Legal Help after Klimakemp 2018

Contacts

Email: pravo@riseup.net
PGP key: 5BCDE7EB (it is uploaded also on popular public key servers)
Phone: 792 259 405
In past we used to use key with identifier 2E949B8E. It was destroyed so it is no longer possible to use it to communicate with us anymore.

Up-to-date information (January 2019)

We already know about tens of people who received two almost identical letters with information about minor offense they had allegedly commited and which consist of disobeying the orders of police officers not to enter certain area within the mine. All these letters have been sent by the City office in Litvínov (Městský úřad Litvínov). Both people who really entered the mine and people who were not in the action or even on this years Klimakemp (!) received those letters. All the impacted people were called to pay 500CZK for each offense (1000CZK in total = appx. 39EUR). Depending on their particular situation people decided to pay both fines, defend against both of them by means of sending a defense (and now they are togehter with their lawyer in the courseof subsequent administrative procedure) or to také advantage of the opportunity to argument that it is nonsense (and unconstitutional) to punish a person for one act twice with two offenses and two fines (in this case one of their defenses was usually accepted and the offense procedure was ended, while they payed the fine associated with the other offense). Up until now we have received no information about anyone with other than Czech or Slovak citizenship who is charged with these offenses.

Apart from this we also know about a handful of people with Czech and two people with German citizenship who received also a third letter with information about minor offense issued by the Mining Office. This offense is described as directly connected to the entrance to the mining area (so it is not about the disobeyed order). In some cases the Mining Office issued only a warning, but we already know also about four Czech citizens who were ordered to pay the highest possible fine 15.000CZK (appx. 582EUR). In all cases the charged activists were part of the group present in the height on the bucket wheel excavator in the mine. But this does not mean for sure that these fines will affect only this small but literally highly visible group that occupied the big digger.

Apart from these things connected with allegedly commited minor offenses is our movement also participant in multiple procedures connected with complaints and lawsuits concerning certain highly problematic activities of Police of the Czech Republic on both Czech Klimakemps. We are also still waiting whether will the company Severočeské doly fi-na-lly start with their private law lawsuit for the loss of profit with that they theatened immediatelly after Klimakemp 2018.

General recommendations

According to available information there is almost 300 people with at least one (but typically with two or three) minor offenses connected with Bílina coal mine direct action. Yet we still have news only about much smaller number of people who have already received an offense letter. This gives us hope that in the end there might be much less damaged people than expected. But it can also mean that there are people who simply don’t know about their “offense paper” (which is somewhere in postbox in their official address or in their state data mailbox) and therefore they can’t do anything to protect themselves about it’s consequences. Some people who did already receive the letter from authorities most likely only forgot to let us know about it.

So we have two recommendations (and also wishes):

1. Check regularly your mailbox in the address of your official address and also your state data mailbox if you have it activated. In the Czech state data mailbox there is an option for notification about incomming message that the mailbox can send to your regular email. When you receive the letter, contact us immediatelly on pravo@riseup.net and ideally also send scans of all the received documents with the date of the day you received them written in the corner of the paper.
2. We would also like to ask anyone who had already received a letter or a data message about an offense and haven’t contacted Legal Team Limity jsme my yet to inform us via email too. It applies also for the case you don’t need any assistence – it will enable us to better organize our help for the people who need it.

Don’t stop chencking your mailboxes and state data mailboxes even in case you have already received a letter about an offense. It is possible that sooner or later you will receive also another offense which may be connected to a higher sanction and therefore it will be even more important to have enough time to decide about how (not) to try to defend against it. If there is a letter about offense don’t hesitate and contact us immediatelly via email or phone.