arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

At 9.30 this morning several buses travelling to Brussels were stopped at the Belgian border near Aachen/Germany. The German border police (BGS) has now set up a checkpoint consisting of several tents and police vans.
All passengers of the DGB (German Trade Union) buses had their passports and details checked (since the Chengen Agreement one is usually allowed to travel through that part of Europe without having to show any documents!) and five were prevented from leaving the country altogether because one of them was carrying a bread knife.

Police presence on the roads and motorways around Aachen (up to 20 miles from the city) was (still is?) heavy and buses are being checked frequently. A ?collective border crossing? is planned for tomorrow morning 8 o?clock.

German police seem to be the most repressive at the moment, taking security issues extremely serious. Sometimes they even act on their own behalf, without any orders from ?above?- so it seems.
In Goettingen (left-wing university town near Hanover) several activists received letters from the police advising them not to travel to Brussels in order to ?prevent them from the danger of measures taken by the police to prevent even more serious dangers.? The obvious threat has also been sent to people with no criminal record and therefore sparked a lot of anger among activists and also members of the PDS (Socialist Party). According to Heidi Lippmann of the PDS this kind of behaviour might be illegal since the police seem to have used material they are not allowed to access.
In Dresden the police paid early morning visits to ?potentially dangerous? activists in order to deliver letters of a similar content saying that the addressee had been involved in violent actions in the past and should not repeat this kind of behaviour.
Levels of paranoia appear to be particularly high in Germany , and the attacks on the World Trade Center provided just the perfect excuse for politicians and authorities to further cut down on individual rights for the alleged sake of security. Watch out!