Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

PROTESTS

Protesters clash with police at anti-nuclear demo in France

Police used water cannon and fired tear gas and stun grenades Tuesday as they battled with demonstrators protesting at plans to store nuclear waste at an underground site in northeastern France.

Published: 16 August 2017 10:01 CEST
Protesters clash with police at anti-nuclear demo in France
Bugey nuclear power plant in Saint-Vulbas. AFP
Protest organisers said six people were badly hurt and about 30 lightly injured in the clash in Bure.
   
The local prefecture said that, according to calls to the emergency services, at least three demonstrators had been injured.
   
Two gendarmes were hurt by a “home-made device thrown by protestors”, the prefecture said.
 
Around 300 protestors took part in the demonstration, some of them helmeted and wielding stones, sticks and Molotov cocktails, the authorities said.
   
The rally was held to oppose plans to store highly radioactive waste 500 metres (1,640 feet) underground at a nearby site — the dangerous long-term by-product of France's extensive nuclear energy programme.
   
Debate over Bure has been raging for years, pitching France's vocal environmental lobby against its powerful nuclear industry.
   
In July, the National Agency for the Management of Radioactive Waste (ANDRA) said construction of the storage site would start in 2022 at the earliest.
   
But earlier this month, a national watchdog, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), declared it had “reservations” about the project.
 
It cited uncertainty about how highly inflammable waste would respond if temperatures rose.

PROTESTS

Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

The chairwoman of the Police Association West Region has said that police special tactics, known as Särskild polistaktik or SPT, should be available across Sweden, to use in demonstrations similar to those during the Easter weekend.

Published: 24 April 2022 15:56 CEST
Calls for special police tactics to be available across Sweden

SPT, (Särskild polistaktik), is a tactic where the police work with communication rather than physical measures to reduce the risk of conflicts during events like demonstrations.

Tactics include knowledge about how social movements function and how crowds act, as well as understanding how individuals and groups act in a given situation. Police may attempt to engage in collaboration and trust building, which they are specially trained to do.

Katharina von Sydow, chairwoman of the Police Association West Region, told Swedish Radio P4 West that the concept should exist throughout the country.

“We have nothing to defend ourselves within 10 to 15 metres. We need tools to stop this type of violent riot without doing too much damage,” she said.

SPT is used in the West region, the South region and in Stockholm, which doesn’t cover all the places where the Easter weekend riots took place.

In the wake of the riots, police unions and the police’s chief safety representative had a meeting with the National Police Chief, Anders Tornberg, and demanded an evaluation of the police’s work. Katharina von Sydow now hopes that the tactics will be introduced everywhere.

“This concept must exist throughout the country”, she said.

During the Easter weekend around 200 people were involved in riots after a planned demonstration by anti-Muslim Danish politician Rasmus Paludan and his party Stram Kurs (Hard Line), that included the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

Police revealed on Friday that at least 104 officers were injured in counter-demonstrations that they say were hijacked by criminal gangs intent on targeting the police. 

Forty people were arrested and police are continuing to investigate the violent riots for which they admitted they were unprepared. 

Paludan’s application for another demonstration this weekend was rejected by police.

In Norway on Saturday, police used tear gas against several people during a Koran-burning demonstration after hundreds of counter-demonstrators clashed with police in the town of Sandefjord.

READ MORE:

SHOW COMMENTS