“Acting as a Street medic during the action, I was going around the sit-in making sure participants were comfortable, had enough water to drink and asking whether they’d need some help or medical supplies, while at the same time keeping an eye on the police. Protesters were really peaceful and the action kept joyful and happy.
The cops were obviously unaccustomed to such a large action organized by so many activists (600+), they were overwhelmed and acted like they had no boss, changing strategy every once in a while, from trying to remove activists from around the mast where some had climbed to hang a Palestine flag then deciding to leave them be, to surround the seated activists then withdraw then surround them again, putting on their riot equipment (helmets, gloves etc.) to taking them off then on again, to moving squads around then back to where they were before etc.
All this funny disorganized moves lasted for a few hours. The only permanent move from the police was to place cops in a line between the sitting activists and the glass wall of the headquarters office entrance, to prevent demonstrators from entering the building.
As far as i know, the cops were acting very disciplined and I did not hear any racist, sexist or homophobic slur nor insults. I noticed that because I remember having thought at the time: “They act quite as professionals ” compared to cops in Belgium.
Some times they did try to remove some of the people sat-in, rather brutally i’d say but not really violently, and giving up when resistance was too strong or when activists were forcibly stood up but managed to sit down again. One of such incident though resulted in one person being injured to his/her arm (did not witnessed that myself), and a fellow medic immediately came to his/her rescue but was vehemently taken aside by the cops, dragged away onto the lawn to a parked van and arrested, although he was clearly identified as a medic and shouted “I’m a medic, this person needs help!“.
Another incident involved an activist cheering up the crowd shouting slogans through a loudspeaker was arrested at some point and resisted the arrest quite vehemently and vocally. This person was taken out of the scene to the police van on the parking lot. Also from time to time, I saw cops from the lined-up police barring the entrance of the building trying to push on people with their knees or bending the head of people sitting just in front of them, resulting in the crowd shouting at them “no violence” or stuff like that and tension rising for a few minutes. In those moments, a cop (always the same) came closer to film what was happening, always protected by a huge Robocop fellow, and in some instances a small squad of cops would come over to backup their fellow uniforms, push some activists around trying to remove some of them, but then the situation would calm down quickly and they would move away. In spite of such punctual and quite short escalation, everything kept quite and the action went on peacefully with people singing and mocking the police.
Also some times the police tried to pass the message on a loudspeaker they were about to evict us from the place, but activists with loudspeakers would immediately come close to them and start shouting slogans or sing just next to them, so that their message got lost in space and nobody ever heard it 🙂
Then somewhere around noon or 1PM, some of the activists standing on the roof of the entrance holding banners talked to the people at their feet as they wanted to come down, and a ladder was brought upright against the roof. I think this is what started the shit show, the cops must have thought some more people intended to go up on the roof. The police boss talked through his walkie-talkie and suddenly all cops started to put on their equipment again, including their gas-masks this time. Shortly after, the cops on the left side of the entrance pepper-sprayed the activists sitting in front of them and immediately after pushed and shoved people to make them stand up and move away, quite brutally this time. Some activists had no choice bu to move but came back sitting as soon as they were let go. Some were thrown on top of others. Batons were flying repeatedly with no regard for what they hit (backs, arms, shoulders, heads, legs etc.), and the scene had turned in a second from a passive resistance to a superactive aggression. The same shit started on the right side of the entrance a few seconds after, and shortly after the lined-up cops have pushed people forward while activists were both suffocated by the pepper-spray and painfully hit by batons.
Presently the cops were making a line away from the entrance and keeping a more or less 1 meter gap in front of them where none was allowed.
I myself was standing in the middle of the line and in the gap, clearly identified as a medic with my armband, my medical supplies visible in my bag in front of me (and all cops had identified me as such since the beginning I guess, due to my constantly walking around and everywhere and talking to people and making sure nobody was hurt), so they kind of let me be as long as I did not try to force their line.
Then came another order from the boss, and all hell broke loose: I saw the cop faces in front of me twisting with rage behind the plastic visors of their helmets and batons rained down on us while the police line moved up and pushed us back, closing the gap and pressing us backward. The thing is that behind us was a low wall and we were being pushed against it, so that the crowd was compressed to the point that we were standing upright and people in the middle could not move at all (as I was myself. I remember having thought “Shit if somebody loses consciousness, one might die here and now without any possibility to get them out“.
At this moment I was holding someone unable to stand up, clearly on the brink of going unconscious, and the cop in front of me was still pressing me backward. I was shouting at him “Medic! Medic! I need to evacuate this person! Emergency!” but he kept on pushing and hit me 4 times on the arm I was raising in front of my face to protect my head, exactly at the same spot… At the time the adrenaline was so high in my blood I just felt the shot, not the pain inside my forearm…
Simultaneously, the cops started to throw I-don’t-know-how-many tear-gas grenades behind the crowd, on the lawn behind the low wall we were getting compressed again, so that the activists at the back (behind us) who managed to step over the low wall and onto the lawn received the pellets on their head and/or were getting suffocated by the gas, their vision blurred, their throats on fire and their lungs unable to breathe.
At first people escaping from the trap helped release the compression of the crowd, and more people could step over the low wall and onto the lawn, but quickly the air got so full of nasty smoke that everyone lost all sense of orientation and had no idea how to escape from this nightmare.
I myself finally stepped over the low wall and onto the lawn, where some comrades from the person I was helping (who was starting to regain their brains again) came over and took over, leading them out towards the park. As soon as I was on the lawn and stopped to have a look at my forearm (there was an open wound at the spot where I got repeatedly hit by the baton), a teargas canister just landed between my feet and the smoke went right up into my face. Realizing what was about to happen (I would get incapacitated and unable to flee before long), I started to run away towards the park but too late, the gas burned my eyes and my throat despite my goggles and COVID mask and I had to really push me to my limits not to throw up and to stay conscious. I kind of walked/stumbled/fell/stood up and walked again in cycles, just following people and grabbing at arms to feel my way until I was in the park and was able to breathe and open my eyes again and the pain in my lungs became bearable…
I then saw the cops in lines on each side of us walking fast with their batons out, and I thought: “Shit, if they follow us in the park and start beating on us again, with no outside witness from the press or passers-by around, this is gonna turn into a slaughterhouse“, and this is when I got really scared. I helped people around me with saline solution for their eyes and passed some around, made some bandages to someone’s bleeding head, came across some comrades from my affinity group with whom we stated to walk away to the big boulevard with the rest of the demonstrators.
The cops had pushed us out of the park and had just intended to keep us out of the Maersk headquarters area, they were not intended to brutalize us, just to threaten us…
What I gather from this hell and from my experience of police violence in Belgium and France is the total lack of preparation of the Danish Police, the incompetence of their chiefs, and the feeling that this could have resulted in a very very serious situation where people might easily have died within this compressed pack, stuck between a line of batons and pepper spray and a line of tear-gas grenades. They offered no way out as they should have when they kettle people. Kettling is meant to push people towards a way out while forbidding the crowd to either stay where they are or move in a direction the cops do not want them to go. Here, people split in every direction, not seeing anything, having no instructions as to where to go, and it’s just luck they managed to find a way out. I’m wondering if ultimately I do not prefer the usual but predictable and planned violence of the Belgian cops to this incomprehensible and stupid disorderly demonstration of violence… I guess next time we’ll have to be better prepared for this, as the Danish police will most likely take advice from their counterparts on the other side of the borders.
My forearm got so swollen the next days I could barely move it or do any thing with my left arm for over a week, but doctors said it was not broken.”
