Ge9n trailer (EN) from SeND film tank on Vimeo.

If not familiar with The Reykjavík Nine – nine people who were charged and later acquitted of attacking Iceland’s parliament after wanting to enter the building’s public gallery on December 8th 2008, a few months after Iceland’s economic collapse – then you can read through the whole case on the nine’s official support website. Check out a short, sharp and informative video from the 2011 London Anarchist Bookfair or download a brochure that was published and distributed shortly before the case’s main procedure, which took place in January 2011.

Also take a look at Ge9n’s official website where you can find a very nice poster, a press kit and the film’s title song: Stóriðjuverkefnið mig, composed and performed by Linus Orri and Þórir Bogason. Finally, read a review of the film’s première (the one mentioning the “ticking timebomb”) and an exclusive interview with the film’s director, Haukur Már Helgason (p. 30-32).

A little more than a year ago, several Icelandic bankers were arrested and kept in custody in relation to the Special Prosecutor’s investigation into the 2008 economic collapse, its antecedents and causes. Appearing in political TV talk show Silfur Egils shortly afterwards, French-Norwegian magistrate Eva Joly, who at that time served as the Prosecutor’s special assistant, talked about how society does not expect—and has problems to deal with—politically and economically powerful people being arrested, interrogated and possibly sentenced.

Eva Joly was right. And the reason? Habit. Whether a journalist, police officer, lawyer, judge or a powerless citizen, in a civilised society based on dualistic ideas of good and evil, one is most likely unable to recognise well-dressed and eloquent people—with possessions and power in their pockets—as anything other than good. During the interview, Eva compared those people with drug users and dealers that are brought to court, who generally are immediately seen by society as criminals deserving to face “justice”. Another rightful comparison would be political dissidents.

JURIDICAL MILESTONE OR POLITICAL WITCH-HUNT?

In September of last year, the majority of Alþingi (Icelandic parliament) decided to charge former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde for negligence and mismanagement during the prelude to the 2008 economic collapse. After heavy parliamentary debate on the options to charge either four former ministers, a couple of them or none, the decision, based on the renowned Special Investigation Commission report, was to charge Haarde alone. Crying “political witch-hunt!”, was his and his comrades’ first reaction, particularly ironic as he himself was one of the main advocates for the investigation leading to this decision.

On June 6, the case was filed in front of Landsdómur, the national high court that now assembles for the first time in Iceland’s history. While some consider it a juridical milestone, Geir and his supporters stated that the filing marked the beginning of “Iceland’s first political trial”. Regardless of one’s opinion about the legitimacy of this particular case, it is impossible to overlook the concentrated attempt, embraced in such a statement, to openly deny not only the juridical system’s political nature but also the fact of how controversial state policies in Iceland—concerning economic, energy and refugee issues, to name a few—have evoked such fierce opposition that the state’s only answer has been to arrest and accuse, threatening people with up to a lifetime in prison.

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

It is remarkably interesting to look at the rhetoric surrounding Geir Haarde’s case in comparison with other court cases. On one hand Geir is a “criminal”, on the other a victim of “political persecution”. The latter definition comes from a team of supporters who up until now have not seen a great deal of reasons to criticise the status quo’s greatest watchmen, the courts. But now, as their teammate has got caught in the unimaginable, they have shown a completely different side in their criticism towards the system.

Let’s be clear from the start: there is a slight difference as Geir’s case takes place in front of a particularly rare set of judges whereas all other defendants face their fortune in front of the standard courts. At the same time, Landsdómur is the only platform where the authorities can be brought in front of the court of law, counterbalancing the aforementioned difference. Additionally, the rhetoric around Geir’s case is not limited to it alone but was also predominant during the above-mentioned bankers’ arrests one year ago. At that point lawyers, judges, politicians and media editors raised their voices, highlighting what in theory is considered to be the maxim of the constitutional state: that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

And now, when Haarde’s case has commenced, we get to hear the same clichés all over again. How his reputation has been damaged and his family and friends been affected by the publicity surrounding his trial. That Iceland’s parliament has been misused for a political assault. That the accusations are built on sand, which still does not allow us to underestimate the seriousness of being accused in the first place, regardless of the case’s final outcome. That the law articles concerning Landsdómur are outdated. How hard and expensive it is for a defendant to defend himself against the prosecution—an institution with a bunch of paid workers, and now even an entire website!

Yeah, yeah—this might all be true. But when compared with the discourse surrounding the majority of court cases, where the charges come from above and head hierarchically down the social staircase, the fuss around Geir’s case reveals itself as a simple tragicomedy. If one believes that some sort of a universal concept of justice exists, and that a particular institution of politically hired judges is able to reasonably execute this justice, the above-listed arguments must apply to all defendants.

But they don’t.

This we know e.g. from recent cases against political dissidents where charges have been in complete contravention of the cases’ evidence, investigations, the laws and Iceland’s constitution. During one of these cases, against the so-called ‘Reykjavík Nine’—who were accused and finally acquitted of “attacking parliament” in December of 2008—media editors, lawyers, police officers, former and current ministers and members of parliament amongst others, did their best to get the defendants sentenced before the actual court proceedings took place. Another case would be the one against anti-war campaigner Lárus Páll Birgisson, whose civil and constitutional rights have repeatedly been violated by the police by the demand of the U.S. embassy in Reykjavík. Lárus has already once been sentenced for refusing to obey the police who illegally ordered him to leave a public pavement in front of the embassy. Another case is going on right now, based on the exact same nonsense.

Neither of these cases nor most other court procedures in this country have been of any concern to the recently uprisen human rights guards of Geir H. Haarde. In the comparison crystallises George Orwell’s ominous saying that all animals are indeed equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

THE BITTER TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE

In his recent book, titled ‘Bankastræti Núll’, author Einar Már Guðmundsson, one of Iceland’s most critical present time authors, actually compares these two cases—the one against Geir and the one against the Reykjavík Nine—and accuses Geir’s supporters, which he calls the upper class elite, of lacking all unity. “Of course all the other ministers from the collapse-government and the bureaucrats around them should demand to undergo the same trial”, he says and refers to a petition in support of the Reykjavík Nine where hundreds of people said: “Charge all or none! We all attacked the parliament!”.

The argument in that case was that no one had literally attacked parliament, and if those who were charged for it actually attacked then everyone who took part in toppling a government during the winter of 2008-9, would be guilty of that same attack. Haarde and his supporters say the same, that he is not alone responsible for the economic collapse and crisis and should therefore not be on trial. And they are right. Geir H. Haarde is not alone responsible for the sufferings of people living under the über-power of the ruling capitalist civilization. It is the system itself—its structure, values and its definition of “justice”—that bears the responsibility.

But like all other systems, there are people behind this one and Haarde is one of them, not more or less responsible than any other authority figure. Sustaining and maintaining the system’s mechanism requires repressive methods, including political persecutions in the form of court procedures. Geir Haarde’s case demonstrates an incident that happens extremely rarely—but luckily once in a while—when those people are forced to sample the bitter taste of their own medicine. There is not much to say except: Bon appétit!

In a conversation with online newspaper Róstur, the director explained briefly his motivation for making the film:

I make the film… well, I guess because there one catches a glimpse of some potential, some possibility, a will for another kind of society, in the minds of a group of people who the state power has, by charging them, defined as a certain set. The charges basically call for an investigation about who these people, defined as enemies, are, and which thoughts someone somewhere can find so dangerous – because it was clear from the beginning that it was not the “action” in the parliament that was considered so dangerous.

On May 3rd 2011, Unesco Iceland held a panel on the right to protest, titled The Yellow Ribbon, where the Reykjavík Nine case and its result in court was the main focus point. There, an 8 min. preview from A9ainst was shown, a clip portraying ‘the tenth member’ of the group of nine: paramedic and anti-war campaigner Lárus Páll Birgisson.

A few days after the panel the same clip was screened in a political talk show on state TV station RÚV and published on the internet a few days later. The clip can be viewed here below but unfortunately there are no subtitles… yet. Like said before the film will be premiered at Patreksfjörður this weekend and will be screened in cinemas shortly afterwards.

Ge9n – Þáttur Lalla from Haukur Már Helgason on Vimeo.

Check out the film’s website here and its Facebook-page here.

Detailed information about the film:

Director: Haukur Már Helgason, Producer: Bogi Reynisson, Cinematography: Miriam Fassbender, Produced by: SeND film tank, Co-producer: Argout film, Post-production: Atmos, Music by: Linus Orri, Jón Örn Loðmfjörð, Áki Ásgeirsson, Giraffe and more.

Appearances: Andri Leó Lemarquis, Kolbeinn Aðalsteinsson, Jón Benedikt Hólm, Sólveig Anna Jónsdóttir, Þór Sigurðsson, Ragnheiður Esther Briem, Steinunn Gunnlaugsdóttir, Snorri Páll Jónsson, Teitur Ársælsson, Lárus Páll Birgisson, Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir, Guðmundur Oddur.

By mid March, the case against the Reykjavík Nine (who had been accused of conspiracy to attack Alþingi with the intent of compromising its “independence and sanctity”) finally came to a close when the state prosecutor decided not to appeal the Reykjavík district court ruling in the case. The nine had been acquitted of all the major charges of the prosecution.

Not for lack of evidence or because the nine were able to slip through legal loopholes. No, the court found that there was absolutely no evidence to support the case of the prosecution; that there was absolutely nothing that indicated the group had ever intended to do anything but exercise its constitutional right to protest peacefully in a public space. The court did, however, find four protesters guilty of relatively minor offences: disobeying police orders and obstructing public officials performing their duties.

So, why are Icelandic activists and campaigners for civil liberties not jumping with joy? For one, the verdict verifies a dangerous precedent the courts appear to follow, namely that protesters must obey police orders, no matter how unjustified they may seem.

The prosecution failed to produce any evidence to justify the decisions of the guards or police to contain and eject the protesters—which means that guards and police violated the protesters’ constitutional rights. Instead, four protesters were convicted of not submitting to arbitrary police orders.

The ruling also proves that the authorities can, with impunity, drag protesters to court on flimsy charges and keep them captive in the legal system for months.

Any sensible person who looked at the case saw that there was no connection between the charges and the evidence. And it is hard to believe that the prosecution did not realise it had no case. So, why did the prosecution go forward if it had no evidence?

Well, because the prosecutor was following political orders. It has been revealed that the decision to prosecute under the 100th paragraph was only taken after someone from the offices of the Speaker of Parliament and the bureau Chief of Parliament had intervened. The intent of the intervention was either to have innocent people thrown in jail for protesting, or to have them dragged through the justice system to teach them a lesson.

Either way, one would think Alþingi and its chief officers owe the Reykjavík Nine an apology. But, no. Its officials continue to aggressively push the idea that the Reykjavík Nine are a bunch of dangerous violent criminals.

Case in point: On February 28 , shortly after the verdict in the case was handed down, Parliamentary chief of staff Karl M. Kristjánsson published an op-ed in newspaper Fréttablaðið, wherein he recycled and exaggerated every charge that the courts had just dismissed. In the missive, Karl stated as a proven fact that the nine had conspired to “attack Parliament” and that they had “violently attacked parliamentary guards”. He then complained that the media had been too favourable to the nine, especially Icelandic State TV, which he claimed had edited the footage from the security cameras, thus distorting the picture of what “really” happened (in fact: during the trial it was revealed that parliamentary officials had deleted most of the footage before handing it over to the police) Karl then expressed his outrage that these criminals were owed an apology from parliament:

“It seems that many responsible commentators want the parliamentary guards to apologise for having been beaten up.”

This is interesting. Especially the part about parliamentary guards having been “beaten up”. There was absolutely nobody beaten up! The Reykjavík district court found:

“There is no indication that the accused ever threatened either police or parliamentary guards with violence.”

And:

“As previously stated, there is no evidence whatsoever, that the accused ever intended to do anything but reach the public gallery to protest the social and political conditions at the time. It is impossible to see how their actions could be construed as having been aimed at forcefully subverting the will of parliament, or to see them as an attack which threatened parliament’s independence and sanctity.”

So. Let’s recap. The police and other state officials can forcefully deny people their constitutional rights to protest in public places—and then have people sentenced in a court of law for disobeying these unjust orders. The state can level outrageous charges against protesters to keep them captive in the legal system.

The office of the speaker of Parliament can instruct the state prosecution to press the most serious charges available in the book against innocent people, then proceed to delete relevant evidence and—even after a court has dismissed all charges of attack and violence—the top civil servants of parliament will continue to push the false charges in the media.

The 17th century Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna was the greatest political mind of his time. He once remarked that one should not underestimate the lack of wisdom with which the world is ruled. I would add that neither should one underestimate the shameless, brazen arrogance and cynicism of its rulers.

Originally published in The Reykjavík Grapevine.

In January 2011, when the illegal covert actions of UK police in Icelandic jurisdiction hit the pages of the international media, the local police forces of the two Icelandic towns Seydisfjörður and Eskifjörður in Eastern Iceland issued a statement in response to queries from the Icelandic National Broadcaster (RUV). The Broadcaster asked if the Icelandic police had been aware of the infiltration of the Saving Iceland network by British police spy Mark Kennedy. According to the Broadcaster the two police forces denied that they had had any “dealings with Kennedy during the protests against the Kárahnjúkar dams.”

Saving Iceland can now reveal evidence that shows clearly that the two police forces are not telling the truth about their dealings with Kennedy. The top photograph accompanying this statement shows two Icelandic police officers grappling with Mark Kennedy during a Saving Iceland action that took place on 26 July 2005 at the site of the Kárahnjúkar central dam. Clearly the incident pictured shows that the Icelandic police most certainly had “dealings” with the British spy.

Furthermore, there are numerous witnesses to the event when the Icelandic police detained a number of Saving Iceland activists at Kárahnjúkar, also in July 2005, and the officers collected the passports of the activists in order to register and photocopy them. Kennedy was one of those whose passport was confiscated in this manner by the police. The records of these passports are available to the authorities, unless they have been tampered with by those who are authorised to access the records.

The above shows that the two respective police forces are lying about their dealings with the British police spy. These dealings in fact turn out to have been considerable, although what has been photographed and entered into police records may just be an indication of much deeper involvement of Icelandic authorities.

Who was Kennedy’s runner in Iceland?

It is standard police procedure with the UK police that a spy like Kennedy will always be backed up by a “minder”. This is a police officer which follows the spy where ever he goes at a “safe” distance and which the spy can always get in contact with 24 hours round the clock. Kennedy himself described this procedure in an interview in the Daily Telegraph.

According to Kennedy this agent would travel on his trail where ever he went abroad. One can assume that during Kennedy’s stay at Kárahnjúkar this “minder” agent will have been based in a hotel at Egilsstaðir, the town nearest to the Kárahnjúkar dams, or at Hallormstaður forest, or possibly even, in the event of close collaboration with the Icelandic authorities, in the work camp village at the dam site itself.

It is more than likely that if the British authorities notified Icelandic authorities of the infiltrator in the Saving Iceland camp that, rather than jeopardize the guise of Kennedy, the Icelandic authorities will have been in more regular contact with his “minder”.

A clumsy cover-up

The fact that the Icelandic police find it necessary to use clumsy lies to cover over their involvement with Kennedy and his superiors, indicates that they are responding to orders from above to suppress information that would potentially seriously compromise Icelandic and UK authorities.

The Icelandic police have already as far back as in 2006 confirmed close collaboration with the UK police on the issue of the Saving Iceland network:

“The published confirmation [in the Police Magazine] of close collaboration between British and Icelandic authorities on the issue of Saving Iceland in the winter of 2005-2006 together with the statements of the police in Seydisfjordur and Eskifjordur, that contradict the evidence that Saving Iceland is in possession of, gives ample grounds to assume that the Icelandic authorities were in the know about Mark Kennedy’s infiltration of Saving Iceland.”

So far the the National Commissioner of the Police of Iceland has refused to answer the question posed by the National Broadcaster about if the UK police notified Icelandic authorities about the Kennedy infiltration of Saving Iceland.

Despite the assurances made in January in parliament by Össur Skarphéðinsson, Minister of Foreign Affairs and also Ögmundur Jónasson the Minister of the Interior, that they would do their utmost to uncover the truth of this ugly case they have so far done nothing to come clean about this considerable significant breach of human rights and of Icelandic and international laws.

Icelandic authorities using delaying tactics

At a meeting with the Minister of the Interior Saving Iceland founder Ólafur Páll Sigurdsson requested that he be given access to all official records of the dealings of the police with Saving Iceland, including all records of official spying carried out by the police about himself and other environmentalists involved in the struggle for the preservation of the Icelandic environment.

The Icelandic authorities are deliberately dragging their heels about the Kennedy case. So far nothing has been forthcoming from Icelandic authorities but sophistry, evasions and lies.

The Ministry of the Interior has stated in correspondence with the legal representative of Saving Iceland that no disclosures are to be expected until the report from the National Commissioner sees the light of day. From the tone and context of the correspondence it is implied that it may be a considerable amount of time until the report will be made available.

Hence it can be concluded that the authorities are using this report as tactical means to delay and defuse the serious consequences that the unraveling of the truth may have.

This is in direct contrast with both the German and Irish authorities. Both the German and Irish police have made official statements in which they admit their awareness of Kennedy’s operations within their jurisdictions.

These arrogant tactics of deliberate bureaucratic stalling and red tape sophistry are nothing new when it comes to Icelandic authorities when they want to deflect attention from inconvenient issues and delay the course of transparency and justice.

The reluctance of the Icelandic authorities to own up to the truth in the Kennedy case reveals yet again how this government has far from discontinued the tradition of unaccountability and repressive methods of former Iceland governments. This is most evident in their continued political repression of Icelandic radicals and specifically the new powers of proactive investigations that the Minister of the Interior is attempting to hand over to the Icelandic police.

Recent history shows irrefutably that the Icelandic police can not be trusted to not abuse such powers when it comes to legitimate political groups opposed to government policy. New regulations are not likely to have any more effect on a police force which has grown accustomed to routinely ignore and set aside current legislations regarding the rights of citizens to protest, even clauses dealing with the sanctuary of privacy in the Constitution.

The Saving Iceland network demand that the Icelandic authorities desist from this game of lies and evasions and immediately reveal the facts about not only the Kennedy case but all their records of dealings with Saving Iceland and the spying that they have conducted into the affairs of Saving Iceland and the individuals in our network.

We call on all those who have voiced concern about this blatant violation of civil and human rights and who have expressed their wish to see the truth about this case to mount pressure on the Icelandic government to discontinue this travesty of justice.

Additional references:

 http://www.savingiceland.org/?s=Mark+Ken…
http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/repression/

http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/rvk9/

http://www.savingiceland.org/is/tag/rvk-9/

http://www.savingiceland.org/2010/06/a- … epression/

http://grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Bi … Introduced

http://grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Sa … ggerating-

http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandrev … _id=372627

Social Forum Journey / Malmö-Belem-Istanbul

Abstract: This article looks at how the national mass protests against neoliberal regimes in Iceland, Tunisia, Egypt and other African and Arabic countries and the Wisconsin in the US are linked with the climate justice movement. Both national protests and the climate justice movement are developing unevenly. National protests in some hot spots, the climate campaigning more even all over the world. By looking at how countries like Denmark and its organized civil society acts it can be possible to understand how the struggle both for defensive goals and constructive solutions can strengthen each other by what lacked in Denmark but exists on the global level. That is solidarity against repression and building resistance which enables solutions uniting anti-neoliberal struggles in general and specific areas.

This is important both at transnational level and in countries that are more advanced in this struggle as well as those lagging far behind their objective potential like Denmark or Sweden. The challenge is how to combine the strength of the workers movement lacking a global democratic organization representing the working class also in the South and peasants, environmental, women and indigenous people who have established such global democratic organizations. The argument is that the key lies in combining the workers movements strength in defending the common interests with the offensive constructive program promoted by popular movements that have established global democratic organizations and organize solidarity against repression of all popular movements.

The commodification of all human beings and all of nature is at the core of the present development model. The resistance against this model is now enabling alternatives to emerge at both national and on specific fields also the transnational level ultimately paving the way for abolishing the present unsustainable development model. By bringing the two ways of challenging the present development model together and critically examine while also celebrating them it might be possible to find new ways of struggling and winning against the rulers of the world. Both the national uprising against authoritarian neoliberal and austerity regimes and the climate justice movement are part of the same democratic momentum questioning the global world order in all kind of countries all over the world.

The mass climate movement must go beyond the neoliberal agenda

Solutions to the climate crisis is a field were those holding on to the present development model are especially aggressive. They push for a new global land and air grabbing regime with the aim of oppressing the poor to give their fair share of the global commons to the rich and wealthy and into the hands of transnational corporations.

The incapacity of those in power due to the present development model to address global warming have caused growing wide-spread concern. In 1991 people in 70 countries on 500 places participated in international climate action days, in 2009 there were actions on 5000 places and last year 7000 places in almost every country on earth. This incapacity also have caused the rising of the climate justice movement which not only asks for action but also resistance against the present development model and promote constructive solutions beyond the limitations set by those in power.

A primary force behind this climate justice movement has been the anti-debt movement emerging from the riots against International Monetary Fund policies imposed on countries who are oppressed and been given the role of delivering their economic resources to those who already are rich owners of capital, riots that erupted in Peru in 1976 and Egypt in 1977 and since then spread all over the world.

Another force has been the resistance against development projects imposed on local communities in the interest of transnational corporations and the capitalists that owns them. This resistance erupted also at the end of the 1970s when the indigenous Katinga and Bontoc people started armed resistance with arrows and bows against the Chico dam project in the Philippines which was supposed to be financed by the World Bank. Many died in the struggle but the Katinga and Bontocs never gave up in spite of the violence and attempts at bribing their leaders gaining both local, national and international support. The conflict ended with victory paving the way for indigenous and other movements protesting against the present development model in all parts of the world. A movement of oppressed indigenous and local communities that have grown stronger and stronger which was expressed at the international Cochabamba gathering in Bolivia last year with 33 000 people calling for climate justice.

These strands in a global popular movement against the present development model together with the peasant, women’s and environmental movements formed in 2007 the Climate Justice Now! Network. Thus a system critical movement had been established as an alternative to the global coalition of well funded environmental and like minded foundations and other organizations often lacking democratic accountability like Greenpeace. A coalition that in different forms address global warming and other environmental issues as mainly technical and individual moral issues claiming that what is necessary is media attention and pressuring politicians but not changing any social order.

This coalition has been dominated by Western organizations lacking global democratic accountability while the climate justice movement builds on the oppressed peoples and global democratic popular movements like Jubilee South, Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth and Women’s World March. They all have a leadership very much from the third world and build on ideas of equal distribution of power in the movement instead of top-down management.

What is lacking is the perhaps most important movement in resisting the present development model or at least in defending peoples interests, the workers movement. But the trade union is the only larger global popular movement that has refused to build on democratic accountability towards the global working class- ITUC, the International Trade Union Confederation has instead chosen to be dominated by the working class in the rich and wealthy countries and no strong alternative to ITUC have emerged which the other popular movements can cooperate with for building a joint resistance and constructing alternatives to the present world order. ITUC promotes social dialogue with business, IMF and G-20 instead of organizing the global working class.

This was criticized at the Open World Conference against War and Exploitation held in Alger 27-29 novemeber 2010 with 400 mainly trade union participants. Abdel Majid Sidi Zaid. General secretary of the Algerian TUC (UGTA), stated in his inauguration speech that employed and people in common had disappeared from the economic agenda. The only thing that seems to count is to give tax payers money to the capitalists. Sidi Zaid criticized how ITUC gradually slipped into becoming a social partner with business, G-20 and governments instead of representing a different interest than that of the employer.

But the voices of North African and other third world working class cannot be heard in the way ITUC excludes the large working classes to have their proportionate say as only number of individual members is counting making it possible for the rich countries with smaller working class but higher percentage of enlisted member to dominate the international organization. This weakens the trade unions everywhere and so also their ability to cooperate with other movements who are independent and not necessarily sees a solution to every problem social partnership with business and government. Thus is the trade unions a problematic ally as their lack of global democracy in their main international organization effectively excludes the third world working class from influence, the same working class that is so necessary to have as allied for popular movements struggling for climate justice.

Without a strong international cooperation partner among the trade unions it is necessary to find other ways to win the majority against false solutions to the climate crisis and for a just transition. The strength of the climate justice movement so far has been several. The commitment of activists in indigenous struggles against exploitation or climate camps and other forms of struggle has a key role. That strong organizations with a multi issue interest in both social and environmental concerns have been able to cooperate in CJN is another factor. So are the well articulated arguments against false solutions like carbon trading, nuclear power or monoculture biofuel. But what is lacking is a program for solutions, for just transition of housing, industry, transport, agriculture, forestry and many other sectors. It is not enough to know what we are against. We need alos something to long for.

Such a programme is indivisibly linked with going beyond the neoliberal limitations set by the social partnership agenda. Without a clear idea of how to socially mobilize for just transition domestically and internationally the struggle for change will become fragmenticized and easy to diverge into ideas of socially neutral technological plans or moral appeals without substantial economy and social forces to enable a just transition

Protests against the general neoliberal politics

While the climate justice movement is a growing wide spread protest in every corner of the world building momentum in small and large scale it has its limitations. What is also needed is challenging the system at the general political level. That is what is going on in some countries at the moment while in many others the situation is passive. While the climate justice movement and the general concern about global warming is spreading rather steadily all over the world the mass protests against the neoliberal general politics and the strongly connected wars and occupations to control the supply of natural resources are more volatile.

In general at least in Europe antineoliberal mass movements are on the defensive and especially trade unions are under pressure if they do not accept worsening working conditions. In elections right wing parties are the dominant force on the whole continent. When mass protests occur as in Greece two years ago the result can be worsening of the situation and even more neoliberal policies put in place to save the foreign banks and make the people pay.

The solutions accepted at the national level by some popular movements causes serious problems in other countries. The German trade unions accepted wage dumping in exchange for maintaining jobs. In other countries workers were able to maintain their salaries in par with the increase of productive instead as in Germany were the productivity increase worked in favor of the owners of the companies and growing export. If every trade union had chosen to follow suit the result would have been an even deeper crisis. But finally drastic contradictions in the European neoliberal politics reached Eastern, Southern and North Western European periphery as well as North Africa and many other places. The role of the periphery is clear, to feed the banks in the richest countries and owners of capital living on speculation while living with rising food prices and social cuts as a result often of demands by IMF. This has been a problem in many parts of the world for long but have now reached also Europe. The renewed axis between Germany and France to promote even more austerity politics with the help of EU will only deepen the contradictions and crisis.

But when the neoliberal authoritarian regimes following the demands by IMF and supported by EU and the US in North Africa started to fall down like in Tunisia and Egypt and now on the way in other countries this model meet severe resistance by movements that had started to protest against their politics already in the 1970s. These uprising are now often supported from the right to the left, with some similar claims and some different, all too limited from an environmental and climate justice movement perspective.

The common statement by the right and left is that this is a struggle for democracy in the Arab region against authoritarian regimes or dictatorships. This is misleading from an antineoliberal environmental point of view. From this point of view politics, ecology and economy are indivisible. Struggle for democracy is thus necessarily linked to the ecological and economical side of the protests. It is quite clear that the neoliberal model is directly in contradiction with the food sovereignty politics demanded by Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth groups and many others. With the total industrialization of agriculture which neoliberalism aims for with the exception of a small niche production of ecological food for those wealthy enough to afford it. The sky rocketing food prices which is the result of a volatile speculation economy combined with the destruction of domestic peasants by subsidized food from rich countries agriculture industry is a devastating combination together with the general assault against working people like the textile female workers in Egypt which with their strikes is a main factor behind the uprising.

Thus the linkage between an ever growing capitalistic speculation economy and a development model based on ever growing consumption of natural resources including destruction of ecological friendly ways of domestic production of food is at the core of the conflict behind the uprisings. A politics promoted by neoliberal regimes in rich countries unto the rest of the world in alliance with authoritarian segments in oppressed countries. In the case of the Arab world this is further emphasized by the role given to the region of the rich countries with their fossil fuel based economies as a region controlled by smaller privileged nations with less population that are supported by the rich countries to see to that the countries with larger populations are kept under control by their oppressive leaders and massive intervention from the West, at times with brutal force as the help to Iraq to make war with Iran and the later war against Iraq.

From an environmental point of view the struggle in the Arabic world is thus intimitely linked to the struggle against a development model devastating nature and built on aggressive control of fossil fuel sources which for certain is not a struggle which can be limited to the Arab world but is a common task. To the environmental movement in Sweden have since decades stated that the primary solidarity struggle is to change production and consumption patterns in Sweden so that it is not based on overuse of natural resources from other countries. As long as this development model claiming that people in rich countries are entitled to use more than their fair share of the natural resources on earth is in place it is causing the support by so called democratic countries as EU member states to oppressive regimes in the whole world.

The right and the left have some differing point of views on the uprisings in the Arabic and African world now spreading to the mass protests in Wisconsin in the US. The right delinks politics from economy which is helpful for avoiding the connection to the ecological and social justice problems which are a part of the economy promoted by the rich and proclaimed democratic nations. To the right winger whether liberal or conservative democracy is a question of form and have nothing to do with content. The geographic limitations is also self evident to them and thus there is no decisive connection between formally democratic countries in the West and the oppressive authoritarian regimes in countries with a central role in seeing to that rich and formally democratic nations is secured cheap natural resources. Under all circumstances there is no reason to reevaluate the own politics at home due to the uprisings in the Arab world.

To the left winger in rich European countries the dominant view seems to be that of revolutionary romanticism, general US criticism and delinking the struggle in the Arabic world from the struggle in their own countries. Appeals are made for mass protests in Palestine against the Israeli occupation in this leftist version of constant exotism appealing to revolutions sometimes in the future or in other countries rather than to reevaluate the struggle at home and also under other conditions than utter desperation like after 60 years of occupation supported by the rich countries.

US as a main enemy of the left is also a way to avoid focusing on politics were one can make a difference at home. In Sweden the left has mass produced articles about how bad the US is with their war and occupation of Iraq. There are hundreds of left wing articles in Sweden strongly criticizing the US for making false claims on the existence of weapons of mass destruction to start the war against Iraq causing the death of hundreds of thousand people. I have seen not one article about the responsibility of Sweden causing the death as many or more people in Iraq as we and others were supporting the economic sanctions against Iraq with devastating effects on the population built on exactly the same false accusations as those used by the US to start the war. The weapons of mass destruction did not disappear suddenly the day the US invaded, they had long gone before in a time when economic sanctions caused the death of hundreds of thousands. The left seems sometimes to have become part of an international literature market were it is more important to appoint big names as enemies than to do the home work in the municipality or country you live in instead of putting all your energy into criticizing other countries or calling for Palestinians to do one more dangerous intifada. From an environmental point of view EU and its member states is as much of a problem as the US and have supported ”stability” in the Arab region and Africa in similar and devastating ways.

The struggle to change production and consumption patterns and politics at local and national level including foreign policy is of course at times not as spectacular as large uprisings in other parts of the world or omnipotent ideas about shifting EU to become a progressive political force. But it is here we need to see what we can do and how the challenges in the world model for an economy based on cheap natural resources as fossil fuel by the uprisings in the Arab or other regions also means something for the daily struggle in every corner of the world also when it is not spectacular. By simultaneous struggles at all levels combining daily struggles and organizing solidarity across borders when necessary also in less spectacular cases is an internationalistic way forward. But this seems to be outside the view of many left wing commentators. They seem to draw the same conclusion of the uprisings in many aspects as the right – Under all circumstances there is no reason to reevaluate the own politics at home due to the uprisings in the Arab world.

The successful uprising in Western Europe

This becomes clear when seeing what both the left and right excludes from their analysis but the environmental movement have to include and all other opposing the present world order. That of successful uprising against neoliberal politics in a rich European democratic country were the government had no choice but to step down or call in the military from an EU member state to survive against the confrontative demands by the people. What is going on in Tunisia and Egypt have already been successfully accomplished in a Western European country. Thus the claim that what is going on is uprisings in the Arab world is wrong, the uprisings are also going on in other parts of the world with similar form and content including the best and richest of formally democratic nations. Why the right commentators excludes this fact from their analysis is after all understandable although makes their intellectual position utterly weak. After all it was 20 years of right-centre neoliberal government that was thrown out of power with a large scale popular uprising. Why the left also is excluding this Western European country in the same way is a fact at first thought puzzling, at second thought possible to understand as the example point at the necessity of change of the form and content of left wing politics in Western Europe.

The successful uprising started in the autumn of 2008 and reached a climax in January 2009 when people after demonstrations every week broke all restrictions of the police and forced their way through the police lines and smashed more or less all the windows of the parliament making it very clear that the government had no whatsoever control of the country any longer and had to go. The actions were disciplined and no harm was made to policeman but there was no way to not understand the message, you have to go as you have no power anymore. The police force was to small to control the growing protests. For the first time since 1949 the police used tear gas but it did not help. The only choice left was to call in the military from the EU member state Denmark who were staying on ships in the outer harbour of Reykjavik. But to call in the former colonial power that gave the freedom to Iceland as late as 1944 was not a popular option so the right-centre government resigned and new elections were held which brough a left-centre government to power.

Both the form, the content and the result of this successful uprising in Iceland brings in question the left in the rest of Western Europe. One is that the uprising was disciplined and all the different strands with the anarchists and environmentalists as those most radically questioning the present development model in Iceland both in content and in the way protests were organized as well as more moderate political forces all keeping to a strict code of not using violence against people. This in contrast to the unclear notion of diversity of tactics which is splitting the movements into factions in some countries. Thus when repression hit the Icelandic movement there is a lot stronger solidarity then in other Western countries were solidarity sometimes is lacking almost totally. This becomes clear before and during the trial against the Reykjavik 9, protesters standing trial in January 2011 for a peaceful action inside the parliament in 2008. In Iceland all the main stream press have declared them guilty of violence for months and stated that what they have done have no precedence in Iceland and thus many years in prison is reasonable. The foreign minister declared the opposite in the court room. In other countries like Sweden even the most self proclaimed revolutionary left wing party either joins the police opinion and declares the activists as more or less terrorist in need of policing or gets totally paralysed due to the media accusations of violence and starts to fight each other instead of the repression.

The political result of the uprising is also a fact showing that what more or less all the left with some parliamentary power is doing in Western Europe is wrong. The Icelandic people did not only make one uprising, they made two, both successful. With the new left-centre government in place Iceland started to negotiate to come out of the economic collapse that the former government had put the country into. They tried to make a deal with several foreign countries and institutions as IMF. The people did not accept the deal and started protesting again and thus the government found a clever way out. A referendum were a clear majority rejected the deal. Now the government could go into negotiations again making a better deal than before.

What Iceland did was directly contrary to the solutions forced onto countries like Greece and Ireland. Iceland placed its biggest lenders in receivership. It chose not to protect all creditors of the country’s banks. “Iceland did the right thing by making sure its payment systems continued to function while creditors, not the taxpayers, shouldered the losses of banks,” stated Joseph Stiglitz to Bloomberg.

The successful politics in Iceland after the uprisings are seen as good also by main stream economists. So why do we not hear about this solution o the crisis? The reason might be simple. The parliamentarian left is so occupied by being respected as responsible and accepts the core of the solutions in saving the banks instead of challenging the whole model by stating Iceland as an example and pointing at the economic catastroph in for Greece and Ireland when domestic debts possible to reduce by domestic decisions are turned into international debts making the EU the powerful collector for the foreign banks. What EU does is the opposite to Iceland, to force countries and thus their tax payers to make the creditors of the banks completely irresponsible and fully paid for their speculation without risk. To stand up against this way of saving the banks by letting people pay is not what many or any left wing parliamentary parties do by pointing at the Icelandic alternative. Instead general ideological rhetoric stating we do not pay for their crisis becomes a way for these parties to avoid using the parliament as a platform to build political opposition.

What they are doing instead, at least in Sweden, is playing political theatre. This became obvious in the last election when the left party formed an alliance with the Greens and social democrats. To very many in the left party it was obvious that the political platform of this Red Green alliance had no substantial difference from that of the right wing alliance which has now for the first time since 1932 been able to govern the country for a second term. One radical left winger in the party concluded that if the left party should have formulated a stronger political platform which he sees is needed and stayed outside of the alliance between the Greens and the Social democrats the party would have been totally ignored by media and would not have been able to come into the parliament. Thus was the support from the left party of the Red Green alliance necessary.

So at least some Left parties also with a long record of being system critical and still having substantial knowledge of what political opposition is necessary are not independent political actors anymore but extensions of the mass media playing a role in their political theater. To such political parties Iceland is a threat to their image as radical and it is better to exclude this example from people’s memory and continue using anticapitalist rhetoric while not opposing the core of today’s politics in parliament.

The non-parliamentary left have equal strong reasons for excluding Iceland from their understanding of the present situation. If they see parliamentary politics only as a problem and their own role as being non-parliamentarian is it not useful to claim that the Icelandic parliamentary politics and its solution to the crisis is of interest for the rest of Europe. If it furthermore includes member of the governments that defends anarchists the identity politics of much of the non-parliament falls into pieces. Such central politicians cannot have a progressive role when the main stream press is totally against the anarchists claiming that they are violent so Iceland cannot exist. It is too much a threat to identity politics of both the parliamentary and non-parliamentary left.

Iceland is not only a threat to the identity politics of the left at the tactical level but also on the strategic. The strongest supporter of the 9 accused Reykjavik activists comes from the environmental movement Saving Iceland. And if there is a left wing strand among the accused activists it seems to be anarchistic while traditional radical left wing organizations are not a visible actor anymore, at least not presented well abroad. Furthermore it is claimed in the support brochure for the Reykjavik 9 that : ”In interviews and other coverage of the court case, the Reykjavík Nine have shown that their participation in that winter’s uprising was rooted in their opposition towards the whole system – not only the economic collapse and “the crisis”.” With other words the activists are not belonging to a single issue movement or ad hoc group but a system critical movement with more long term goals than replacing one government with another to make some shifts in the costs for the bankruptcy of the banks for the Icelandic people. This threat is fully understood by the neoliberal press who have called for hard sentences against the Reykjavik 9 and claimed that they not only were violent, but also introduced a culture of violence into Icelandic protests. Thus they are also guilty of the escalating protests that continued during the winter and finally forced the government to resign.

In Many Western European countries the non-parliamentarian left is still to quite some extent influenced by parties claiming they are revolutionary and their press. To this left Iceland is a threat showing how a new radical system critical movement is emerging, so better keep silent about Iceland. One good exception is the German MP who have actively engaged in the case. He also makes a connection between the case of the Reykjavik 9 and the recently discovered British spy that was sent into the Saving Iceland movement as well as direct action movement in many other countries and asks if this is part of a European–wide policing of movements.

The case is similar for the environmental movement. In Iceland it is the system critical direct action movement that is strong and not so much environmental NGOs which is the opposite to most other countries in Western Europe. Neither the strong solidarity between the environmental movement and the protesters against the neo-liberal regime or civil disobedience as a form of action are not what many environmental NGOs sees as important.

In spite of that the Icelandic experience is relevant for a number of political reasons it is thus largely ignored both among the left and the environmentalists.

Connecting the hot political spots and the weak

The case of Iceland becomes also interesting when seeing if there is a possibility of connecting struggles in hot spots with successful uprisings and the more daily struggle and even defensive struggle when things gradually gets worse.

Here the climate justice connection can serve as helpful. The climate struggle is going on almost everywhere helped by the fact that any emission or deforestation anywhere on earth are contributing to global warming making our destiny as a human race ultimately connected.

Thus we here can see both an issue and a struggle different in the form in terms of a more steady increase forward and less volatile as the struggle against the economic crisis.

What are than the connections? One is the political content. In both cases is antineoliberal politics at the core of protests. In the case of the climate justice movement the stand against carbon trading, in the case of Iceland a general protests against neoliberal politics. There is furthermore some deeper connection. One is that the banks that brought Iceland to de facto bankruptcy earlier were state owned and then privatized, a privatization with some consequences. One other that the Icelandic crisis have a root in exactly the same idea which is underlying carbon trading schemes, that of establishing a market mechanism for selling nature. A speculation boom like the one promoted by the privatized Icelandic banks has to built on some cash flow and this was created by the decision to allow the selling of fish quota in Iceland.

This points at two complementary ways of challenging the neoliberal hegemony by general political uprising in some countries and a world wide challenge against the expansion of a neoliberal regime in one important sector, nature.

The other connection between the hot spot Iceland and more weak struggle in many other places is the form. Here Iceland has set an example that will tear up some of the hardest resistance against challenging the neoliberal world order, the resistance among many organizations claiming themselves to be anti-neoliberal or even revolutionary.

This resistance was clearly evident during the climate summit in Copenhagen when Denmark was a host to a meeting of global importance. Every revolutionary and other left wing parties in Denmark as well as every other environmental or social organization built on membership and representative democracy chosed to claim that non-violent civil disobedience towards an assembly of legislators which is a central character of a UN conference is an impossibility in Denmark. It would automatically result in violence to be blamed on those initiating the non-violent action and was thus unacceptable in a Nordic political culture like the Danish.

This is correct in the sense that a majority of the Danish people according to opinion polls claims that the violence used by the police against non-violent demonstrators is not actually violence committed by the police but violence caused by the non-violent activist. This is totally different from lets say an Egyptian policeman beating demonstrators with his stick in Cairo to protect the stability of the state who according to the same world view now is committing violence which everyone can see as easily as she or he can see how the policeman using his stick at the Climate Summit conference building is actually not using violence as the violence is caused by the demonstrator who does not understand the self evident need of the stability if the Danish state.

It is also correct in the sense that main stream media and the large majority of the parliamentary parties in Denmark have the same view. The media uses a model for shifting chronology or placing people in false places to make believe the story about police behaving properly and those under violent attack from the police as the cause of violence.

Thus if the only stone thrown at a policeman at the Climate Summit that actually harmed a policeman causing only light injury was thrown as an reaction in another part of the city after that the police mass arrested 918 innocent demonstrators this is by the media presented as preceeding the violence of the police against the demonstrators.

Similar is the way the mass arrested demonstrators are presented as causing their own mass arrest as some few demonstrators were smashing a dozen windows at the stock exchange and foreign ministry. But this was in another section of the demonstration where the police had guided activists into the demonstration that intended to go elsewhere but the police wanted them in the demonstration. It was also in another part of the city far away from the mass arrests. By claiming that there is a connection between the section that was mass arrested and the material damage at the stock exchange and the foreign ministry media presents a model for how the violence against the demonstrators is caused by themselves.

All parliamentary parties from the most radical left to the right with the exception of the social liberal party in the center followed the same pattern in their firsts comments on what had happened. Emberessment was not directed against the totally unacceptable mass arrest of 918 demonstrators who all later in court have been found the right to receive damages as innocent and victims of police abuse. The emberessment was instead directed against stones thrown at the police fueling furthermore the false chronology and misplacing of the mass arrested section in relation to the course of events.

With other words we have a people, mass media and parliamentary parties supporting the police view that the violence used by the police is not violence but actions by non-violent demonstrators and activists is the cause of the violence for everyone to see. Such a country is not at all a police state but a police nation, a situation probably similar to that in many other countries and of importance to deal with if a simultaneous protest movement against the present social and ecological crisis should be able to emerge in more than a few countries under extraordinary circumstances.

In such a police nation it is understandable that representative democratic organizations claim that non-violent action against a UN-conference will be perceived as guilty of the violence that automatically will take place according to this logic. But it is not acceptable. Every organization have their own responsibility towards their stated goal. If the rest of the nation have turned into a police nation this is no excuse for any organization to join the band wagon and even make a principle about it. To claim that only temporary activist networks should carry the whole burden against the violence of the police nation or even see to that when this violence occurs the victims should receive no solidarity is not standing up for the truth which is the basis of our society.

The claim by all formal Danish organizations rejecting to support a non-violent direct action was that the political culture in Denmark was such that by action, non-violent or not, against an assembly of legislators would be regarded as completley unacceptable by everyone except for an isolated small group. This was wrong as such a non-violent action took place at the EU-summit in the same conference center as COP15 was held but this fact was hidden to international cooperation partners or forgotten. More important is that Denmark cannot claim that their political culture is significantly different from that of Iceland sharing history for almost a thousand year and with stable democratic institutions.

As the Icelandic people have been able to make an uprising and storming the parliament successfully in a non-violent manner, this form of action cannot in principle be said to be impossible in Denmark. Furthermore can the Icelandic popular movement show results in combating neoliberal economic politics that most or all the left wing and environmental organisations in Denmark also would like to achieve.

The key point therefore is a question that concerns any European antineoliberal organization, is the kind of non-violent action against a parliament in principle always unacceptable this also means to say not to both the political antineoliberal success and form of the protests in Iceland. As Via Campesina and others in Copenhagen showed was it possible also at a Climate Summit to do the same thing as the Icelandic popular movement did, although it had less success due to that Danish left wing and environmental organizations opposed the non-violent action. It is well argued to claim that Iceland has similar political culture as Denmark. The conclusion of this is that the left-wing and environmental organizations in Denmark are not anti neoliberal or interested to protect the environmental but prefers to be part of a police nation and protect the state when given a choice.

It is necessary in every country were these kind of organizations dominate the political space for opposition to demand clear principles that shows respect for the Icelandic people. There are always specific conditions in each circumstances but there are also a general level were similarities exists. Iceland is a long term democratic nation and their experience should be reflected in any antineoliberal organization in a Western democracy. It gives possibilities of strengthening simultaneous struggles in different countries which also are of importance at Summits when global popular movements can combine their efforts with local mobilization to challenge the present world order.

Linking climate justice to anti neoliberal general political uprisings

Many left wing and environmental organizations are today not only part of the police nation but also accepting the limitations set by mass media. They see the unity with organizations having access to media as more important than to build on clear demands against false solutions on the climate issue. In spite of that key global democratic movements as Jubilee South, Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International and the whole Climate Justice Now network is opposing carbon trading and offsetting most organisations prefer signing such statement and go home afterwards not taking them seriously.

If it is not media attention there are other tactical reasons for not taking international declarations seriously. One is the interest in cooperating with social partnership trade unions who refuse to take an antineoliberal stand in the climate justice issue. This is why the global day of action has such a out of date watered down platform.

But the antineoliberal climate justice movement is sufficiently large today to enable a stronger uniting initiative leaving the old claim for more action and a real climate deal behind. This was attempted at the Cochabamba gathering but with some problems. One was the exclusion of the Roundtable 18 (mesa 18) which also critically addressed social changes within countries including Bolivia. Another was the rather big ideas about a global referendum but no idea on the immediate term for uniting the climate justice movement.

But this is crucial for the ability to strengthen both the climate justice struggle and the general antineoliberal uprisings and struggles. By using the capacity of the climate justice movement to be present in almost every country a real important force would be added to the general antineoliberal uprising at national level. This would also work well in reverse. By politically showing more closeness to the political energy coming from the uprisings against authoritarian regimes whether in the West or other parts of the world the climate justice struggle would also be strengthened.

The climate justice movement could also learn from the Icelandic experience concerning solidarity. In spite of that all the press was in the hands of neoliberal perspectives and nine activists put to trials were presented as violent while making an action inside the parliament the movement kept together. 705 people claimed they had done the same crime which according to the attorney should result in minimum one year in prison. The trial ended with the verdict not guilty for most of the activist, a fine for two and suspended sentence for two others. The nine activists refuses to accept the verdict claiming that only full aquittal is acceptable.

After COP15 the trials are not yet over and two spokes persons for the non-violent action have been sentenced to four months in prison, verdicts that are up in court once more in the end of May. The massive solidarity in Iceland have lacked in Denamrk, especially during COP15 but also compared to Iceland afterwards. Without solidarity, the movement dies.

The anti-neoliberal uprisings can learn from the climate justice movement work for a constructive program for both agriculture forestry, industry, rural and urban planning to solve the climate crisis in ways which also solves other social and environmental crisis. Inspiration can come from the Klimaforum09, Assembly of Social Movements at European Social Forum in Istanbul and the Cochabamba roundtable 18 declarations that focus much on social justice and constructive solutions. A popular movement cannot only be against if it shall be able to win in the long term, it also needs something to long for, something that can attract more sympatizers and bring about change.

During a long period since 1980 all the results of the productivity increase have fallen into the hands of owners of capital. This has enabled those in power to penetrate every mind and every movement with the message that the market can solve everything while others cling to the defensive hope for the state or EU to challenge the market. The uprisings in Iceland, Africa and Western Asia challenges this model for controlling societies and limiting protest to defensive demands. The key way to try to limit the effect of the uprising in Africa and Western Asia is to claim that this is only a rebellion against dictatorships limited to the Arab world. Here Iceland is an example showing clearly that this is false. Together with the uprising in Wisconsin in the US inspired by the revolt in Egypt we here have examples showing that it is all authoritarian neoliberal and corrupt economic regimes that are challenged.

Together with a global action against neoliberal solutions to the climate crisis combined with a program for just transition the uprisings and the climate justice movement can make 2011 into a springtime of the people. A year of simultaneous struggle in many countries building a solidarity across borders that can bring us a decisive step towards making another world possible.

Tord Björk is active in Friends of the Earth Sweden.

Background on the COP15 lack of solidarity and trials:

The whole world on trial http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1109

Final count down for political theater at COP15 trials

http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1846

Danish law 1243: Truth! 2010: Power? http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1800

Historic COP15 victory against summit repression http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1892

Call for solidarity actions with the accused spokespersons for the Climate Justice movement and update information: http://www.climatecollective.org/en/start/

Strategy appeal made at World Social Forum tematico in Mexico May 2010:

Climate Justice and Class Struggles after Cochabamba http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1629

Reykjavik 9 and Iceland material:

Facebook cause Support the 9 Reykjavik and COP15 Activists! http://www.causes.com/causes/567523

Background material on the Icelandic situation: http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/rvk9

Solidarity web site for Reykjavik 9: http://www.rvk9.org/in-english/

Iceland’s Decision To Let Banks Fail Gaining Appeal by Paul Nikolov http://grapevine.is/Author/Paul-Nikolov

Report from Bloombergs with quotes from Stiglitz on Icelandic example: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/iceland-proves-ireland-did-wrong-things-saving-banks-instead-of-taxpayer.html.

In one of the most controversial trials in Iceland, four of a group popularly known as the “Reykjavik 9” have been sentenced. A most fascinating, and what many have also termed “absurd” case in the country’s recent history has seen nine peaceful protesters accused of threatening the sovereignty of the Parliament; being charged with article 100 of the country’s penal code which deals with acts of terrorism– one that carries a sentence from a year to life in prison.

Reykjavik District Court announced its ruling of the case on February 16, amidst tremendous national furore, as the Reykjavik 9 waited for their verdict on “attacking” the Icelandic Parliament, Althingi, in December 2008. All nine defendants were acquitted of their initial charges. However, four were found guilty of rioting and were slapped with sentences ranging from fines to conditional prison sentences up to 4 months.

However, allegations of “politically motivated charges” to “reaction [from the government] stemming from the threat of popular uprisings” still continue to echo within the citizens of Iceland and it seems a long way to go before the dust settles on this particular case. In an exclusive, Managing Editor of The Fresh Outlook, Shayoni Sarkar, speaks to a few key people involved with the Reykjavik 9 to understand the case and the traces it leaves behind.

Charged While Enacting a Constitutional Right?

It started in October 2008, as the fall of the banking sector and currency collapse in Iceland had triggered unhappiness and the cause for protest in the hearts of the citizens. On December 8, around 30 demonstrators entered the Icelandic Parliament through the visitor’s entrance and made their way to the public benches. Nine of these protesters were arrested.

However, it was only a year later that the Reykjavik 9, as they came to be popularly known, were charged under article 100 of the penal code, a most serious charge, and one that had been used only one time before in the country’s history – in 1949, when anti-NATO protesters were charged of threatening the government.

Magnus Sveinn Helgason, historian, activist and husband of Solveig Anna Jonsdottir of the Reykjavik 9, says: “The back story is that a group of 20-30 people wanted to enter the public benches of the Parliament to essentially deliver the message that the people of Iceland were fed up with the inaction and incompetence of the political elite. Parliament had yet to address the collapse of the economy and society in any meaningful way. Aside from propping up the banks and guaranteeing 100% of domestic bank deposits, something that primarily benefited a handful of wealthy Icelanders, they simply went along as if nothing had happened. This enraged many people who were witnessing it: The economy had collapsed, the currency had collapsed, people were losing their jobs and the entire social contract was torn asunder. But the political elite appeared to be completely asleep.

“Some in the group had intended to read a declaration from the public benches – there is a long tradition of this kind of protest in Iceland, where large groups of people gather in the public gallery, and many such groups have read declarations. The Icelandic constitution states specifically that the public has a right to observe the meetings of Parliament. But, on this particular day, the parliamentary guards in the house decided that the group posed a grave danger to Althingi, closed the house and sent an emergency “attack alarm” to the police, which resulted in all available officers in the greater Reykjavik area being summoned to Parliament to defend it against what they thought was a violent attack which threatened the members of parliament and the very institution.”

He continues: “But there had never been any such attack. It was a massive overreaction, and when the dust settled and the police investigation was finished, the detective who investigated the matter felt that the whole hullabaloo had been blown out of proportion and that this had been a rather insignificant event. However, the Bureau Chief of Parliament, chief civil servant and a bureaucratic officer of the parliament, requested that the people be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including, under article 100 of the penal code, which deals with acts of terrorism, attacks against the state and attempts to overthrow the government; the people were found guilty of violating this article it , would have resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail. The maximum sentence is life in prison.”.

Lara V Juliusdottir, prosecuting attorney for the state, responds: “What they [Rvk9] did was exactly what is described in article 100 of the penal code. They attacked the staff of parliament, forced their way into the parliament building and beat up the staff, some of whom got hurt. There was fighting.”

Almost 30 years ago, the current Foreign Minister of Iceland, Össur Skarphéðinsson, along with a large group of students had walked into the gallery of the Parliament and, protected by his fellow university students, recited a long speech protesting a proposed cut in student loans.

Dropping Charges Establishes “Absurdity”

Solveig Anna Jonsdottir was among the four sentenced. She, along with Steinunn Gunnlaugsdottir of the Reykjavik 9, received a fine of ISK 100,000 (£534). Andri Leo Lemarquis received a four month conditional prison sentence while Thor Sigurdsson received a 60-day conditional prison sentence, as well.

However, acquitting five and reducing the charges on the other four are not enough for the Icelandic population to let this case pass. A very serious “threat” to the freedom of expression has been made by a country that prides itself on its ideals of free speech.

Einar Steingrimsson is a mathematician who has lived and worked in Iceland, the US and Sweden, and is now a professor at the University of Strathclyde. He has written several opinion pieces and blogs in the Icelandic media about the Reykjavik 9. He says: “First of all, the court threw out the very serious charge of a threat to the “sovereignty” of the Parliament and essentially deemed it absurd; even though the court, in my opinion, otherwise used very narrow legalistic reasoning. The same happened with the charge of “breaking and entering”.I think it is fair to say that this shows that the prosecution overreacted in a very grave way, and that it therefore is guilty of a serious attack on the right to free speech, since false charges of this gravity, carrying a minimum of one year in prison, are in themselves enough to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights. This is especially serious in light of the fact that the prosecution never had any evidence that even made it debatable whether the nine had tried to do anything other than enter the gallery of the Parliament to utter a few words.

Ms Juliusdottir, when asked what the dismissal of article 100 charges to the accused signify, said: “It is described in the court’s decision. Not to express my views, but I personally feel that the article 100 charges [against the accused] were proper.”

In spite of reduced sentences and serious charges against them dropped, Mr Steingrimsson feels that the punishment meted out to the four who were not acquitted on all charges shows “that the justice system in Iceland still gives the police and other authorities unlimited rights to violence without any regard to what sort of civil rights people are trying to exercise”.

“The four were variously convicted of “holding” and “pushing” people, as all claims of violence or harm that were previously alleged were dismissed by the court,” he says. “[They were convicted of] holding open a door that a staff member tried to close, and one of the four was convicted for biting two policemen. In that last case, the two policemen had the defendant pinned down to the floor with their body weight, and he had a hard time breathing and was in a state of panic.” Ms Juliusdottir maintains that the “violence” resorted to by the nine should be penalised, saying: “He [Andri Leo Lemarquis] was biting people. There was fighting and he bit two police officers. That is proven in the case.”

It is perhaps such adamant nature, even after a judgement has been delivered that makes Einar Steingrimsson believe that the convictions serve to “cement the attitude that the state may use force where it sees fit, but the citizens are required to show complete submission and obeisance, even when the authorities are depriving them of constitutional rights”, such as observing Parliament in session.

“[This] is what the police and staff were trying to prevent the nine from doing”.

A Compromised Prosecutor?

According Mr Steingrimsson, the prosecutor for the case was not “qualified” to handle the case. The source claims that in email exchanges with her, it has come to light, albeit after the case has been closed, that she was aware of a close relationship between her and a defendant. This would inherently compromise her position as a prosecutor, however, it is alleged that she took no action to rectify her position in the trial.

“She knew, well before the main court proceedings in January, that she is related to one of the defendants, as her father had been married to that defendant’s grandmother,” reveals Mr Steingrimsson . “According to Icelandic law, this leads to automatic disqualification. She should have announced this and withdrawn from her role as prosecutor. The judge, had he found out, would have been obliged to remove her. However, she remained silent, which clearly is against the law.”

Ms Juliusdottir defiantly responds: “I am not related. It is true that my father married one of the defendant’s grand mother but my father and mother are divorced. After their divorce, my father’s new wife had two children with him. The defendant is the son of one of those two children. I am definitely not related to them.”

She continues: “I feel drawing attention to this point is completely irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the case. The lawyers did not bring this up and this goes on to prove some ridiculous these accusations are.”

However, Mr Steingrimsson believes that the defendants, although aware of this, chose not to push it.

“They didn’t want the case to be pushed back to the starting point, which is what would have happened with a new prosecutor.”

Increasing “Paranoia” Within the Political Elite

Not just suspicions over the motives of the prosecutor, it is widely believed that the trial was “politically motivated”. This political motivation is alleged to have been fed off by “paranoia”, a looming sentiment within the elite, who were alleged to be “scared” of the demonstrators and their calls for accountability. The charges that the Reykjavik 9 had faced was deemed “absurd” by most. Einar Steingrimsson had earlier told The Fresh Outlook: “I am not aware of anybody, even among those who feel that the protesters did something wrong, who has tried to justify prosecuting the Rvk9 on these grounds – that is, for having threatened the “sovereignty” of the Parliament.

“One can speculate about paranoia among those responsible for the charge, namely the Speaker of the Parliament, its administrative chief, and the prosecutor. The prosecutor and the Chair are political allies and personal acquaintances, and the prosecutor, in fact, has strong ties to the Parliament, since she served as a substitute MP for a few years twenty years ago, in addition to being the current chairman of the board of the Central Bank, elected by Parliament. In many people’s opinion, this should disqualify her as a prosecutor here, since Parliament is, in part, a party to the case. The judge, however, dismissed that objection when it was raised by the defendants.”

And the speculations of “paranoia” and “political motive” behind the charges don’t seem unfounded for most, especially those deeply entrenched in the case. Magnus Helgason says: “It has emerged that the bureau chief was behind the charges, but it is difficult to believe that he was acting alone, and that the decision was not made in consultation with or on the behest of the office of the speaker of parliament. The charges are obviously political, and it is clear the highest levels of the bureaucracy and political elite wanted to send a clear message to protesters. They understood that the corrupt world of nepotism, good-old boys networks and back-room deals, built up over decades of conservative rule had collapsed as the financial bubble popped, and that the people wanted change. Those who were invested in the corrupt old order were understandably afraid and shocked .”

Ms Juliusdottir defends: “I am surprised by these accusations from their very start! In my mind there has been no political pressure towards this case, either to direct it or to bring it up.”

Whether the claims of “political motivation” can be validated or not, there is widespread opinion that the decision handed down by the District Court was hardly a victory. Mr Helgason, who was present during the verdict, recounts: “The court ruling was strangely anti-climactic. The judge read the ruling fast while mumbling and those present did not even fully realize that he was reading the ruling. Then he rushed off. It was very surreal.”

“On the surface it might appear as a victory – that the nine are all found innocent of the most serious charges, and that only four are sentenced for what are, for the most part, very innocent charges. However, this is at best a partial victory. The court found it necessary to sentence some of the accused of some offences, rather than simply dismiss the entire case. This seems to be so that the prosecution can save face and does not need to admit that its case was, at the core, built on sand.”

Article 100 – Used After 50 years

Inspite of the serious charges of article 100 being dropped, it does not seem to have curbed sentiments against the government for not undertaking appropriate action during the financial storm of 2008. If nothing, the Reykjavik 9 case seems to have fuelled such sentiments. Such a serious charge against peaceful protesters undertaking an action guaranteed by their constitution has been met with stern condemnation from the masses.

Mr Steingrimsson says: “One significant difference is that in 1949 [when article 100 was used to charge] the proposed participation by Iceland in NATO polarized the nation, which would last for decades to come, whereas in 2008-9, people of all political persuasions were thoroughly dismayed and disgusted by the entire political establishment.

Mr Helgason explains: “Another difference is that in 1949, the government had organized, deputized and armed with batons, a group of young conservatives who assisted the police in dispersing the crowd. The crowd reacted by throwing cobblestones. Some of the protesters were later convicted under the article 100 for “attacking parliament” as this was interpreted as an attack with a deadly weapon: The protesters had taken up arms against the Parliament and its defenders.”

Mr Steingrimsson feels that this makes for an important difference between the two cases: “As one of the defence lawyers in the case of the Rvk9 pointed out, not only did the Rvk9 not act violently, they were not armed and carried nothing that could be construed as a weapon”.

Many have also found it strange that the events of December 8th are by no means the only serious confrontation of the protests during the winter of 2008-9. It angered the people further when it came to light that the December 8 protests of the Reykjavik 9 was a protest on a much smaller level as compared to many more. “For example, on November 22 2008, a group of several hundred protesters had gathered in front of the headquarters of the Reykjavik Police,” recounts Mr Helgason . “A protester, who during one of the large mass demonstrations the week before, hoisted the flag of “Bonus” a discount grocery stores on the flagpole of Althingi. Bonus is owned by Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, one of the most infamous corporate “vikings.” This protester was not arrested for the act of hoisting this flag, as the police could not prove that he had hoisted the flag because the crowd had helped him get away. He was however arrested for not paying an unrelated fine, but nonetheless, people saw it as a retribution for the flag incidence He later won a court ruling court ruling that proved that his arrest had been illegal, further strengthening the suspicion that this was an act of retribution.”

Further, he explains that the demonstration in front of the police station “got very agitated” and a part of the group “managed tobreak through the front doors of the station”. The police were able to gain control of the situation, but nobody was arrested.

“The most significant protests took place during January 19-21, 2009,” explains Mr Steingrimsson. “They started when Parliament reconvened after the winter break, with people assembling outside the parliament building when the MPs entered. This then continued throughout the day, and the following night, and didn’t stop until it became clear that the government would resign. In fact, the centre of Reykjavik was taken over by protesters, who lit bonfires that were kept alive throughout.”

“Although several people were arrested during the protests in January, no charges [were made against these protesters] with a crime, which makes the case of Rvk9 stand out in even starker contrast, because it’s become abundantly clear that their protest was very peaceful in the sense that they did not resort to any violence, whereas there were many other situations where violence, even if minor, broke out, without anybody being charged.”

A spokesperson from the Althingi refused comment, stating: “People are still waiting to see if there will be an appeal. The Speaker at the time [2008] and his successors have refrained comment on this situation. The latest news is that the defendants’ lawyers are waiting to judge whether they would appeal to the Supreme Court.”

Rvk9 Verdict Clouds ‘New Iceland’

After the financial collapse in Iceland, there has been sufficient debate about the need for a ‘New Iceland'; one free from corruption and “incompetence” that caused the collapse.

“Sadly, apart from the scathing, but extremely thorough and convincing report of the parliamentary commission charged with investigating the causes of the crash, not much has changed for the better in Icelandic government and business dealings,” Mr Steingrimsson explains regretfully. “In particular, we can see with the case of the Rvk9, the ugly side of power. This brings back memories of the deeply divisive and oppressive political climate during much of the latter half of the last century.”

He believes that to many people, this is one more sign that “there will be no ‘New Iceland’”. “Although the state, through the prosecutor, had its most outrageous charges thrown out, it [has] still succeeded in what seems to have been the goal; namely to show the citizens that they can’t exercise with impunity the rights they are supposedly accorded in the constitution,” states Mr Steingrimsson

“It is hard to say whether the general public will be engaged in this in the future, but it is clear that many of those who have been most vocal in voicing their demands, and hopes, for a “New Iceland” have seen them dashed by how the establishment closes ranks against those who want to see substantial change in how the country is run by cliques of power and money.  This is just one of many signs that the old elite’s grip on power and money is not loosening at all, but rather being fiercely defended.”

However, Ms Juliusdottir disagrees: “Of course I don’t think that this case could dampen the country’s future. However, I do think that the publicity of the case has been out of proportion. People were angry and were attacking the parliament building. This needs to go to the courts to be tried.”

Disagreeing that the Reykjavik 9 have many supporters, she maintains that the “main reason” that the population were “upset” was because the Reykjavik 9 case “was the first to be tried after the fall of the banks”.

“People were angry that this case went the furthest. They were waiting for bigger cases to appear in court but the process is lengthy and many have had to wait. I feel that with the people, I feel their anger.”

It’s not simply lengthy waiting periods that have troubled the people of Iceland, especially the nine accused. It needs to be brought to light that those fined and sentenced to suspended jail terms have to pay for a large amount of their own defence, if not all. This roughly translates into almost two months of pay for each.

“We are not talking about people with high paying jobs at investment banks, but students and ordinary people working low paying jobs,” explains Magnus Helgason. “Furthermore, the time that has gone into attending drawn out court hearings; all of the accused have had to spend countless hours defending themselves in court and the media , time that they could then not spend on other things, be it their families or on other work.”

At the same time, it is interesting to note that the trial of the Reykjavik 9 has served to “energize” Icelandic activists and “engage very diverse groups”. “There has formed a large, but loosely organized and connected support group around the Rvk9, encompassing people from very different backgrounds,” say Mr Helgason “This group would never have formed had it not been for the prosecution”

Mr Steingrimsson reaffirms, “In the beginning, the Rvk9 saw little sympathy, and there was not much concern among the general public. This changed, slowly but surely, throughout the process, with the government steadily losing ground as it became clear how absurd the charges were, and how the Speaker, Bureau Chief and even the prosecutor lied outright about their part in the case.”

“The head of the Social Democratic Alliance had famously remarked that those unhappy with the government were “not the people”. But gradually it has dawned on the government that they could not hang onto power and that the protests were not going away,” concludes Mr Steingrimsson.

The Reykjavik 9 have drawn intense national media coverage. Unfortunately, it didn’t draw the same amount of coverage outside of the country and many feel that the lack of reportage on this case perpetrated the trial. However, it is hoped that future attempts against constitutional rights, not just in Iceland but elsewhere, should receive the importance that it deserves, in order to call governments to accountability.

For more details, please visit: www.rvk9.org/in-english/

TheFreshOutlook.Com

Since the verdict declared on February 16, support for the Reykjavik 9 has been growing, and the case seems far from over; the question now remains whether the four who have been sentenced will appeal to the Supreme Court of Iceland against the judgement by the Reykjavik District Court.

The Fresh Outlook’s Managing Editor, Shayoni Sarkar, continues to speak to key figures surrounding the Reykjavik 9. In an exclusive interview, Saving Iceland, a network of people from different nationalities championing the causes of the country, speaks about the Reykjavik 9.

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Shayoni: Can you explain Reykjavik 9? How do peaceful protests end up facing charges of ‘threatening the government’?

SI: Reykjavik 9 is a group of nine people that took part in one action together with 20 other people on December 8, 2008. That action was entering the Parliament. That might sound like a big deal but it is not in Iceland because it is a constitutional right that every citizen can go to the public gallery of the Parliament and listen to the members of it. The action was, as I understand, totally unorganised, but people seem to have heard about it by word of mouth. The reason why nine of the 30 people ended up being charged for “attacking” the Parliament amongst other accusations is that the government had to punish someone for what happened that winter [after the country faced a banking collapse in 2008] and these 9 people were the perfect culprits. The case stinks of political persecution.

Shayoni: These accusations have been alleged to stem from ‘paranoia’ amongst those in charge. What is your comment on this? There are speculations that the Speaker and prosecutor are ‘political allies’, so-to-speak, how does this affect the case?

SI: In Iceland, the people in power are all connected: friends, political allies, blood related, or all of it. So relations like the one you mention is nothing that we are not used to. But of course, it is obvious that the whole case is a revenge of the power elite that want to give the people here in Iceland an example as to how they will be punished in the future for protests and actions against the structures of the government.

Shayoni: This wasn’t the only protest, several others also protested about the 2008 financial crisis. There have also been significant protests in January 2009. How is it that none of the other protests face such charges while the RVK9 do?

SI: It was easy in the RVK9 case to pick out 9 people and say that they took part in something violent since there were so few witnesses of the action, except the ones that took part in it themselves and the police and the guards of the parliament. So, the RVK9 were perfect to punish for the whole uprising of thousands of people in the winter 2008 and 2009. No one else has faced charges.

Shayoni: Can you explain the mood of Iceland’s citizens after the banking sector collapsed? How did the government react?

SI: It seems like the government was in a total panic after the economic collapse. They were also desperate to save their asses, personally and politically. The image that the government had been feeding its citizens had collapsed with the economic collapse. So, the government were facing very angry people that had realized that they had been lied to for a long time. Many people were afraid and didn’t know what to believe and what to do. That made the situation unpredictable.

Shayoni: Considering that the Reykjavik 9 were informed a year later that they were to be charged according to Article 100; how did this news go down with not just the accused but the Icelandic population in general?

SI: The Icelandic government’s tactic to uncomfortable situations, questions or issues is silence. The government did not properly answer who, inside of the Parliament, was responsible for [instigating] the charge. A lot of people in Iceland were sure that RVK9 must have committed a crime since they were being accused of one. Even though the power structures have shown how they [laws and legal charges] are a tool used against the lower classes, even then most people still believe that some of it must work properly. But after this case, I think many have changed their minds about it.

Shayoni: The Speaker, in a letter, condemned the ‘violent’ nature of the protests. Subsequently, the evidence did not portray any scenes of violence, particularly camera phone footage. How did the Speaker try to justify her position?

SI: Silence is her answer.

Shayoni: What controversies surround the situation at the moment (i.e. security footage, police brutality, etc)? Are there any specific angles you feel have not been represented enough? Is there anything of interest that might not have been reported in the media or escaped proper reportage which would lend the story a different perspective?

SI: For this question, I would direct you to the English blog from the trial: www.rvk9.org/tag/trial/

Shayoni: Do you feel that if there had been enough media force, both in Iceland and internationally, this trial wouldn’t have gone ahead as it did and would the government have been held further to account for its actions?

SI: There are two big newspapers in Iceland; the editors of both wrote editorials against the accused. According to that, they intended to steer the discussion to the direction of condemnation towards this political judgement, not only by the courts, but also by the society.

Shayoni: The Prime Minister has expressed ‘sadness’ that this was the only trial even remotely connected to the economic climate in the country and although condemned the violence, has also made it very clear that it was in no way a ‘threat to the nation’. How did the rest of the government react and what were their reasons for continuing proceedings?

SI: The government claim that they can not interfere with any court cases. A lot of members of the parliament were pro the court case. There were only a few that were not. But that changed after the first days in the court as proceedings took place; because then it was obvious that the case was shameful for the state. After abstaining from comment about it for a whole year, the prime minister gave some populist comment about how sad it was that those nine people were the only ones that have been taken to court since the collapse but not any one of the bankers or politicians at that time.

Shayoni: What are your comments on the prosecution’s allegations that say the Rvk9 had pre-meditated ‘forced attacks’ on Parliament?

SI: In the winter of 2008-2009, a lot of spontaneous actions took place. It is a big misunderstanding that this was an organized attack on the Parliament. Most of these people didn’t even know each other.

Shayoni: How have international organizations and other countries reacted to the Rvk9 case as it surely exemplifies the suppression of democratic free speech?

SI: Mostly, alternative websites and papers abroad have talked about the case. It has been hard work to get any of the big media to show it with the slightest interest. But anarchistic web sites reacted immediately.

Shayoni: The Rvk9 have been praised for their political activism. It was the protests during that time that toppled the conservative government embroiled in the banking collapse. With protesters working towards democratic processes of election and political consciousness, it is unfair to think that they are being accused in such a manner. What is your view on this as someone who has witnessed the situation and is well-versed in it? Were the Rvk9 were targeted simply to serve as a ‘warning’ to future protesters?

SI: Yes, the RVK9 were supposed to be a warning to future protesters for sure. But the action itself, when 30 people went in the Parliament, is far from being the most daring and powerful action made that winter. The action itself also failed. The people in RVK9 claim that they would hardly remember it if they had not been charged for it.

Shayoni: How does the verdict, that has dismissed charges of article 100, affect the supporters of the Rvk9?

SI: The few people that saw something wrong with the case managed to push the truth about the case forward to the rest of the society and that changed the general attitude towards it. In the end, so many people were angry because of it that it would have probably ended up as another uprising if the RVK9 had been found guilty of attacking the Parliament.

Shayoni: After the financial storm there was to be undertaken a concept of a ‘New Iceland'; is this not a complete irony considering how the Rvk9 are being charged?

SI: The concept of a ‘New Iceland’ does not exist as a result of a revolution in spirit or structures; it is just one more attempt of the Icelandic government to hide the truth from its citizens and keep on doing their business in their same old way but under a new, but false, flag.

See also the SI analysis and declaration of solidarity with the RVK: A Spade is a Spade, Repression is Repression

The Social Forum Journey

Is there a possibility that we can see a new era in the struggle against repression? While repression according to many reports are growing in Europe and the world with widening social gaps there are also some changes in the way repression is organized and counteracted. Rightly addressed the situation gives new possibilities for solidarity and uniting movements that hitherto were kept separate thus building a base for democratizing society.

The 18th of January a trial starts in Reykjavik against 9 activists accused of crimes against a law protecting the parliament. The crimes can give maximum life sentences which on Iceland in practice is 16 years in prison. At minimum this crime will give 1 year in prison. In reaction to the trial 705 persons have claimed guilty to the same act. As Iceland is a small country with 320 000 inhabitants this means that if the same mass protest would occur in Germany 200 000 people would have signed a statement that they also deserve to be put to trial threatened by at least one year or a life sentence.

The scale of this mass protest should not be underestimated, nor the political situation in which it takes place. It can tell us something about the nature of the present parliamentarian system, the relation to economy and the way to organize movements and solidarity today. The action inside the parliament took place at the beginning of popular protests on Iceland against the economic crisis. Every week there were the so called casserole actions were at most 8 000 people participated. The police used tear gas against the protesters for the first time since 1949 when the Icelandic politicians allowed the US to establish a military base on Iceland and then the country joined NATO. On 8th of December 2008 some 30 people went to the parliament in an attempt to make an action on the balcony. The parliamentary guards and one policemen on duty stopped them but two were able to get up to the balcony making a statement in a hurry that they did not trust the parliament saying quickly: “Get the fuck out! This house no longer serves its purpose!”

In a very well documented brochure about the case and the political and economic situation on Iceland made by a Icelandic solidarity committee with the Reykjavik 9 the content of the shouting is commented laconically: ”Even those who might have disagreed at the time, have since been forced to concede that this analysis was quite correct. Forty days later, in January 2009, mass protests succeeded in ousting the right-wing Social Democratic-Conservative government and forcing a new election. That was the first time in Icelandic history that public protests actually achieving something as dramatic”.

During the action the police arrested some of the people in the hallway and outside the building with some minor scuffles and nothing more dramatic happened. The defendants have been accused of causing harm to one guard in the back but the security cameras shows that it was another guard who was clumsily shoving demonstrators around who caused the problem so the charge was dropped. No violent attempt can be shown – on the video cameras not even one raised fist can be seen. The action was a peaceful protest.

The attempt at criminalizing a peaceful protest comes timely as many parts of Europe and the world are hit by an economic crisis while those countries that seem to escape from problems have postponed the real contradictions by in practice putting all tax payers money into a guarantee for bankers to keep on speculating. It is in the interest of every undemocratic government that want to suppress questioning of their way of handling the economic crisis to criminalize and divide any opposition instead of allowing protests to politicize questions.

The economic crisis was most dramatic on Iceland and so were the way of protesting. It built on a modern combination of mass participation and smaller activists circles formulating more forward looking demands while the different strands of the movement both had the capacity of arguing and organizing emotional activities combining what is necessary to win a struggle at two times. First by ousting the parliament and then by protesting against a bad deal made by the new left wing government enabling somewhat better conditions for Iceland.

On the other hand if the repression becomes to dramatically in conflict with juridical norms and common sense the legitimacy not only of the Icelandic political system but also of all similar European states will be in danger. This we have already seen in the case of the climate summit protests were the political parties and media competed with each other to to stamp all protests and especially those at the UN conference building as violent causing the mass arrest of two thousand innocent people and a trial against preventively arrested spokes persons of Climate Justice Alliance. The trials turned out into tragicomic farce until the last trial resulting in 4 months prison for spokespersons arrested at the spot for the action. But the struggle is not necessarily over and the result all in all so far is a loss of legitimacy for the state. The climate summit case can be used to step up struggle against repression if different strands of the movement find ways to use the loss of legitimacy caused by the court decision that the mass arrests were illegal and the preventive arrests were aquitted.

In the Icelandic case the spiral downwards for the political system is much worse and the case is developing into the end of all basis for the legitimacy of the present political system and its capacity to maintain trust in the country and among people. In short the combination of the most dramatic economic crisis with a small society lacking possibility to professionalize and formalize a conflict means that the very basis of common sense necessary for every society and its relations with others is rapidly brought to the forefront by the way different actors relate to the trial. The trial is thus turning into a story possible to understand for everyone and thus it becomes a night mare for all the professionals trying the administrate society from privileged positions in the courts, parliament, mass media or business or other organizational head quarters. A modern Icelandic Saga is developing in front of our eyes and so far they are doing nothing more than make the story better for every turn of events, in such a speed that hopefully a tragic outcome for the accused can be avoided.

Maximum in total 144 years against maximum 2 years

There are of course the more obvious contradictions between how those who caused and made profit out of the crisis and those that protested to stop it are treated in the courts. The tragedy caused to many that had to pay for the profits made by the few have so far not resulted in one single trial. A special commission have been set up by the parliament and finally it has been decided to press charges to only one public official Geir Haarde, Iceland’s prime minister before and during the collapse, for incompetence and negligence in public Office. If found guilty, the maximum sentence Haarde faces is two years jail. Bankers might be charged later.

A country that has caused severe damage not only to its own citizens but also to many foreigners by allowing its parliament to elect public officials that allowed the bank system to run wild has to watch out. It is not clever if it threatens those that started stopping the corrupt economic system which the politicians allowed or even worse promoted with in total 144 years in prison at maximum and minimum 16 years while one the side of those responsible for allowing the damage in total maximum 2 years in prison is asked for. Such a country is a shame to itself and the world.

So the politicians have built a trap to themselves, if they continue as they have done so far insisting on the the need to see that what the activists did as a severe threat they will come in conflict with how Iceland is seen as a nation not taking its responsibility for the economic damage they have caused severely while instead blaming the victim, those wanting to stop the damage. If they give in they will get the opposite problems showing that they cannot be trusted as they have been pushing the wrong arguments to long. In a domestic situation this might be possible to handle but in the present economic crisis what happens on Iceland has international implications both on the economic field as well as the field of political culture and repression. As Iceland is not scrutinized regularly abroad the politicians can get away for a long time as if their acts are of no great concerns but when they become more obvious to the rest of the world which will happen during the trial then the situation will rapidly change. This makes the situation out of control and who will be able to tell the best story then have the chance to get support.

Defendant not allowed to participate in the hearing

Then we have the judicial system. This issue places Iceland outside any civilized country. The judge cannot even see to that defendants are allowed to participate in the hearing against themselves as the police without the judge interfering stopped them from participating one time and continue to make problems for them to enter the hearing. The defense lawyer Aðalsteinsson has pointed at this stating the severe consequences for the trial. The judge can not be considered impartial – by handing all authority in the case to the police, by not attempting to keep the police in line, by not reacting to incidents where the police stopped defendants from entering the courtroom and by not taking any measure to keeping it from happening again the judge has shown that he considers the defendants dangerous and violent criminals who do not deserve a fair hearing in an open court of law. Aðalsteinsson has made repeated formal complaints which the judge has refused to hear – he has also appealed these to the supreme court, which has similarly dismissed them.

Media full of lies about non-existing violence

The media have also been mass producing stories about violence and then refusing to tell the truth when they were exposed as lies. The police and guards claimed that the demonstrators were violent and the media was full of such stories causing a climate around the trial which asks for strong verdicts. The problem was that the claims were false from the very beginning. The violence that the guard accused the demonstrators for was caused by themselves which could be seen on the video tapes from the parliament and the demonstrators were not intenting any violence. These facts were silenced in the media as the Icelandic massmedia have lost its interest in spreading news and instead chose to spread false rumours. Journalist on Iceland are as much a joke as the professionals in the juridical system.

A political system dismantling itself

A key to the modern state is the hierarchic order of those organisations that are supposed to be responsible for its functioning like political parties or the government or the secretariat of the speaker of the parliament. The head of an organization is responsible for what the organization does, that is self evident and if not so, then the whole idea of the present political system dismantles itself. There are of course other responsible models for organizing but also in another more horizontal system there is a clear responsibility shared and if not so there is no horizontal organisation either. Above all whether we have a formal hierarchic democratic order or an informal horizontal democratic order, in both cases there has to be respect for democracy as the overarching value meaning that in principle all men are equal and thus those acting in any democratic order are doing this to serve, not to be above the people. On Iceland that by some measures can be seen as having among the longest lasting democratic traditions on earth with the parliament Alþingi that have been existing for a thousand year putting the basis of the democratic order in jeopardy is a serious matter. This can be caused from the outside, but also from the inside.

The highest democratic post in Iceland, the speaker of the parliament Ásta Ragnheiður have caused a rupture in the core of the heart of formal democracy in Iceland. She claims on the one hand that she and the parliament have nothing to do with the trial. This in response to the petition made by 705 people claiming that there is something wrong when they have done the same thing inside or outside the parliament as those accused but on other dates and then only nine are selected as scapegoats. Ragnheiður gives the general answer that should be given by a speaker of parliament in any country with division of power between the judicial system and the political. There are only some problems. The judicial system did not make anything out of the action were the nine participated. It was first when the general secretary of the parliament told them to do so and even pointed at what paragraph to chose including the one with extreme penalties of minimum 1 year in prison that the prosecutor started to open the case.

But this is not the only way Ragnheiður causes problem to herself and the parliament. She is also among those that have accused the defendants for many things. In response to a parliamentary inquiry, she stated that the Reykjavík Nine, and the other protesters who entered the house of parliament that day had “forced their way into the house of parliament,” that they “overpowered” staff and guards and generally behaved in a “violent” and “threatening” manner. According to her, it was “obvious” that the group had “no compunction about using force to get into contact with members of parliament.” She stated further that this was caught on the surveillance camera giving her statement a more sense of objectiveness.

The problem here are twofold. On the one hand she states mainly things she has not seen, or at least at the occasion when she made the statement could not be controlled by others as the surveillances tapes not yet were public. Once they became public it was clear that the kind of claims made by her and many others were false. Both our judicial system and the bible claims you should not bear false witness against your neighbour. By using her powerful position as speaker of the parliament interpreting the surveillance tapes in such a distorting manner due to inability to judge them properly or listening to others false version she has dishonoured her post as Speaker of the parliament and given a view from the side of the organisations that supposedly have been under such heavy attack according to the general secretary that at least one year in prison should be the punishment, which with the false statement about what happened made by the speaker becomes more underpinned on loose ground.

Ragnheiður also stressed that the protesters had entered Alþingi through “the back door.” This especially interesting as it puts in question whether the speaker of parliament respects the people she represents and if she bear false witness also on this point. From the perspective of the MPs the notion back door is understandable, as they can use what they call the front door. The problem here is that the only way citizens can enter the parliamentary building is through what the MPs call the back door but for the people electing the parliament is the only front door. By using the word back door about the only door that those the MPs are supposed to serve can enter also in public addressing the people shows disrespect. Furthermore the concept back door have the general connotation that one goes there to sneak in rather than going proudly through the public entrance. The way the Speaker of the parliament uses the term back door shows disrespect for the public and the serving role of the parliament as well as intended or unwillingly questioning in a false way the openness in the way the demonstrators entered the building.

Thus have the speaker of the parliament put herself and her institution in a downward spiral going against its own principles, the bible and the trust in democracy serving the people. As there are so many contradictions her the way out is problematic without a clear commitment to the basic principles of maintaining a society, tell the truth.

To make it simple she could say: ”It is of importance that the parliament is separate from the judicial system and this is why I am correct when I do not accept an appeal about the courts made to me or the parliament. But as  the main responsible for the parliament I should have known that it is we ourselves that have broken against this principle and I shall immediately see to that we apologize for this to restore the trust in our democratic system. As this already has caused a possibility for damage to the judicial system by making people unequal to the law and those committing the same crime or worse at other occasions get free while those making the action on December 8 are targeted as the only ones to be put on trial I can only state that I recognize this as an unwanted problem possibly due to our interference against our democratic principles.

In general I also want to add that this is of utmost importance to Iceland as a small country. There are the risk in such a country that politicians or others might influence the judicial system in an informal way which is a threat to the integrity of the judicial system and thus to democracy. This makes it so more important to avoid the kind of formal request made by functionaries of the parliament to the prosecutor which now happened. We cannot allow this in the future as it makes the trust uncertain in our capacity to keep not only the judicial and political system separate but also other systems as the economical.

Concerning my statement in the parliament I claim that I felt threatened during the action. But the facts about acts made by the demonstrators as violent with reference to the surveillance tape were wrong. It was bad that I in this way was spreading false witnesses about other people and I have no excuse for this. As politicians we were and are still under big stress but so were also others in Iceland and those effected abroad. I felt threatened at the time of the action which might have carried me away when I heard about what the surveillance tape showed. It is of importance to differ between what you feel and how you act. This is precisely what we demand from people in a democracy when they protest. It is the content which should be important and if necessary sharp, not the way you act. When I allowed my feelings to give a false view on how the demonstrators acted I lacked the disciple which I demand from those protesting against the parliament. To regain the needed respect for each other in a democracy I see it as important to explain to each other why we act as we do and I am willing to sit down and discuss this matters with all concerned to rebuilt trust. I will also propose a change of the use of the word back door to public entrance.”

1976

Other politicians are also deeply involved making the down ward spiral a strong possibility. It is only a minority in the social democratic and redgreen party that have opposed the kind of version of what happened that the Speaker of the parliament presented. What politicians and media alike is claiming is that nothing of this magnitude ever happened before in Iceland except for the last and then the only time when the law was used in 1949 four years after Iceland was liberated after Danish rule against those protesting at the parliament against membership in NATO.

But the same kind of action as that made by the Reykjavik 9 and their fellow demonstrators took place in 1976 inside the parliament through the same entrance as this time. People then were storming the bench for visitors and making a human shield around one person who read a statement protesting against a change in students loan to the assembled and thus disrupted MPs. They refused the orders of both guards and policemen resulting in some minor scuffles. The student reading the speech became a leading social democratic politician and is today foreign minister. In January 1993 the same thing happened again, this time against membership of EU.

By claiming that nothing similar ever happened in Iceland and this makes the extreme possible punishment necessary and a hard verdict understandable of no concern for those not understanding this uniqueness in the Icelandic tradition many politicians runs into a problem. The actions 1976 and 1993 are documented and for an outside observer fully possible to compare. As the surveillance cameras has been looked at and the stories told about violence by many have been proven to be false the situation is now drastically changed. The level of violence during the action is not existing or so low that there is no way to present to outsiders that the actions 1976 and 1993 not are similar. It is only compared to the false rumours about the action 2008 that there are some difference.

The problem here also becomes twofold. On the one hand many politicians will get the same problem as the speaker of the parliament as their story about earlier actions are not correct. They can as the speaker is advised by me to do openly state that they were mistaken or the modern saga gets one more chapter to present to the world about lying and telling the truth o Iceland. But there is also the problem of the destruction of trust on each other if the only way to stand up for truth today is that what happened by chance got caught on a video camera. A society needs to be built on trusting each other. The kind of very strong statement about the lack of any similarity with what happened now with what happened earlier or the use of violence by the Reykjavik 9 when it was not the case becomes a way were the whole basis for our society is cracking. Already in the first case it is a problem when the guards and the police have lost so much control of their ability to observe what happens that they claim that the demonstrators is causing the violence when it actually is one in their own ranks who in spite of being a professional is using so much excessive force that he hurts his colleague. When many starts to believe this story and then the video shows that it is not correct this puts in question not only the version from the police and guards this time but also when the camera is not there. If they cannot make a correct observation when the camera is on, what are their inability when it is not there. But in the case of the politicians claiming that what happened earlier is totally different the case is worth. They have not been in the middle of the confrontation which sometimes can be an excuse for the police and guards making it harder to make an unbiased description. When they build their view on totally difference between earlier actions and now on the false witnesses and not the new version after the videos became public they can maybe survive this when the media do not present the new facts to the Icelandic public but they cannot tell the rest of the world their view as observers from the outside tend to look at facts.

Nordic law 1243: Truth! 2011: Power?

Iceland has the same base as other Nordic countries were the law is considered by people in common as important to follow and at the same time is supposed to be understandable and built on a higher value. This higher value was formulated already in 1243 in the Code of Jutland, a province in Denmark. This law is still used in juridical argumentation and known by people in common in Denmark. Iceland is building on the very same tradition. The law has two essential parts. The first being ”By law shall the land be built.”. Here comes the strong arguments for extreme punishment against anyone breaking the peace in the parliament which was also a reason for the very strong reaction among many Danish organizations against protesting against the UN conference by any non-violent action at the conference centre during the climate summit COP15. The second is equally important – ” There is no law to follow as good as truth”.

The speaker of the parliament and many other politicians have completely lost this second tier underpinning both the judicial system and the whole society. By neglecting 750 years of traditions that have kept the Nordic societies together they are on the brink of destroying the core of society which is the trust built when telling truth to each other.

The upward spiral

There is also an upward spiral, a hopeful one were we all can participate. The good spiral of telling the truth and acting together in solidarity. The key here is presence, being by the side of the accused at the hearings and then organizing and action telling the truth that also you and other made the same act. Documenting all aspects and make it know to the world. I have seldom seen such a well documented and well organized solidarity campaign as the one organized in Iceland. The repression of the solidarity have caused the upward spiral to get even stronger. When the police did not allow interested to come into the room of the hearing this caused only more protests. When media first told about the use of violence and then not about the video showing this was not true, this became one more argument for continuing the fight. Organizing that mix of activities necessary for an upward movement, concerts outside the parliament, art exhibitions, own media, contacts with other movements and supporting the families that have been put under pressure by the accusations of heavy crimes.

Here everyone outside Iceland also can contribute. Iceland is a small country dependent on the rest of the world. But it is important in the development of the economic crisis and the only country in Europe were the people have been able to change government after strong protests. When the politicians, media and courts try to create extreme punishment for some activists it is not only an attempt at criminalizing a whole Icelandic movement. It is also an attack en every one questioning the present economic model were the Icelandic movement have showed us all that there are possibilities to win some victories in this fight.

They need our support because their struggle is ours. You can find ways to do something on the link below to Icelandic websites with information in English. Actions at Icelandic embassies or spreading information about the trial are welcome as well as any other support. Below you also find extract of the solidarity statement made by the Icelandic environmental movement Saving Iceland, one of the strongest supporters of the Reykjavik 9.

The author is active in friends of the Earth, Sweden

Follow the protests on the Reykjavik 9 website:. http://www.rvk9.org

See also Saving Iceland. http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/rvk9

Read the well documented »Support the Reykjavík Nine Brochure« (PDF). http://www.savingiceland.org/2010/10/support-the-reykjavik-nine-brochure/

Read the article »Attacks On Alþingi Are Of No Concern To Alþingi« at The Reykjavik Grapevine. http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Articles-Attacks-On-Althingi-Are-Of-No-Concern-To-Althingi

http://www.savingiceland.org/2010/06/a-spade-is-a-spade-repression-is-repression/

Sections of a statement by Saving Iceland:

A Spade is a Spade, Repression is Repression

Environmental network Saving Iceland declares full solidarity with the Reykjavik Nine defendants (RVK9), who face between one and sixteen years in prison for exercising their democratic right to peacefully protest against a disgraced parliament, on 8 December 2008.

These nine people have been picked out of the thousands whose protests brought down the previous government, whose corruption and ineptitude was responsible for the historical crisis Icelandic society is still being torn up by. This same government has now been confirmed by the Special Investigation Committee report (SIC – an apt acronym) as instrumental in the abuse that lead to the complete crash of the Icelandic economy; and as a major force in the severe corruption, democracy deficit and ethical crisis which have since emerged as the underlying reasons for the total failure of Icelandic democracy.

Criminalizing political opponents, even those who use non-violent civil disobedience, is an old diversion tactic used by states worldwide. This act of political repression is in glaring contradiction to the sanctimonious declarations of ‘shouldering responsibility’ and ‘taking heed of lessons’ paid by the parties responsible for the crisis. …

The case against the RVK9 is a blatant diversion tactic executed by an utterly irresponsible power community in complete denial of the disgraceful scenario that Icelandic democracy has found itself in. We are witnessing a discredited establishment attempting to scapegoat people for protesting against a parliament that has been universally condemned as corrupt, inept and disqualified. Saving Iceland questions whether the Icelandic State will reclaim any respect for its institutions, particularly by destroying the lives of these nine individuals and their families?

The severe irregularities in Icelandic society are no news to the Saving Iceland network. When Icelandic society was in the grip of the greed frenzy that lead to the collapse, we were among the very few who stepped forward to expose and challenge these developments. As a result we experienced both vilification by the Icelandic corporate media and political persecution by the Icelandic courts and police.

The present ‘left wing’ government is not only continuing the culture of political repression, but is actually significantly increasing it. Now the state intends to take revenge with hefty prison sentences. This is in retaliation for what really only amounts to a benign act of non-violent civil disobedience. The underlying justification of this repression is that of a deterrent against further civil disobedience.

Saving Iceland would like to call the urgent attention of international human rights and civil liberties NGOs to the attack on the legislated rights of protesters in Iceland. These rights are both constitutionally and internationally legislated.

….

Nine protesters on trial for entering the Iceland parliament may be jailed despite a lack of evidence against them

Nine people went on trial in Iceland last week, charged with threatening the country’s parliament – a charge that has only been used once before and that carries a maximum life sentence. They were among 30 demonstrators who entered the parliament building via the visitors’ door during a small protest in December 2008 at a time when thousands of Icelanders took to the streets to express their outrage at the government’s part in the financial crisis.

Several precedents of vocal protests on the public balcony of parliament can be found, one of which a current MP, Össur Skarphéðinsson, organised and attended in 1976. No one has been charged for taking part in such action before – not even the group who donned army camouflage and carried replica machine guns to protest against Iceland’s decision to join the EEA in 1993.

The Reykjavik Nine are charged with a violation of a paragraph that falls under the article on terrorism in the Icelandic penal code, entitled “Attack on Parliament”. In April 2005 the United Nations Human Rights Committee complained of too broad and obscure a definition of terrorism in the code. It might, the committee said, “encompass and consequently jeopardise legitimate activity in a democratic society, in particular participation in public demonstrations”.

Now these concerns have been vindicated. If we assume the law on justice to be coherent, attacks on parliament should be interpreted as a more serious crime than terrorism: there is a minimum sentence for an attack on parliament, while there is none for terrorism. However, there is no sustainable evidence of intent of any kind of attack in the case against the Reykjavik Nine, nor of any violent behaviour or even threat of violence.

The evidence amounts to nothing more than the fact that on 8 December 2008, 30 people tried to go up to the public balcony of parliament to protest, and one of them managed to say a few words from it. From this group nine individuals were picked and charged at random.

During the trial at Reykjavik’s district court last week, a group of Reykjavik Nine supporters transcribed the whole trial in a live blog. This has never been done before in Iceland, but it proved necessary, as the local media had mostly shunned the story until the trial began and relied on statements from parliament and the police authorities, which brought the action. The live blog enabled the public to read what was actually happening during the trial.

Reflecting the shock and dismay among the public at the lack of evidence and reliable testimony, the Icelandic prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, expressed her sadness at the proceedings on her Facebook profile during the trials. Possibly the most embarrassing moment of the trial was an admission by the parliamentary security manager, Guðlaugur Ágústsson. Ágústsson testified that on his own initiative he decided to copy only a fraction of the proceedings from CCTV cameras, knowing full well that the rest would soon be automatically wiped.

As the defence pointed out, the prosecution did not even manage to establish that all the accused had ever been inside the parliament building, let alone on the day in question. What the trial – and a ruling will be issued within four weeks – did establish was a deeper and more widespread understanding of the fact that the prosecution has no prima facie case. The crime the Reykjavik Nine are accused of was never committed, and there is no evidence to suggest anyone intended to commit it.

Jórunn Edda Helgadottir and Guðjón Idir are both active supporters of the Reykjavik Nine and helped to blog their trial.

“The trial of the ‘Reykjavik 9’ is an attempt to criminalise retroactively Iceland’s democratic protests in 2008 and thus depoliticise them. The defendants include Solveig Jonsdottir, the leader of Attac,” said Andrej Hunko, Member of the German Bundestag, regarding the trial of the nine Icelandic activists. “The charges are based on the accusation of an ‘offence against Parliament’. This can mean up to life imprisonment, and carries a minimum sentence of one year’s imprisonment,” explained Mr Hunko, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

It was the determined mass protests in December 2008, known as the “saucepan revolution”, which finally forced the resignation of the conservative government, which was embroiled in the banking scandal. Two days before the blockade of Parliament at the heart of the current trial, 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead by the police in Greece. Across Europe, social movements had taken to the streets.

“The charge of an ‘offence against the Icelandic Parliament’ has only been resorted to once in Iceland’s history: in 1949, when demonstrators opposed Nato accession. This demonstrates the political nature of this clause.

“However, the blockade of Parliament led to elections and political change. Instead of the accused now being threatened with prison sentences, tribute ought to be paid to their political activism,” Mr Hunk continued.

“Furthermore, since 2005 Mark Kennedy, the recently unmasked spy for the British police, had been targeting the Icelandic activists who went on to participate in the peaceful revolution. The cross-border deployment of undercover agents which has now come to light represents, in my views, a coordinated, Europe-wide campaign targeting social movements. For this reason, I have today written to Icelandic parliamentarians and the Ministry of the Interior informing them about the parliamentary initiatives in Germany regarding the illegal undercover operation involving Mark Kennedy and proposing a dialogue,” Mr Hunko said in conclusion.

____________________

www.andrej-hunko.de

http://www.rvk9.org/in-english/

The location, Nasa is one of Iceland’s biggest clubs and concerts venues, and is located on Austurvöllur, the square in front of Iceland’s parliament, where most of the biggest protests have taken place last years. The concert starts at 20:30 and entrance fee is 500 ISK.

The court procedure in the case against the Reykjavík Nine takes place on January 18th, 19th and 20th. You can follow the case on the official support website (in English here) and on Twitter. A call for a week of soliarity actions, from January 10th to 16th, was recently published worldwidely and can be read here.

In December 2008 the bullet that killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos set fire to the streets of Athens, a fire that soon spread to every city across Greece. That same December on the opposite shore of Europe, in Iceland another revolt was already under way born out of the wreckage of the economy that had collapsed that fall. In the winter of 2008, Iceland, the first ‘victim’ of this global crisis, was witness to the largest mobilization in its history. Demonstrations, mass gatherings and popular assemblies, direct action and confrontation on a daily basis and finally mass riots managed to bring down the right wing government at the time. But, just like in Greece that bullet was only one cause to a revolt that had a thousand reasons behind it, in Iceland the bubble that burst that fall was only the spark for the pent up rage and frustration resulting from two decades of neoliberal government – and well, against the political and economic system in its entirety.

As we speak, the Icelandic state threatens with imprisonment nine individuals chosen to be the scapegoats of the uprising that brought down the government in January 2009. They are the Reykjavik Nine.

On the 8th of December 2008 and while thousands of people had taken to the streets of Greek cities, in Reykjavik, Iceland, a group of 30 people stormed the Parliament in order to interrupt the proceedings and read out a statement of protest. Despite the fact that entrance to the public benches of Parliament is open to all, the police, along with the guards, blocked the entrance and detained the group on the staircase while only two of the 30 people managed to get to the benches. After some minor scuffles few persons were arrested and the rest were let go.

A year later, the authorities targeted nine out of these 30 people. The charge, among others, is that they “posed a threat to the independence of the Parliament” and the potential sentence is from one year up to life in prison!

This action was merely one out of a plethora of actions that took place on a daily basis in Iceland on the winter of 2008: mass protests, home ‘visits’ to ministers and bankers, sabotage on state property, disruptions in banks and other financial institutions, disruptions at government meetings and mass sabotage to the live TV transmission of the annual party political debate. An intrinsic part of this uprising was the evolving anarchist movement which is rooted in the years long struggle against heavy industry and the ecological disaster that has resulted from it, always in the name of “green development”. The roots of this movement became apparent when it began to adopt en mass and for the first time confrontational tactics such as the unprecedented attack on the Reykjavik police headquarters by a crowd of 500 people as a response to the arrest of an anarchist.

The revolt reached its climax on the 20th and 21st of January 2009 when thousands of people gathered outside Parliament and prevented what would be Parliament’s first session for that year. The beginning of the end for that government was marked when a newly formed group of radical students, Oskra, broke the lines of the police in front of the Parliament. What followed was 48 hours of rage and fury with noise, fire and rocks. The Christmas tree was sacrificed at the fire and every single window of the parliament building was shattered. For the first time in 60 years teargas filled the air of Reykjavik. With the police reaching breaking point there remained only two options for the state: To call in the Danish army (Iceland’s former colonizer) who had been on hold for three months in the outer harbor of Reykjavik or to dissolve the government.

The case of the RV?9 is a clear case of political persecution. The CCTV evidence brought forward demonstrates beyond doubt that the violence was that of the police and the guards. The current ‘left-wing’ government took over power in May 2009 on the backs of the grass roots movements that toppled the last government. This government is not interfering in this case not because it lacks the political will but precisely because its political will is to criminalize the radical elements of the revolt having already co-opted the revolt itself and suppressed popular demands for retribution against the politicians and bankers responsible for the crisis, of whom NONE have yet been brought to justice! Just like in other European countries ‘socialism’ seems to be the most appropriate medium for the most vicious neoliberal restructuring of the economy, in Iceland the left-wing government with the blessings of sold-out labour unions and under strict supervision of the IMF, is the one that will execute the mass cut backs, the privatizations and the sell-off of natural resources for the further development of heavy industry. All this is taking place in the name of the “crisis” and in a climate of nationalism, neo-fascism and xenophobia that has resulted from it. Note that in the recent protests ‘against the crisis’ in Reykjavik in 2010 neo-nazi groups have suddenly emerged and participated! Luckily they were attacked by anarchist demonstrators.

The final hearing in the RVK9 case is taking place in Reykjavik city court on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of January 2011. An international week of actions in support if the RVK9 have been called for the week beforwe the trial, 12th – 16th of January.

For this small island state at the periphery of Europe, any negative attention from abroad deeply hurts the authorities, the elite and the corporate media. For this reason it is imperative that we give them all the negative attention they deserve so that the Icelandic authorities know that the world is watching them, so that they know that there will be serious consequences for them at the event of a conviction for the Reykjavik Nine!

We call for ALL kinds of solidarity actions to the Reykjavik Nine and against the Icelandic state!

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

Please send pictures, statements, or other informations about actions to rvk9@riseup.net so that it can be reported on after.

A list of Icelandic embassies can be found by clicking here.

More information about the case can be found on this support site.

RVK9 in English on Twitter here.

A brand new solidarity brochure about the case of the RVK-9 was distributed at the Bookfair as well.

Watch the video below and download the brochure here. Be sure to visit the support site of the Reykjavík Nine at rvk9.org.

The nine currently stand trial, accused of having attacked the parliament of Iceland on the 8th of December 2008 and threatened the independence of the parliament.

Read more about the case and the context around it in the brochure, which can be downloaded in PDF format here, or by clicking on the picture above.

Please mail, print and distribute as widely as possible.

Click here to visit the support site for the Reykjavík Nine.

After Iceland’s three banks collapsed in October 2008 – a bankruptcy bigger than Lehmann Brothers’ in a republic of 300,000 inhabitants – the public overthrew a neoliberal government through mass protest, precipitating a general election. On election day, 25 April 2009, the conservative head of Iceland’s public radio newsroom sighed his relief: ‘Judging from the atmosphere this winter a revolution was foreseeable in spring, some sort of revolution – that something entirely different from what we are used to would take over. Now we know better.’(1)

We certainly do. Whenever someone mentions IceSave, an angel falls on an elf and they both die. That pretty much does justice to the tedium amassed as this single issue drags on: the debate about compensation for money lost by 300,000 British and Dutch depositors has stifled any more radical discourse about change in Iceland for almost a year. Totalling around 10 per cent of the debt accumulated through the ‘good years’, the IceSave saving accounts scheme was established by Landsbanki in 2007, four years after its privatization, in order to solve the bank’s liquidity problems, as investors had become sceptical about its foundations. As democracy had given way to finance, Iceland’s banks were at the time directly involved in every sphere of society. Construction of a music hall in Reykjavík city centre, the cost of which was estimated as around 2 per cent of the country’s GDP, had come to a standstill, but as soon as the IceSave accounts started luring in customers with their promise of high yields, construction began again, in full swing. (2)

Two narratives now compete for the interpretation of the situation – or more precisely, a narrative and a vision. According to the narrative upheld by the current government, it’s a story of Pinocchio getting high with Icarus: whether seduced by flat-screen televisions, large jeeps or yachts and jets (expensive drugs and prostitutes remain at most alluded to), people fell for greed and hubris. The most excessive ones ‘must do some soul-searching and many must show humility’, according to PM Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir.(3) It is time to grow up, take responsibility and compensate for the damage we did in our drunken stupor. On the other hand, the vision upheld by former mayor, former prime minister, former Central Bank manager and now newspaper editor David Oddsson, and most members of his anti-EU republican Independence Party, sets off with a gesture of dismissal: obviously something went wrong – but now is no time to dwell on the past, for Iceland is under siege! As the UK and the Netherlands demand compensation, David has found his Goliath. What this country needs, his admirers exclaim, is a Churchill!

Factually, neither account is false. Yes, those were greedy times. And yes, states seek to preserve their interests. The original IceSave contract was negotiated in June 2009 by a diplomat assisted by a young UK-educated philosopher. The government at first celebrated the conclusion, but the diplomat’s own description of the terms – ‘Iceland is taking on the sins of Europe, like Jesus on the crucifix’(4) – did not convince the public, nor the ‘unruly faction’ of the Left-Green Movement, as social democrats refer to their anti-capitalist partners in government. ‘The sins of Europe’ refers to the general understanding that as the Icelandic banks operated according to European regulation, as well as under British and Dutch surveillance, Iceland was not solely responsible for their catastrophic failure. Iceland must, however, ‘drink that bitter cup’ of restoring faith in the whole banking system, which was considered at stake. Whether seen as lack of vigour or willingness to negotiate, the eagerness to conclude the matter can in part be ascribed to, if not Schadenfreude, then at least a pseudo-Christian sense of guilt and remorse: this is what you get for succumbing to the evil right so willingly and for so long.

These two factually coherent but unsatisfying accounts remain caught in a loop of incessant but immobile talk, prolonged in January 2010 by the president’s veto of the contract known as IceSave II, and a subsequent referendum last March. This 10 per cent of the country’s debt still takes up 90 per cent of the debate. Why?

The f**k-the-foreigners law

Apart from ordinary local polemics, what makes the IceSave issue such a dilemma is Icelandic authorities’ very first reaction to the collapse of the country’s banks: in October 2008, the Independency Party-led government overnight pushed an emergency law through parliament, fully securing all deposits in local accounts, while unambiguously signalling to the UK Finance Ministry that foreign depositors would get the leftovers at best. With the legislation, known among legislators as the ‘f**k-the-foreigners law’,(5) the right-wing government made sure that local capitalists would not bear an unnecessarily hefty burden of the crisis, buying them out, as one journalist put it, of any subsequent social upheaval. The emergency legislation has mostly remained beyond debate and no one has so far had to justify the policy behind it. If the matter momentarily surfaces it is brushed off as inevitable: ‘Anything else would have caused unprecedented riots.’ In other words: You, the debt-ridden majority of no or little savings, have already joined Europe’s precarious low-wage workforce, so that the upper layers won’t get angry at us. The anger of the upper layers is of a magnitude that you cannot fathom (they have our private phone numbers), whereas your anger (noticeable only when thousands of you gather and set fire to Christmas trees) is already under control. Now, go serve the tourist industry (and don’t leave your smile at home ;-).

The referendum

On 6 March 2010, a referendum was held on an improved IceSave deal, IceSave II. Improvements included an upper limit on annual payments, set at 6 per cent of GDP. The deal was rejected by a 94 per cent majority of those who voted. The 40 per cent of voters who shunned the referendum included Prime Minister Sigurdardóttir and Minister of Finance Sigfússon. They and most of their supporters saw the process as a silly spectacle, orchestrated by the opposition, spearheaded by David Oddsson’s all but militarized daily, Morgunbladid, to divert attention from their own responsibility.(6)

Factually the vote was about details – will we accept this particular deal, with its particular interest rates and terms of payments, or will we negotiate further? However, the deal being voted on was already obsolete at the time of the referendum, as Iceland had already received yet another incrementally better offer. Voting ‘yes’ would have been absurd and so the republic’s first referendum became a purely gestural event, a spectacle of solidarity aimed at the foreign press – but solidarity against what? According to the right, against foreign oppressors, of course.

Much is at stake. The scheduled return to normality in Iceland is dependent on IMF loans, which are conditioned by traditional ‘structural adjustments’ (cuts in welfare, health etc.) and a solution to the IceSave crisis. Some also perceive the solution of the matter as a criterion for Iceland’s will and capability to participate in the EU, for which it has applied. But the anti-EU right-wing opposition is not the only opposition to the deals drafted. The ‘unruly faction’ of the Left-Green Movement has consistently opposed IMF cooperation. Their reasoning, however, does not reach a wide audience. That is not merely due to the media being pro-capital, which they are, but lies deeper. In short, Asterix has been available in Icelandic translations far longer than Immanuel Kant. Icelanders have been raised on a thorough conviction of their own singularity, a sentiment that runs deeper in public discourse than any universal ideal.(7) It is thus mainly thanks to international media and their fortunate oversimplifications that the referendum has been interpreted in terms of a universal anti-capitalist principle at all. A Financial Times leader was far from unique in warning that the UK must settle a deal, for ‘the wrath of the Icelandic public raises the prospect of citizens elsewhere refusing to pay for public debts seen as someone else’s fault’.(8) The implications of a people given legal authority to revolt against bank bailouts are explosive. What started, partly, as a misinterpretation, an exaggeration of the referendum’s factual content, has the retroactive potential to become true.

How to wash invisible hands

While this single matter all but blocks out the attention of the media, Iceland undergoes complete restructuring from top to bottom. On the one hand, the government implements IMF strategies, making severe cuts in health care and education, paving the way for the country’s first private hospital (focusing on liposuction tourism), minimizing public broadcast services, and so on. On the other hand, ‘private enterprise’ is taking care of its own. When Iceland’s banks collapsed new ones were established overnight. As Geir H. Haarde, then prime minister, declared in October 2008, ‘This is not nationalization’ – meaning, this is done purely for the sake of private interests. Funded by the state, the new banks bought the old banks’ loans at a 50 per cent discount.(9) One has already been handed over to creditors and investors; the others are set to be re-privatized as soon as possible. While the 60 per cent of businesses are at the mercy of the new banks, the government has no policy about their operations, or principled criteria for default and resuscitations. As the banks go about their business, piecemeal information gathers into a coherent image: those who already wore tailor-made suits retain the lucrative parts of business, while those who never got out of their jeans and sneakers – employed, self-employed and unemployed alike – foresee a future of paying back the infinite tailor’s bill.(10) Ministers respond that they understand people’s anger and share their grievances. However, ‘more is needed than legislation, regulation or authorial orders’, as Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir explained in her recent address to the neoliberal lobby group Chamber of Commerce: ‘Manipulation is now considered the root cause of the bank collapse’, and so the government remains ‘absolutely opposed to politicians manipulating the financial system’ this time round.

Let us make clear, before we move on to critique, that there is a world of difference between the current administration and the 1991–2008 administrations led by the Independence Party: the Independence Party and its businessmen are more akin to a highly organized criminal gang than a political party. As they held legislative power for so long, and as party members remain highly influential in business and society, it is uncertain what legal action can or will be taken – but let it suffice to describe one example, important but not unique, as a hint of the corruption at stake. When Landsbanki’s privatization was under way, in 2002, one man, Steingrímur Arason, resigned from the privatization committee, citing differences in opinion. Only after the 2008 collapse did the nature of that difference become clear: Prime Minister David Oddsson had decided, contrary to the committee’s advice, to hand Landsbanki over to his allies, father and son Björgólfur Thor and Björgólfur Gudmundsson. Whereas ‘distributed ownership’ had up to that point been a catchphrase of privatization, a new one was coined: ‘ballast-investors’. A single nautical metaphor seemingly moved the issue beyond debate. The Björgólfurs were said to have made their fortune with a beer brewery in St Petersburg, and so had the financial means to provide the required ballast. In 2009, however, it was revealed that half the purchase fee had been borrowed from the other recently privatized bank, Kaupthing, the managers of which were reluctant but gave in to political pressure. When both banks were returned, insolvent, into state hands in 2008, father and son had not paid back a single króna of the loan. In retrospect, the whole procedure amounts to an elected public official lending a bank to his friends for a few years, to have some fun – ‘go buy yourselves an English football team’. Meanwhile, the debt collected through Landsbanki’s IceSave accounts alone, the payment of which Oddsson now vehemently opposes through his newspaper, amounts to more than sixty times the purchase price the father and son pretended to pay for the whole bank in 2003. The damage done by the bank reaches further still, as has recently been revealed: a great deal of the Icelandic banks’ income in the twelve months preceding their collapse was derived from short-selling Icelandic currency – that is, essentially betting on the diminishing total worth of the Icelandic economy.(11) And diminish it did.

There is no reason to suspect the current government of any such corruption. It has, however, taken on empirically verifying Slavoj Žižek’s postulate that whereas conservative parties tend to represent some particular (old) money, social democrats are more apt to represent capital as such. Minister of Finance Sigfússon, head of the Left-Green Movement, represents the values of ardent industriousness and integrity. In spring 2009, he arrived at government negotiations driving an ageing Volvo. Meanwhile, the silent, dignified proletarian Prime Minister Sigurdardóttir serves as the symbolic guarantor of fairness – under their insignia measures can be taken that would cause outrage if accompanied with MBA portfolios and the stupid glee of their holders. But no matter how socialist their aura, the fundamental political decision not to interfere with how the insolvent banks redistribute the country’s wealth may be the biggest single act of laissez-faire implementation in Iceland’s economy yet. What remains left, as capitalism is brought back to life with injections of public funds, are compassionate utterances of grief and scolding, better defined as poetry than politics. Poetry in the pre-modern, romantic sense; poetry before Rimbaud or Walt Whitman; poetry, to paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard, as so much ornamental boo-hoo.

Letting off steam?

Kierkegaard famously elucidated the nature of poetry by analogy to an execution device: a brazen bull-shaped kettle designed for the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris. The victim was led through a door into the belly of the bull, the door shut, and fire set beneath, roasting the prisoner inside. The diabolic detail of the design, however, was a system of brass tubes attached to the bull’s head, which turned the victim’s screams into ‘the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings’.(12) Analogously, noted Kierkegaard, the poet’s agony, by virtue of his expressive nature, sounds like music to others’ ears. And, analogously still, we are all poets now. ‘The lid on the social kettle is shut triple-tight, and the pressure inside continues to build.’(13) Inside this kettle that unites us, you have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be interpreted as a boo or a boo-hoo.

In his book about the Iraq invasion, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle,(14) Slavoj Žižek employs a well-known anecdote from Freud, about a man asked by his neighbour to return a kettle he borrowed: ‘Kettle? Which kettle? I borrowed no kettle, the kettle was broken when I got it, and there’s nothing wrong with it anyway.’ In much the same way, for the last twenty or thirty years, whenever someone mentioned the kettle that confines us, when someone spoke of capitalist oppression, a neoliberal Candide would be close by to reply: ‘Kettle? What kettle? There is no kettle, and anyway it’s a necessary kettle, the best kettle you could be in, the temperature’s just right, besides there’s no way out, so why bother?’ Kierkegaard’s analogy now describes a universal situation. Inside the kettle: we, the people, linguistic creatures of flesh and blood. Outside the kettle: the abstract tyrant of capitalism, operating beyond the symbolic field, beyond the scope of words and meaning. Operating, that is, through violence.

No more Mr Niceland

In his splendidly researched Meltdown Iceland, Roger Boyes writes:

By the spring of 2009, with the days longer and wetter, Skuggahverfi [‘the subpolar Manhattan’ district of Reykjavík] had become an urban graveyard. Someone had scrawled CAPITALISM R.I.P. on the side of one of the buildings. Squatters had moved in. One group converted an abandoned house into a cozy café, the kind of place where you could strum a guitar and check your e-mails. The Reykjavikers cheerfully welcomed the return of some kind of life to Skuggahverfi. The developers, however, did not approve. So, just after Easter, the riot police were sent in, men in black, with a chain saw to hack through barricaded doors and pepper spray to disable the young squatters. The cleanup was nasty, brutal, and short: it was the official end of Niceland.(15)

As Naomi Klein argues in The Shock Doctrine, from Haiti through Chile, Iraq and China, neoliberalization has been backed up by brute physical force, at the hands of police or military forces. On 11 March 2010, the end of ‘Niceland’ noted by Boyes was clearly underlined as the public prosecutor pressed the first charges related to the 2008 financial collapse. Corruption and fraud may have all but bankrupted the country, but the people prosecuted were nine protesters, who in December 2008 entered the open public benches of parliament, presumably to make noises. Among those select nine are people who also took part in the lawless return of life to Skuggahverfi, so efficiently quenched by police. Those nine are charged with threatening the safety, autonomy and sanctity of parliament and public order, and face possible life imprisonment. There was a famous moment during the collapse of communist East Germany, when the Stalinist Erich Mielke, minister of state security – head of the Stasi – addressed Congress to convince its members that the Stasi had a singularly good connection to the public. It is November 1989. The members of congress laugh. ‘Ja, wir haben den Kontakt, ja wir haben den Kontakt’, says Mielke, agitated. As he addresses the congressmen as ‘liebe Kameraden’ some openly oppose and ask him not to use that expression. But that’s a purely formal question, objects Mielke, and then makes history with the painfully pathetic exclamation: ‘Ich liebe doch, ich liebe doch alle Menschen!’ Congress burst out in laughter. That emperor never found his clothes again.

The day after the IceSave referendum, leaders of all the country’s political parties made a thoroughly ‘Mielkian’ impression on television: almost every sentence uttered invited ridicule. What set the situation apart, however, was that no one present was capable of the mocking laughter – something taken care of by reinstating the national ‘we’ in the 2009 election. ‘The fact is’, the current leader of the Independence Party exclaimed,

‘what I’ve been trying to point out is that you’re wearing no clothes! You’re wearing no trousers, no shirt, no coat…’ As his mouth keeps talking his eyes are deeply anxious, begging as it were: please mock me, make me stop. ‘Now, that’s quite daring of you, isn’t it’ interrupts Finance Minister Sigfússon, ‘that’s very daring of a man who hasn’t worn any clothes for years, the leader of a party where no one, as it seems, has had clothes on for decades! If we are wearing no clothes, and I’m not saying this is the case, but if we are wearing no clothes, that’s your clothes that we’re not wearing. In your position, I would stay quiet.’

This effect of shared responsibility, this mutual hostage situation of critique, shows democracy at its worst, democracy as a successful means to eliminate any outside. As everyone involved has already invested in the route decided upon, there is no one around to make the truth-gesture of pointing and laughing at the naked emperor, the gesture assigned to a child in Hans Christian Anderson’s anecdote.

——–
Notes

1. Editor’s blog, www.ruv.is/heim/frettir/innlendar/kosningar/2009/blogg/meira/store807/item261997/ (link is no longer active).
2. Culture journalist Hjálmar Sveinsson noted this first: http://blog.eyjan.is/hjalmarsveinsson/2010/01/26/8/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
3. Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir at the Iceland Chamber of Commerce’s annual congress, 17 February 2010, www.forsaetisraduneyti.is/media/frettir/Vidskiptating.170210.pdf.
4. Svavar Gestsson interview with Morgunbladid, 8 June 2009. Summary: http://eyjan.is/blog/2009/06/08/svavar-thetta-er-leid-ut-ur-fataektinni-en-ekki-leidin-til-fataektar/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
5. According to historian Gudni T. Jóhannesson, in Fréttabladid, 10 March 2010: ‘if deposits in the Icelandic banks had not been guaranteed we would have faced chaos … that was among the issues at stake in the so-called emergency law, the ‘f…k the foreigners-law’ as some of those who authored it called it amongst themselves.’ http://silfuregils.eyjan.is/2010/03/10/gudni-icesave-og-rikisabyrgdin/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
6. Cf. Egill Helgason, Reykjavík Grapevine, March 2010: www.grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/How-to-Succeed-in-modern-business-Olafur-Ragnar-Grimsson-at-the-walbrook-club (accessed 13 March 2010).
8. Financial Times, 26 February 2010, www.ft.com (accessed 13 March 2010).
9. http://eyjan.is/blog/2010/03/12/lan-voru-faerd-i-nyju-bankana-a-meira-en-helmingsafslaetti-langmest-afskrifad-hja-arion/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
10. See, for example, http://eyjan.is/blog/2009/10/01/ar-lidid-fra-hruninu-audmennirnir-halda-enn-fyrirtaekjum-sinum/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
11. Around 1 trillion ISK were supposedly gained through these short positions, or €5–6 billion at current rates. http://eyjan.is/blog/2010/03/12/sedlabankinn-stod-ekki-vaktina-bankar-foru-offorsi-i-gjaldeyriskaupum-foru-gegn-landi-og-thjod/ (accessed 13 March 2010).
12. The Works of Lucian of Samosata, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905, ch. 28.
13. The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2009, http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thecominsur_booklet.pdf.
14. Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, Verso, London, 2004.
15. Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland, Bloomsbury, London, 2009, p. 186.

On the 17th of August 2010 the local court of Reykjavík will continue prehearings for the most absurd case in the country’s recent history: The first public prosecution related to the economic collapse of 2008 is not sought against any of those scores of people indicted with corruption, crimes and misdemeanours in a 3000 pages thick detailed report published by Parliament earlier this year, but against nine demonstrators, who in December 2008 entered the public benches of Parliament to read a declaration, concisely summarized in haste as ‘Get the fuck out! This house no longer serves its purpose!’. If anyone honestly disagreed at the time – there were a few – they can make no objections today that this analysis was quite correct. 40 days later, in January 2009, mass protest outed the right-wing government and election followed. Rhetorically, we are all socialists now, whatever that actually means. That winter was the first time public protest actually achieving something in Iceland’s history.

A year later someone seems to have felt it was time for retribution.

There are minor and major charges in the case aginst the nine. Some of the minor charges have simply been proven false, such as a supposed attack causing one guard’s back injuries: a video recording broadcast on public TV news, has demonstrated how the injury was actually caused by the guard’s colleague, clumsily shoving people around, and none of those currently facing charges. Other minor charges may prove as insubstantial – the video recordings show no violent intent – not a single raised fist. The major charges, however, are pressed for a breach of section 100 of the penalty law, interpreting the happening as an ‘attack against Parliament’. Now, that’s certainly something you don’t want sticking to your passport in police databases around the world. Admittedly, the only weapon involved was a single piece of copypaper, the printed declaration. And sure, the beforementioned video shows some defendents calmly hanging up their overcoats before walking upstairs to the benches, open to the public since the founding of democracy. In short, there is no evidence of violent intent, nor any intentional harm to have been done to people or property. Yet, minimalist and modest as it may be, the public prosecutor interprets the occurence as an ‘attack’, meaning that all those nine involved face a minimum sentence of one year in jail, maximum 16.

Peculiarities abound. All in all 30 people took full part in the action – why only nine of those have been charged remains unexplained. Thousands of people then wilfully and successfully halted Parliament’s functioning 40 days later, and deliberately disobeyed police orders during three consequent days and nights of protest – for which no charges have been pressed either, as would be politically disastrous for the government which thus came to be. 700 of those protesters have signed a petition demanding the prosecution will be dropped, or otherwise they should all be charged on the same grounds. The petition was handed to the president of the Parliament, who gesticulated that even if she took the papers their reception was void of meaning as the case had nothing to do with her. She, as the second-highest authority of the state, had already by then repeatedly spoken in public of the defendents’ guilt as a matter of course – a certain libel case if she were not protected by Parliamentary indemnity. More seriously still, it has turned out that as one Jón Ólafsson made characteristically modest comments on the matter in a radio interview, the president of Parliament personally called him up to urge him not to spread such doubts about the prosecution.

As the facts of the matter were set straight in the media, and it became clear to the blogosphere that no bones had been broken, no threats been made, those few but eager servants of power who still want to see some revenge for the events of 2008-2009, are lost with words. They now remain strategically silent.

Meanwhile, the case proceeds slowly. On August 17th, almost a year since charges were originally pressed, the court will rule about a claim made by a lawyer of the defendents that the case be dropped due to the investigating prosecutor’s personal relations to one of the Parliament guards involved. If the claim will be dismissed, the defense will presumably appeal to the high court. And so the case drags on and who knows when – ‘or if’, add the hopeful – witness hearings actually commence.

As the case evolves, news should be updated rather regularly here: Rvk9.org

The video mentioned above, which was shown on the national TV, can be seen here:

The artworks from the event have now been gathered and put up in an exhibition in the museum, which will last until August 14th. During that period, more events will take place there, including a panel discussion about the court case, freedom of expression, media and human rights. More information will be published soon on www.rvk9.org and www.nylo.is.

Skríllinn gegn ákæruvaldinu from Haukur Már Helgason on Vimeo.

On Thursday, July 8th at about 12:30, 20 people went to the Icelandic consulate in Barcelona to show there outrage against the Icelandic state; for there existence and there heavy repression of the 9 people of Reykjavík because of their actions at the parliament December 8th 2008. If there were any kind of true democracy their demands would have been welcomed and allowed a space. But since obviously there can never be true state democracy, the peoples demands were repressed and silenced.

It is obvious that these actions by the state of Iceland are politically and ideologically motivated. Targeting specific people out of the thousands that protested, and even out of the people who entered the parliament this particular day. In these actions it is also obvious that the government is trying to set a precedent, to squash any future dissidence and outrage that could disrupt their status quo. The repressive measures even extended to the consulate, where it seems that they asked for assistance by the most aggressive riot police in Barcelona, the Mossos.

There were more than 20 Mossos in the entrance of the building and 4 riot vans were in the surrounding block. The building which houses the Icelandic consulate has many different offices and normally only has one guard. The consulate is on the 8th floor of this building. When we arrived we were told we would not be allowed inside this building as a group, and that only one person could come inside to talk to someone that was not from the parliament itself, but a director of the building. During the demonstration, other people continuously walked inside and out from the building. When we got there, the police had told us that the consulate was closed and that some director from the building would come down to hear our demands and relay them to the consulate. After this, two people left to call the consulate, who answered the phone and had said that they were open. Then we tried to call and hand the phone to the policeman but he would not accept and kept with his position of them being closed.

We demonstrated in the streets for a little over an hour, with banners saying in Catalan, “Stop the repression against the activists in Iceland!” and “If the Reykjavik 9 fall, so will the Icelandic state!” We passed out leaflets about the repression and situation in Iceland from last winter, banged pots and pans, and shouted slogans in support of the Reykjavik 9 and anti capitalist chants. These continued repressive measures to blockade the entrance to this place that is legal to enter any other time – just like the parliament in December of 2008 – show once again that the Icelandic state will take all measures to keep their status quo, and suspend all civil rights that are even left under their state apparatus.

But what they don’t realize is that the struggle will not die, it will only strengthen. And that the Reykjavik 9 are not alone in this struggle. Your struggle is our struggle! No political prisoners! All political prisoners must be set free!

From Barcelona: Complete solidarity with the Reykjavik 9!

The president of Iceland’s Parliament Ásta Ragnheiður Jóhannesdóttir received this statement by hand on 24 June 2010.

– – –

To the Icelandic State,

Iceland is so far the only State in the West where the response of the people in the streets to the economic crisis has had direct consequences in the field of public politics: On 20 January 2009 performance, we initated, together with thousands of others, an attack on the parliament (The Althing at Austurvöllur Square). This was an unarmed attack and not made in order to cause harm to any humans – the clear and noisy deprecation towards the acting parliament, however, involved a large number of deliberate violations of laws and regulations. Thousands disobeyed the requests of the police, after the yellow ribbon that was stretched around the house was broken.

Many disobeyed repeatedly and many got into some minor fights with police officers who emptied their weapons stores in order to supress the potentially revolutionary situation. Some of us were arrested.

The aim of the attack was to achieve changes in Icelandic society, which is in deep trouble, not just because of the capital crisis that began in October 2008, but also because of what could be called earlier attacks on the parliament, attacks that were committed against the public interest for private interests of the few.

On 1 February 2009 the parlamentary majority collapsed and the government was owerthrown. Our attacks played a key role in making this happen.

The State and its instruments, particularly the judicial system and the police, know that they are helpless against such a mass movement. Holders of State power know quite well that its unsecure exixtence is built only on temporary and amendable agreement with the people from time to time.

The State, however, can not mask its fury against the people who thus forced the government to step down. The judicial system now tries to apply the well known strategy called divide and rule: On 2 March a charge was issued against a group of nine persons who are alleged to have, on 8 December 2008, violated the first paragraph of article 100 of the Criminal Code which reads: “Anyone, who attacks the parliament, so that its autonomy is endangered, sends out messages with that same purpose, or obeys such a message, shall be subject to imprisonment for not less than 1 year, and the penalty can be imprisonment for life, if the guilt is very severe. ”

The State Prosecutor tries to disguise the actual charges and facilitates the media to distract the debate, among other things by spicing the charge with other, unrelated, allegations – bitten ear and strained thumb. By applying article 100 of the Penal Code, for the first time since the public protested against Icelandic membership in NATO in 1949, the Prosecutor does not seek compensation for strained thumbs. The Prosecutor´s real intention is to send this message: The people’s intervention in State affairs is criminal activity.

By directing charges to nine relatively unknown individuals, the Prosecutor chooses an opponent that he considers himself able to deal with, and hopes at the same time to get the thousands of people from all sectors of society, who were involved in similar actions of protest, to participate in a silent accessory. This is how political persecution takes place.

We want the State to be aware that we, who participated in the opposition against the government in the winter of 2008-2009, among other things by violating the law, regard the government’s attack on the group of nine as an attack on ourselves and the thousands who protested that winter. The nine persons are our partners and allies in the struggle against the rightly labelled Masters of the police: Violent government and the oppressive capital to which the State provides its services. Our solidarity will not be broken by selecting nine from the group, or four, or one.

We insist that the State should waive the charges against the group of nine. If the Prosecutor thinks he lacks a reason to change policy in this case, it may, for example, be taken into consideration that at the time of the attack a serious threat the autonomy of the Parliament was not posible, due to the fact how holders of wealth and power had already undermined this very autonomy by successful attacks from within. The Prosecutor could also look to a long standing tradition of not pressing charges for individual incidents in trade conflicts.

Otherwise, we expect the Prosecutor to show the consistency to release charges against anyone who attacked the parliament during the winter 2008-2009, including us who sign this Statement.

– – –

See Saving Iceland’s own declaration of solidarity with the Reykjavik Nine and the Reykavik Nine homepage.