Besides German-made tear gas launchers, police will have armored cars, helicopters, dogs, and water cannon at their disposal. Those who stay are required to carry identity papers and are being encouraged to stockpile food and medicines. Theaters have been shuttered and multinational targets like McDonald's are boarding up their windows. Authorities have even canceled all scheduled court proceedings in order to make way for processing the expected masses of arrested protesters. That group did eventually gain entry.
Police deny that they are systematically suppressing the right to demonstrate.
But with specific persons who we have concrete information about, who are clearly coming here to break the law, we will prevent them from entering the country. Last week Gross pledged to resign if the meetings do not go off as planned. Our approach has been to prepare for the worst scenarios, and I hope the only thing we will be criticized for is that we exaggerated these preparations. Our goal is not to shut down the beginning of the meeting, but we definitely intend to disrupt it using a variety of direct-action techniques. Last week, city authorities revoked several march permits awarded to the United Front, a hard-line communist group led by Ludvic Zifcak, a former secret service agent who helped ignite the protests that toppled Prague's Soviet regime in 1989.