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I was at the anti-racist border camp in Cologne, when, while it was hot as hell (some 100°F) all the roads and pathways towards the camp site were blocked by the police for many hours, when they tried to get onto the camp site using brutal force (I was one of the people keeping them off the place, getting some bruises on my arms, but fortunately nothing more than that – other were not so lucky, the police even used tear gas and pepper spray) – and I was still there when we were surrounded by a massive wall of green-clad pigs with clubs, helmets, and shields, when the camp was evicted violently. Due to my fatigue and the hot temperatures, I decided to leave the camp site »voluntarily« instead of resisting till the last minute. A good friend of mine decided to stay with the others when I was led out of the area – I still don't know anything of his whereabouts, he might be in hospital or in jail right now, but if he had been set free, he would most probably contacted me by now.
The camp was a completely peaceful gathering of left-wing activists, hippies, eco freaks, punks, even some goths like me who had overcome their natural sunlight aversion. There were families with little children, and some refugees from all over the world. Many of those refugees were there illegally according to German law, therefore the attempt of the other campers to defend them with their own bodies, which was bound to fail due to the enormous number of the police and their brutality.
The local press dubbed us »a bunch of criminals and rioters«, while in reality our only crimes were to provide some shelter for illegal immigrants and protest for their freedom of movement, which our German laws do not grant them, and to resist when the cop pigs tried to storm the camp. The large majority of the campistas kept very calm even under massive attack by the robocops (that's what we Germans call riot control units, due to the look of their body armour) with clubs, maces, pepper spray and tear gas, but a few people hurled small objects at the green-clad forces and masked their faces (which is illegal in Germany), which was afterwards taken by the police as justification and finally solitary reason for their actions.
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