European Economic Summit: Report from Warsaw
- Dział: English news
A press conference of the Anti-Summit organizers took place on Tuesday morning (9.03.2004). It was our reaction to the hysterical declarations of the president of Warsaw and his supporters presenting antiglobalists opposing the EFE as a threat to the capital city. A large number of journalists (about 50 people) represented all important TV and radio stations arrived to the conference. Our representatives were interviewed by them long after the meeting. In response to our conference, the president of Warsaw, Kaczynski, organized his own one, on which he was present with his deputy Stasiak and colonel Polko. The colonel Polko was not long ago a commanding officer of Grom, a special commando unit, which took part in the war in Iraq. Now he is going to be the president's adviser on safety during the EFE.
aspires to become the mair Giuliani of Warsaw, described antiglobalists as perfectly organized dangerous movement formed from small well specialized groups. Suddenly he - changed the opinion after our conference and stated that he is not going to interfere into anyone ideas, but to keep order during the summit. That was the reason why he has asked Polko for help. Next, taking into consideration an expected full blockage of the city during the summit, the president sent an official request to the president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, asking to change the summit's localization. From the last unofficial news we know that the place has been changed, but nobody can tell where the summit is going to be. A very preliminary cost of the summit in the PKiN are said to be 5 mln zloty (about 1,05 euro). Officially all costs of the summit are to be paid by the World Economic Forum and private business, but there is a high probability that it is a lie.
On the day of conference all radio stations were talking about that event in the positive and reliable way. In comparison to them, most of TV news were showing it less favorably illustrating the reports with pictures from the biggest antiglobalist riots. TVN, the biggest private TV network, called their report "invasion of barbarians". Next day newspapers were focused rather on the expected costs for the city, however they mentioned also an expected dangerous riots despite the organizers' peaceful plans. In our opinion Rzeczpospolita turned out to be the biggest rag. The newspaper being read mostly by officials and businessmen - published a long article "Anarchy in barracks". It touched on an unofficial idea of the authorities, who according to the newspaper, are going to organize a camp for the 20 thousands of antiglonalists on the unused airport on the outskirts of Warsaw, Bemowo.
Both the mayor of Bemowo and its police head started to panic after reading the article. As often happens, the idea turned out to be a journalists' invetion. Speculations concerning moving the summit from the PkiN has been raised during last couple days. A final decision will be made on Monday. Undoubtedly, wherever they go, we will follow.
Polish Libertarian Milieu Organizing the Anti-Summit Wa29