Ein Großaufgebot der Polizei rückte an und eine Straßenschlacht entbrannte. Die Beamten setzten Tränengas und Wasserwerfer ein. Laut Polizei wurden mindestens 17 Beamte zum Teil schwer verletzt. Nach Behördenangaben gab es 42 Festnahmen.If you can't follow the text, the photo should say it all - State using weapons on citizens whose interests they are supposedly representing. The citizens might well have been out of order - I can't read all the text - but the response is sadly worrying.
In Berne?
ReplyDeleteGosh. The Swiss seemed so well behaved in my time.
I suppose (reading your comment James) that you'd much rather the police use force and weapons to break up the crowd instead of the tried and true water cannon eh?
ReplyDeleteYou say the crowd may have been out of line but...
There isn't really a but after that you know, if the crowd is out of line, it is the job of the police (or other authority) to restore peace with as few casualties as possible (even one is too many breaking up a 'mob'). The water cannon cuts down on accidents with rubber bullets (or real ones!!) or the odd person that is poisoned by tear gas.
Of course they could just man-up and use physical force to remove the people, but then you not only put the people at risk, you risk your police force needlessly.
Shades - the Swiss have much to protect.
ReplyDeleteLord Nazh - don't think I'm against Laura Norder. And I have been to demonstrations to demonstrate against the demonstrators and to help the police before. But look at the photo and ask yourself if they look like a crazed mob, those people in the foreground.
This is state overkill. It's not the police themselves at fault - they're the poor sods caught in the middle. It's the suited man in his pad who ordered it whom I'm after.
James, unless you have some magical photo you are looking at, all I see is a group of people fleeing a water cannon.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing in that picture to suggest overkill, there is nothing to suggest anything wrong with the state response.
Again, you stated they may be out of line, I propose that if they are, it's the states JOB to put them in line, for the safety of everyone else :)