Syndicate: Fw: Welcome Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic!

[Arthur Bueno <abueno@v2.nl>]

Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 22:58:59 +0200
From: IndyMedia Italia <italy@indymedia.org>
Subject: Welcome Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic!

     WELCOME MINISTRY OF INTERIOR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC!
     Indymedia Italia intercepts the czech police
     and writes an open letter to Prague and the czech politicians.

     http://italy.indymedia.org
     mailto:italy@indymedia.org


At 8:53 (Prague Time) of September 15 the Ministry of Interior of the
Czech Republic visited the Indymedia Italia website from the host
mvcr.cz, that is running also the site www.mvcr.cz.

We hope that the czech police has been able to read all the italian
content and to enjoy the flavours of a mediterranean independent
medium. We are glad to be monitored from an institution devoted to
protect order and normalisation in the Czech Republic since the age
of the communist regime.

Are times really changed? The present police chief was a member of
the Communist Party and now he is working together with FBI to
organise police forces like once he worked with the Red Army. From
the White Mountain battle, sadly the Prague karma is used to be slave
of a foreign powerful country.

We would like to remember to the Ministry of Interior that Indymedia
is not an organising tool for mobilisation and protests, but only an
information medium to cover cultural diversities and global activism.
In the same way Indymedia is not a propaganda tool, simply we offer
spaces and tools for free expression and free information. We are not
the 'Pravda' (or the 'Rude Pravo') of the global movement.

Indymedia Italia has not direct information about the italian
partecipation into Prague 2000, but we think it will be non-violent
(if the police wants to know that). We think that activists coming
from all the world are not in Prague to face police and FBI but to
demonstrate their *constitutional* right to protest WTO/IMF financial
policies. Those activists will ask the Prague population, including
policemen's families, if they likes to follow IMF/WTO policies and
become as poor as Russia. After the Communist regime Prague has seen
more wealth, but the IMF/WTO is going to make east europe as poor as
once.

It is odd that the biggest movement featuring a really united
european spirit is that youth movement protesting the big financial
institutions, while euroskepticism make euro slump and nazis are
growing. Something does not work in the spectacle of the United
Europe if the only movement capable to unite people from all
countries is that protesting movement.

Demonstrators of Prague 2000 belongs to the real democratic tissue of
Europe. This is the biggest protest since 1989's Velvet Revolution.
Ten years ago the president Vaclav Havel was treading on the same
squares, when cops were beating marching students, the communist
government was falling and the present Minister of Interior of the
Czech Republic, the 31-years-old Stanislav Gross was growing around
the communist party. Are times really changed?

We can't ask Prague citizens for joining the mobilisation because we
are not a political medium. But we can suggest to the Ministry of
Interior not to destroy Prague touristic and political image with a
postcard coming from the past. There will be hundreds of Indymedia
videomakers and photographers at work in Prague  ready to put their
materials on a worlwide information channel. We hopes that Indymedia
will cover the real issues about the IMF and WTO meeting and will not
turn itself in a body count bulletin of activists beaten from police.

The president Havel is suggested to keep himself distant from IMF and
WTO policies. They don't bring good luck. But we would be stupid to
preach to stop the so-called *new normalisation*: it will be the
first economic crisis that will remind about a less wild
globalisation, a "globalisation from the bottom", that is what
protesters ask. As the Czech central bank governor has warned, the
fiscal deficit is growing and the future is on danger. IMF and WTO
are not the solution, they are the cause: are you ready to go back to
the past, mr. Havel?

intercepted regards,
Indymedia Italia

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