Champagne Breakfast Demo in Malmö
Up to 100 demonstrators gathered outside the Swedish Migration Board’s offices in Malmö today. News agency TT report that the peaceful protestors laid out a champagne breakfast for employees arriving to work this morning to draw attention to Sweden and the EU’s immigration policies.
The protestors are in the city for the fifth European Social Forum.
The Forum is the largest meeting place in Europe for different social movements and organisations to get together and exchange ideas on how to create a better world. Around 20,000 participants are expected to attend this year’s event taking place over five days in the southern Swedish city.
Over 200 workshops and seminars will be held discussing everything from equal employment laws to climate change. Music, film and other cultural activities are also on the agenda.
Aside from today’s protest, Malmö police say they are not worried about unrest or violence having learnt their lesson from the protests during the 2001 EU Summit in Gothenburg.
Any serious problems that do arise are likely to come from protesters from outside of the Forum, they say. Further demonstrations against companies in Malmö with connections to the US military are anticipated. as well as protests from the Reclaim the Streets collective whose ideals of shared access to all public spaces have seen whole areas of towns shut down in the past.
Police from other regions of Sweden have been called in for reinforcement and for the first time forces from Denmark, Norway and Germany will be involved.
