This is is a state law, not a federal one. As far as I understand it is limited to 2 months. Just a clarification, not a justification. It was a somewhat controversial law, and I think those cases clearly show why. Those laws always get justified with terrorism, and now they're jailing people that block traffic.
I don't think such laws should exist, and we should do better there. Unfortunately I don't expect that with the Bavarian politic landscape this will happen on the legislative way.
Also might be worth mentioning that the Bavarian state police law that these arrests are based on is actively challenged in court and there arrests could become part of that case.
I can't be alone in thinking that jailing people who obstruct traffic and jailing people who we believe intend to obstruct traffic are two totally different matters.
Usually that believe stems from the fact that those people explicitly announced they would do it again. And again. After being sentenced. In front of a judge.
I would still rather have them sentenced for the crimes they’ve committed - even if sentenced harshly due to their unrepentant disposition - than for the crimes they may commit in the future.
We are all hypothetical criminals and I would prefer that the state not have that freedom to lock people up.
I don't think most people have claimed they will commit a crime in the future. Not necessarily for climate protests, but in many cases in the US we do this same thing too.
Hasn't Germany ratified the European Convention on Human Rights? Those are definitely breaching the above and could easily be considered as fascist laws. This should be a fairly easy trial.
I do believe it is reasonable to hold repeat offenders. And I hope this law will be upheld when tried. These people do not understand democratic dialogue and so I have no pity for them.
There is a fundamental difference between killing people, placing bombs and gluing yourself to a road. If your definition of terrorism includes all of these, it's useless.
Not really hard to come up with situations where this actually kills people. Someone in an ambulance getting delayed in getting to the hospital, just for a start.
If the teamsters strike hospitals miss drug shipments and people die. Farming protests can lead to food supply chain disruptions. Transport strikes cause economic disruption which could theoretically lead to deaths.
That’s not what terrorism is.
Terrorism requires terrorising people through violence and intimidation. Not standing on a highway.
So you're saying that silently disconnecting all power stations of a country via software is not terrorism? Is it an attack to you at all? Or is it just a protest too? Cyberterrorism is a big thing. Where is the violence or intimidation in manipulating software?
Terrorism is a broad term but it is rarely used for its lower end as its also a term used as a tool to scare people. The idea that it mandates violence is outdated. Violence was the means to terrorize but it no longer is.
> So you're saying that silently disconnecting all power stations of a country via software is not terrorism?
This terrorises people. It causes mass fear and panic, and will cause pretty immediate loss of life. All people have good reason fear for the safety of them and their loved ones in the case of a catastrophic grid failure.
This is not true of blocking a highway. It’s an economic disruption. The response of those opposed to the action is one of anger and frustration. Society at large does not fear for their safety because people are occasionally blocking highways, unlike in a mass terrorist campaign.
Cyberterrorism as a term is applied too liberally, a direct result of governments wanting to expand their powers under the guise of combating terrorism. Software attacks that immediately threaten life and limb (eg attacks on health systems, major damage to critical infrastructure) can be argued to be cyberterrorism. Not every software attack is of that magnitude.
It's the same thing as both make life miserable. Hundreds/thousands may lose hours of their lives. Some may lose a job, a life opportunity, some may die. And all for nothing because this kind of protest is counterproductive as it associates climate change talk with narcissistic clowns.
There is no enumerated right in Germany, the US or Canada to have a pleasant life and plenty of people suffer far worse than the occasional traffic inconvenience. There is in fact a war going on in Ukraine right now which is making a whole bunch of peoples' lives quite legitimately miserable and depriving many of their lives - well beyond adding twenty minutes onto a trip to costco.
I think it's totally legitimate to argue over how effective an action like this is for the cause - but this is a quite reasonable form of protest.
There are surprisingly few ambulance rides that would result in a death if they encountered a 5 minute delay. Half the time they are empty and if they are not empty they first stabilize the patient and then bring them to hospital relatively stable. Ambulance is really more like a hospital on wheels than a fast taxi with space for a stretcher
Sports games kill people in this manner all the time - if a football game is letting out and causing a traffic jam we don't consider that to be manslaughter. And common sources of traffic like that provide a much higher widespread effect than protests (which can usually be routed around by emergency services - and which will often voluntarily disassemble for emergency health services).
The difference is that a sports game is generally not being organized by a group that's trying to use those consequences as an intimidation tactic to get what they want. I could say, "accidents with explosives at fireworks shows accidentally kill people sometimes," but there would still be a difference between putting on a fireworks show and bombing a mall.
You could come up with a scenario, sure. Bad in law though. [1]
Another scenario you could come up with is a future climate catastrophe, where millions die and/or are displaced because of this global boiling era.
Incidentally, which is the protest thought crime that is being prosecuted.
[1] Legally there's a world of difference between proximal causes and proximate causes. (Neighborhood vs causally related.)
How about we stop making up hypothetical situations to justify authoritarian acts by the state, violence or worse, death, and stick to the facts of the matter?
If protests actually cause deaths, we can always prosecute the people causing said death as manslaughter or negligent homicide.
Until then it’s just a protest, guaranteed in many countries as a civil right.
Your freedom of movement doesn't entitle you drive a car, and the history of protest is soaked in examples of protestors effectively blocking specific forms of transportation to make a point.
You don't have a right to drive a car. It's a privilege, as indicated by your drivers' license.
You're entitled to be upset when someone blocks your car. But framing it as a civil rights issue rather than a practical one (and calling someone blocking your car "kinetic") makes you come across as un-serious.
Freedom of movement is a fundamental right in Germany. Your freedom to move the car everywhere, and without qualification is of course limited for the safety of everyone. But driving places is part of your personal freedom, which has to be weighed against somebody else's freedom to protest.
This is a profound misunderstanding of civil liberties. Being inconvenienced by another person doesn't violate anything.
If the government were to install roadblocks and check your identity card before letting you leave your town, that would violate your freedom of movement. If a local private militia did the same thing, it would be as well. But being slightly delayed by a bunch of environmentalists blocking a specific form of transit doesn't meaningfully violate anything.
The counterstatement here would be "the state has the right to forcefully remove anybody who slightly inconveniences me"; it should be obvious why this would be a gross violation of civil liberties.
This is a useless distinction when the distances dictate pretty much this only mode of transportation: nobody's going to march 40km on foot unless their lives depend on it.
The counterstatement here would be "the state has the right to forcefully remove anybody who slightly inconveniences me"; it should be obvious why this would be a gross violation of civil liberties.
There is a whole slew of laws and regulations dealing with people who inconvenience others on purpose.
> nobody's going to march 40km on foot unless their lives depend on it.
Freedom of movement specifically exists for when "your lives depend on it" - it is a vital right to preserve and the freedom to make that 40 km walk has saved countless lives over the centuries.
If people who wanted change always avoided breaking laws during their protests, there would be a lot less positive change int he world. You might want to read up on the history of protest, and, specifically, civil disobedience.
While voting should be done, it is not always effective/possible. An obvious example to bring up is the suffragist, since they were not allowed to vote.
The point of protesting in a manner that is truly disruptive is to force the problem to be dealt with. This concept seems to allude many, to them the only acceptable form of protest is one that is entirely ignorable. I’m not sure we would have many of the important freedoms we have today without people choosing to be disruptive in this manner you find unacceptable.
Good reading on this is “How to blow up a pipeline by Andreas Malm” … the disruptions we see right now are pretty mild & maybe this preventive detention is an attempt to reel in the more extreme activists before they do something truly disruptive?
"Voting is not always effective" is true especially in Bavaria, where the CSU has perfected populism to the point that they have managed to stay in power basically since the current Federal Republic of Germany exists (with a brief interruption from 1954 to 1957) - if they don't get more than 50% of the Landtag seats, they can pick and choose their coalition partner, and they have already excluded a coalition with the Green party, because other parties (FDP, Freie Wähler) are more pliant.
Some would argue that a car highway prevents right of movement for pedestrians and cyclists.
I get what you're saying but you're very narrowly trying to define right of movement to make your argument and without your narrow definition it falls apart.
You're unironically repeating the same kind of rhetoric used against Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi when their protests happened to mildly inconvenience people in power.
This is not restricting freedom of movement. Merely inconveniencing. But the bar is pretty low when you see the reaction you get from the driver behind you if you overtake with “only” 130km/h on the autobahn, instead of 150+ km/h like they do.
This is a really deep misunderstanding of what freedom of movement means - and if this qualified as interrupting freedom of movement then there'd be violations every time we needed to fill a pothole. There is no right to convenient movement - just to movement at all.
Driving cars is so much more than just driving cars. The practice of driving cars is one of the major practices that is leading to the destruction of our planet's ability to support our life.
I don't think such laws should exist, and we should do better there. Unfortunately I don't expect that with the Bavarian politic landscape this will happen on the legislative way.