Cop15 Copenhagen = Demonstrations, frustrations and police forces

Cop15 is about to finish and I am very exited to see where it will end. In general i have been more focused on what have happened outside the Bella Center, than Inside. The social network Twitter has been a great help to keep track of the progress and the chaos… Just now when I am writing this, Tan Copsey from the Green Party in New Zealand tweets that Obama and Wen Jiaboa are making progress. You can follow Tan here. And his link here. Most likely it´s old news when you see it…

One of the most beautiful things I have seen the last two weeks was the demonstration on December 12th. For a very long time it had been announced that this demonstration should be BIG and peaceful. With the one goal: To show the world leaders that the public wants CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW. More than 350 different organizations where participating  and all in all about 100.000 people showed up in front of the Danish parliament, Christiansborg. I was there among the crowd before the speeches started. Walking around and watching all the various cultures, nationalities and creative expressions made me touched. I loved it! People where dancing for climate, hugging for climate, dressed in blue as the ocean or wearing a swimsuit to illustrate that the water level will rise if we don´t ACT NOW. I took some portraits of the lovely climate activists that I met. Some of them will be in the bottom of this post, the rest you can find on my flickr account by clicking Here.

The demonstration started to move from Christiansborg towards the Bella Center. There was music and dancing people all over the place! It was to describe as a Folk Party!! or a carnival. It was all happy times until the very moment where we got stormed by the police. They came from one of the streets on the left. With cars and policemen in battle uniforms, they blocked the road for that part of the demonstration where I was. Luckily I saw them coming and started to take photos of them, and be course of that I managed to pass the chain they made. two minutes slower I too would have been arrested like the 968 other activists. The police say that there was “trouble” with the Black group of people. That they were making vandalism… I saw nothing, I heard nothing and I was there too… Out of the 968 people arrested the police can raise charges against some-what 3 – 10 of them. The rest could go home after 5 hours sitting down on the freezing payment in the cold with handcuffs, and additional 10 hours in the “climate prison”… I can´t understand how that act by the police can be possible! It sounds like something troops are fighting against in Iraq or Tehran…

The worst part this situation is that these 3 – 10 people gets more attention that the remaining 99.980 others peaceful participants in the world media…

Here are some of my photos from the day.