---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 00:29:56 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Danish Politicians Seek Cannabis Crackdown in Christiania
Danish Politicians Seek Cannabis Crackdown in Christiania
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/228.html#christiania
While contemporary anarchists have for the past decade dreamt of
establishing "temporary autonomous zones" free of outside
authority, the residents of the Copenhagen neighborhood of
Christiania have constructed a permanent autonomous zone that has
flourished for the past three decades on what was once a Danish
barracks and army base. The residents of Christiania have
organized communally to provide for basic services and have long
campaigned to keep hard drugs and violence out of the area, but
Christiania is most well-known for its open hashish and marijuana
markets, particularly along the aptly-named Pusher Street. But
now, in the latest of a series of occasional attacks on the hippy
haven over the years, conservative Danish politicians are vowing
to end the commune's famously tolerant attitudes toward soft drugs
-- and if they can't do that, to end the commune itself.
The move highlights a contradiction between Danish social reality
and its cannabis laws. Denmark, along with Britain, has the
highest levels of cannabis consumption on the continent.
According to the latest survey by the European Monitoring Center
for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 34% of young adult Danes and 25% of
all adult Danes have smoked cannabis. And while cannabis
possession is a crime under Danish law, possession for personal
use is rarely prosecuted. But parts of Danish society have a
problem with smokers having someplace to obtain the weed.
"We can no longer tolerate the illegal and open cannabis trade
that has become a part of everyday life out there," Conservative
Party spokesman Helge Adam Moller told the Copenhagen Post on
March 8. "If Christiania is allowed to survive, then it has to
become as law-abiding as every other community in Denmark -- and
if it doesn't, we'll close it down," he threatened.
And the Danish government is moving to do so. Last year, the
center-left government led by the Social Democrats passed
legislation that gave police the authority to close down what the
Post called "hundreds of small 'hash clubs,'" and while
Christiania has so far escaped unscathed, the political landscape
has shifted. In elections last fall, the Social Democrat-led
coalition lost control to a center-right coalition led by the
Liberal Party, in alliance with the Conservatives. Now Moller and
the Conservatives are calling for a reworking of the political
framework that governs relations between the commune and the
Danish state. Under Moller's plan, Christiana would have three
weeks to remove all drugs and drug dealers or the law allowing the
community to exist in peace from the authorities would be
annulled.
A spokesperson for Christiania, a radically democratic "Free City"
of about one thousand people on 60 acres in Copenhagen, blasted
the Conservatives. "Instead of trying to criminalize the many
thousands of customers who enjoy hash every day, why don't they
consider legalizing it instead," Britta Lillesoe told the Post.
It was a "knee-jerk reaction" from right-wing politicians, she
said.
The conflict is not new. Founded by squatters and hippies who
crawled through a fence onto an abandoned military base and set up
shop in the early 1971, Christiania has alternately been tolerated
by authorities and targeted by them. While conflicts have flared
over taxation, the provision of services, and "slummification,"
much of the tension between the commune and the state has centered
on drugs. In 1979, with hard drug use spiraling out of control
and the state threatening to assert control, residents formed the
Junk Blockade to evict all hard drug sellers and users.
Since then, the Christiania drug scene has largely centered on
cannabis, but open sales of the drug have led to repeated clashes
with police throughout the 1990s. The Danish government has
repeatedly threatened to end the "Free City," and now another
offensive is underway. Parliament will be discussing the future
of Christiania next month, the Post reported.
But Christianites are well-schooled in defending their
prerogatives no matter what the government does. A bit of history
from the Free City's Moonfisher Coffeehouse provides some
Christiania flavor: "The Moonfisher like all the other bars in
Christiania had a really hard period in the end of the 80's
beginning 90's, the government pressured Christiania to get the
bars and restaurants registrated and to pay their taxes. We
refused to agree having the good reason of not being government
supported in our institutions like for example kindergartens or
the garbage team. The battle raged back and forth for a little
while and in the end the Moonfisher lost all stock and inventory
and was forced to get registrated," the coffeehouse wrote on its
web site. "From 1990 to 1993 Moonfisher had a liquor licence, but
still problems with the police because of too much weed-smoking in
the place. 1993 the government threatened to take our liquor
licence if we didn't stop all the smokers in the cafe, but how can
we run a coffeeshop in Christiania and not smoke, impossible. So
we decided that they can take the licence and put it somewhere
where the sun don't shine, we'd rather smoke than drink, and we
have been a coffeeshop ever since."
(Visit http://www.christiania.org for much more information on the
"Free City" and its history, inhabitants, politics, business and
social life.)
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