of an IPB bank and KFC.
The Police made an utterly clear mistake, however, in the phase of arresting those suspected of violent acts, where thanks to faulty tactics primarily persons who had committed no act in conflict with Czech law were detained. After the violent militant protestors were sent on the run to surrounding streets by the Czech police, they arrested and sent to police stations mainly non-violent demonstrators (who reacted to the police not with flight, but rather by, for example, sitting down) and innocent bystanders. A typical example of this is the strike against "protestors" in the night of September 26th on Stepanska street.

2. Detainees’ rights were violated severely and en masse at Prague police stations. The detainees (especially if they were not Czech citizens) were cruelly beaten and humiliated; fundamental rights under the Czech code of law were refused to those who fell into the hands of the police – the right to legal aid, the right to inform friends and relatives of their detention, for foreigners the right to an interpreter, and so on. Even though this did not happen at all stations and not all officers behaved in this fashion, the sweeping nature and the brutality of this behavior is regardless significantly unsettling, and is a warning for the future.

3. The Interior Ministry Inspectorate investigated events at the Prague police stations in a manner that turned the investigation of these events into a farce, in a manner that criminally breaks the law, in a manner that human-rights activists and lawyers know well from the past. EPS passed a large quantity of evidence to the Interior Ministry Inspectorate; the evidence included contacts to foreign witnesses. The Czech legal system and international agreements make it possible to conduct hearings of witnesses and injured parties abroad, through official requests under the European Convention on Mutual Aid in Criminal Matters. The Inspectorate did not make use of this possibility in even a single case (it conducted hearings for only two foreigners, both living in the Czech Republic), not even in cases where hearing foreign witnesses was a fundamental prerequisite of any worthwhile investigation (e.g. the Arabska, Hraskeho, and Bartolomejska stations). A typical example is the investigation of violence at the Arabska police station, where the Inspectorate conducted hearings only of one injured party – the Korean assistant at Charles University’s College of Social Sciences, Byeongju Jeong and two Czech witnesses, and went on to suspend the case, stating that no-one had complained about the Police’s behavior (which was untrue, as American businessman Edward L. Barner had complained to the American consulate regarding the officers’ behavior at the Arabska station) and that "it cannot be suspected, based merely on the testimony of Mr. Jeong, that officers used their powers in a manner that conflicted with the law, when even the officers themselves deny any violence." According to the records, another 25 foreign witnesses, whose names and addresses are known, were present at the station. The Inspectorate did not try to conduct hearings of even one of them.
The investigation of the remaining cases went on in a similar fashion. The Inspectorate in no way confronted officers’ testimonies against each other (it simply believed, without further ado, their stance that nothing happened at the stations), while on the other hand trying to cast doubts on the testimonies of injured parties and on material evidence such as bloodstains and pieces of broken teeth found at the Ocelarska station.
The clear cause of this state of affairs is the fact that the Interior Ministry Inspectorate is, not only from the standpoint of the legal description of its competence in the law on police, but also and more importantly from the standpoint of its de facto standing and its staffing, clearly a police authority. As such, it functions (no matter whether intentionally, on the basis of "false solidarity," or unintentionally, due to its own incompetence) not as an independent body for investigating the crimes of persons working in the state’s security forces, but rather as a veil, and as a broom to sweep such crimes under the table in case of need.
Thus in essence, no investigation of the criminal activities of members of the police force from outside the Police itself exists.
In our opinion, it is vital that this system change (in the form of a change to legislation) and that legislative change in the matter of human-rights NGOs’ workers’ access to police stations and enclosed areas where persons arrested by the police are detained.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)