The German Love Parade disaster

[4 articles]

Nineteen Die in Love Parade Stampede

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/17386/184891

German dance festival permanently canceled after weekend tragedy

By Daniel Kreps
Jul 26, 2010

Nineteen people were killed and nearly 400 injured after chaos broke
out at Love Parade 2010, a dance music festival in Duisberg, Germany,
on Saturday. The stampede took place in a tunneled underpass that
connected the festival's main area and an expansion site that was
opened nearby after close to 1.4 million people showed up for the
free festival, well more than the 800,000 expected to attend. Many of
the victims were crushed against walls in the tunnel as attendees
flooded the underpass from both entrances. Despite the casualties,
the Love Parade was allowed to continued as scheduled because
organizers and police feared a cancellation would only add to the
panic, CNN reports.

"The pressure from behind become so high that... we couldn't do
anything any more. People were just pushed together until they fell
over," one festivalgoer told a local German paper, according to the
BBC. Another attendee added that inside the underpass, "Everywhere
you looked, there were people with blue faces." Duisberg police
president Detlef von Schmeling said 16 of the deaths took place on
the steps of an entrance ramp to the underpass. The police defended
their security plan at the festival ­ 4,000 officers were reportedly
on hand ­ but an investigation is underway to find out why the crush
in the underpass occurred.

The Love Parade launched in 1989 in Berlin as a peace celebration in
the months prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fest was moved
to western Germany in 2007 after a two-year hiatus, and last year's
event was canceled. Following the tragedy, Love Parade organizer
Rainer Schaller said the festival would be permanently disbanded "out
of respect for the victims, their families and friends." "The Love
Parade has always been a peaceful event and a joyous celebration,
which will now forever be overshadowed by the tragic deaths,"
Schaller said in a statement.

Artists including DJ David Guetta reacted to the tragedy on Twitter.
"What happened today is heartbreaking and unprecedented," Guetta, who
was scheduled to perform at the fest, tweeted. "I won't [be] with you
at Love Parade. I trust that my fans who came to dance with me will
understand why. If you are there please move slowly and safely home.
My sincere sympathies to anyone who has been touched by this."

The Love Parade tragedy is the deadliest music festival incident
since 10 festivalgoers were crushed to death during Pearl Jam's
performance at the Roskilde Festival in 2000. As Rolling Stone
previously reported, following the death of a 15-year-old girl at Los
Angeles' Electric Daisy rave, dance festivals have also come under
increased scrutiny in recent weeks. "The Love Parade was supposed to
be a peaceful and joyful festival for young people from the region
and beyond," Duisburg's Senior Mayor Adolf Sauerland said. "Now this
event must unfortunately be considered to be one of the great
tragedies in the contemporary history of the city. I am deeply
shaken." The Love Parade has set up a Book of Condolences section on
its official website.
http://www.festivalpig.com/Love-Parade-2010.html

--------

Germany: 20 dead and hundreds injured at techno music festival

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/love-j27.shtml

By Dietmar Henning
27 July 2010

This year's Love Parade techno music festival, held in the city of
Duisburg, ended on Saturday with 20 dead and approximately 350
injured, including many severely injured. This tragedy is directly
attributable to the negligence of local city authorities and private sponsors.

With their eyes on maximizing profits, both the city of Duisburg and
the main organizer of the festival, the fitness studio chain McFit,
ignored a series of warnings from the police, fire brigade, local
inhabitants and visitors to the festival.

The 20 mostly female victims, between the ages of 20 and 40, died
when the only entrance and exit to the festival area was closed at
around 5:00 p.m. as large numbers of people tried to join in. In
addition to German victims, the dead included visitors from the
Netherlands, Italy, China and Australia.

The site chosen for this year's festival was the former railway
freight station south of Duisburg city center and close to its main
station. The area had been hastily prepared. The Love Parade
originated in West Berlin in 1989 and was held in Berlin until 2003.
It also took place in Essen in 2007 and in Dortmund in 2008. In all
of these cases the Parade was held in a large open area without
fences or barriers.

The Love Parade in Duisburg was the first to take place in a limited
arena. Last year the neighboring city of Bochum called off the
festival, declaring it was unable to ensure the security of those
taking part. In Duisburg this year, such fears were simply swept aside.

While hundreds of thousands were waiting to enter the festival,
thousands were trying to leave. The police responded by closing the
only access point, a tunnel 120 meters long, 16 meters wide and less
than 4 meters high located between two other tunnels. Panic broke out
as thousands crowded into the tunnel. Desperate visitors began
climbing high surrounding walls, ladders and railings. The organizers
maintain that some then fell back into the crowd, unleashing a mass panic.

This version is not confirmed by eyewitness accounts on the Internet.
Because of the enormity and speed of events, there were also few
pictures or videos of what took place. A Swiss visitor, who wanted to
remain anonymous, wrote: "People were pressed against a wall. A whole
mass of people lay on top of each other a meter high across an area
of perhaps 15x15 meters. It took a half hour, until this mass of
people was relieved. It is simply not true to say that people fell
from a wall."

In an initial statement on Saturday evening, those responsible for
organizing the event, including the mayor of Duisburg Adolf Sauerland
(Christian Democratic Union), spoke of the "individual weaknesses of
individuals" that led to the panic. Prior to the event the city had
prepared "a sound security concept with the organizers and all
partners involved."

The security plan had been drawn up by the Duisburg researcher
Michael Schreckenberg, who defended his concept to the press. He told
Spiegel Online that the tunnel in which the mass panic took place was
large enough and that responsibility lay with individual participants
at the event. What had taken place was an eventuality that could not
have been predicted or planned for, he contended.

In fact, the statements made by the organizers were aimed at covering
up their own responsibility for what took place. The area chosen for
the event in Duisburg offered sufficient room for around 250,000 to
350,000 people, although previous festivals had involved gatherings
of over a million. The city authorities also gave shops and
businesses in the Duisburg city center permission to remain
open­although the city center itself provided sufficient room for the
Love Parade. Representatives of the Duisburg Marketing Society (DMG)
explained that the closure of shops during the Love Parade in Essen
in 2007 had set a very bad example.

Things were to be different in Duisburg, despite the fact that the
police and fire brigade had criticized the security concept, which
the Duisburg mayor now defends so vehemently. A fireman whose
criticisms were ignored has since laid charges against the
organizers, while the public prosecutor's office has raided the city
hall to confiscate all documents relating to the festival.

The police trade union GDP holds the city council and the organizer
responsible for the tragedy. GDP spokesman Rainer Wendt told the
Bild-Zeitung, "I warned Duisburg one year ago that it is not the
right place for the Love Parade. The city is too small and narrow for
such gatherings." The police had originally requested that the
entrance to the festival be staggered to prevent any concentration of
visitors in the access tunnel. Such a concept would have required
additional personnel and was rejected by the city administration.

In a further attempt to deflect from the responsibility of local
authorities, leading members of the city council sought to defend
their planning concept by arguing that far fewer people had taken
part in the event than anticipated. The security advisor to the
Duisburg council, Wolfgang Rabe (CDU), told a press conference on
Sunday that in his opinion only 150,000 had taken part in the
festival. This figure is absurd. Various media outlets put the number
of participants much closer to one and a half million.

The Duisburg chief of police Detlef Schmeling also sought to deny
that a mass panic had taken place: "Mass panic is an evocative term.
As far as I am aware there were no indications of a mass panic." His
explanation also sought to reduce the tragedy to "individual
responsibility", i.e., blaming the victims themselves.

Not only were eyewitnesses warned by police of the danger in the
tunnel on the fateful day, there was also a prolonged discussion on
the Internet over the potential risks. A number of persons exchanged
their views on the web site of the region's biggest newspaper www.derwesten.de.

Already on June 4 "a resident" wrote on the web site that the
organization was "unbelievable: The administration is provoking
incidents." Another wrote that he was not prepared to be treated like
cattle: "Then I will remain at home! I have no interest in being
trampled to death!"

Three days later another contributor wrote disbelievingly: "Am I
seeing right! They are planning to conduct a million people across a
single-lane tunnel with two small paths to the meeting area? In my
view this is a trap. It can never work. I can't believe it! I predict deaths."

Two days earlier, on July 22, a Duisburg resident wrote: "There will
be huge chaos. The city would have been better advised to call off
the Love Parade.... People will talk about this Love Parade for a
long time­unfortunately only in the negative."

Erich Rettinghaus, the North Rhine-Westphalia regional chairman of
the German police trade union for civil servants (DPolG), blamed
economic interests for the disaster and declared: "In the long run
security should not be subordinated to commercial interests."

But this is exactly what happened.

For a long time the future of the Love Parade remained uncertain. The
city of Duisburg, which has the highest level of unemployment in the
state of North Rhine-Westphalia and recently imposed a drastic
budget-cutting program, was unable to finance the €840,000 estimated
for the event. But finally a consortium consisting of the state of
North Rhine-Westphalia and private sponsors assured its funding. The
festival was to be promoted as part of the Europe Ruhr.2010 project,
with the city of Duisburg and the fitness studio chain McFit as main
sponsors. The Sinalco firm was another main sponsor.

The plan was to raise €6 million from merchandizing. The Duisburg
Marketing Society, for example, sold Love Parade insignia over the Internet.

Prior to the event, Mayor Sauerland declared: "A meeting, which
mobilizes up to one million people, who peacefully hold a party
together with the world's best known DJs has to be a good thing. I
regard the Love Parade as a good opportunity to show the world how
tolerant and in particular how exciting our city is."

According to Olive Scheytt, managing director of the Ruhr.2010, the
Love Parade has "important, international charisma", while Eva Maria
Kießler, press speaker for the economic promotion company
Metropoleruhr Ruhr GmbH, said the Ruhr district needs such meetings
in order to demonstrate its "image as an open and tolerant habitat".

Twenty people have now paid with their lives for this publicity
campaign aimed at emphasizing the economic advantages and profits to
be made in the city of Duisburg and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

--------

Festival violence:
gentleness and decency will survive these vile attacks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/21/festival-gentleness-decency-survive-vile-attacks

To see the violence that marred T in the Park and Latitude as some
awful fall from innocence does the festivals a disservice

John Harris
21 July 2010

More than strawberries at Wimbledon, rained-off Test matches and
politicians' holidays, one image is now solidly built into the
British understanding of summer: as seen in just about every current
commercial break, a festival crowd, joyously jumping around to
anthemic indie-rock and rejoicing in the apogee of modern
togetherness. Strange to think, perhaps, that the tangled roots of
all this go back to events ­ from the original, police-free
Glastonbury, through illicit acid house parties and beyond ­ that the
straight world tended to greet with a mixture of panic and hostility.
Now the promise is of family-friendliness, a visit from Prince
Charles, and unending coverage on the BBC.

This week, then, has brought particularly unsettling news. A week
after an alleged sexual assault and two attempted murders at
Scotland's T in the Park, last weekend's Latitude festival saw two
reported rapes and an incident in which a girl was harassed and
chased by a pack of "drunken yobs". At any event, such news would be
grim, but part of yesterday's massed gasp of shock was traceable to
what Latitude is: a self-consciously high-end event, keen to attract
a more mature kind of attendee, and a byword for cultured relaxation
rather than lairy excess. Hence one of the choicest quotes from
Melvyn Benn, the chief executive of Latitude's organisers, Festival
Republic: "It is difficult to find any nastiness or aggression at
Latitude. This is shocking."

It is, but a few points demand to be made. One is about the rather
naive view of festivals that defines whole swaths of the summer's
media coverage, much of it put together in comfy backstage compounds
by people whose experience of the nitty-gritty is limited, to say the
least. Breathlessly enthusiastic satellite news reports ("Dave from
Wrexham ­ is this your first Glastonbury?") and the obligatory
Saturday morning pictures of girls astride their boyfriends'
shoulders do not quite convey what anyone who has spent three days
out in the fields will know: that once tens of thousands of people
are temporarily living cheek by jowl and many are set on joyously
losing their minds, the festival experience can sometimes go awry.

Often thanks to their chemical intake, I know plenty of people whose
summer weekends have at least partly been defined by fear,
disorientation, and brushes with unpleasant people who were there for
something other than the vibes. At 1994's Glastonbury, for instance,
I can well remember the fear spread by a shooting on the Saturday
night, as well as subsequent news that someone had been slashed in
the face (on the Monday, the Guardian's headline was, "Music festival
peace and love marred by overdose death and gun attack"). It doesn't
quite fit with what might be called the BBC3 worldview, but it's an
obvious enough point: there is a certain part of the festival milieu
­ or, rather, the illicit economy ­ that will always teeter into
nastiness, and worse.

Quite apart from that kind of incident, the news from Latitude points
up something arguably even more uncomfortable. Consider again an
account of that aforementioned girl's experience at the hands of
those "yobs": "They had stuck their hands down her top and pinched
her bum. She hid in the toilets so they wouldn't know where she was
staying before coming back." There is not much organisers can do
about it, but perhaps this is what occasionally happens once festival
culture has become everyone's property. It'll sound hopelessly
sniffy, but what the hell: back when some of the big festivals were
defined by a sense of countercultural esprit de corps, many elements
of the human zoo were present and correct ­ but you rarely
encountered what might be called the stag weekend demographic.

Still, in response to the current festival-related headlines, no one
should get too carried away. In late 1969, when an 18-year-old named
Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by Hells Angels at the Rolling
Stones' infamous outdoor concert at Altamont in northern California,
the incident entered rock lore as the Death of the Hippie Dream,
rather than a stupid consequence of the band's decision to
contract-out "security" to pool cue-wielding thugs. Similarly, to
characterise the events at T in the Park and Latitude as some awful
fall from innocence would suit the over-excited terms in which such
events are reported but do a disservice to the underrated revelation
that burns through each year's festival season.

Our take on the modern outdoor ritual is coloured by understandable
nostalgia for the glory days of Hawkwind and free admission, and a
hyperactive culture often stops us realising which aspects of
contemporary living are truly remarkable ­ but our festival culture
definitely is. It is some token of most human beings' capacity for
gentleness and decency that the season usually passes without serious
incident; moreover, it's fascinating that as our everyday lives seem
to find us ever more atomised and terrified of each other, so
millions of people feel an ever greater need to spend weekend after
weekend in each other's company. Rather than the odd ugly incident,
it's that story that deserves our attention, and it should be a cause
for nothing but (outdoor) celebration.

--------

The German Love Parade disaster: Not a tragic accident, but a crime

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/love-j29.shtml

By Ulrich Rippert
29 July 2010

"This was not a tragic accident, but a crime." These were the words
used by Marek Lieberberg, one of Germany's most experienced event
organizers, when speaking to the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the recent
disaster at the techno music festival in Duisburg. He accused the
Duisburg organizers of the Love Parade of "money-grubbing and incompetence."

Four days after the Love Parade had witnessed 21 largely youthful
participants killed, over 500 injured, some seriously, and tens of
thousands frightened to death, there can be no doubt that the
disaster was not only predictable but to a degree inevitable.

Numerous eyewitness testimonies indicate that the organizers and
those politically responsible ruthlessly disregarded the concerns and
warnings raised by experts. They reveal an organizer who regarded
this major event with hundreds of thousands of participants solely
from the perspective of advertising effectiveness and the
profitability of their own company, the fitness chain McFit. Added to
this was a municipal authority that with bureaucratic arrogance
ignored laws, safety standards and urgent warnings because it
regarded this mega-event as a project to boost the region's image and
"attract young people to the area, bringing money to cash strapped
local authorities." (Der Spiegel)

The irresponsibility is not limited to the technical preparations­the
selection of a completely fenced-in event site with a capacity of
only 250,000 instead of the expected one million visitors; the use of
a single entrance and exit route through a 120-meter-long tunnel, in
which the entry and exit routes were not even separated; the
abandonment of elementary security measures such as escape routes of
the prescribed width and fire plans, all on cost grounds.

Experts and officials who warned of the dangers were systematically
intimidated and put under pressure. For example, Thomas Mahlberg,
Duisburg chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), had asked
a year ago in an open letter to the interior minister of North
Rhine-Westphalia for the removal of the Duisburg police Chief Rolf
Cebín because he had spoken against the Love Parade on security
grounds. Cebín's actions drew "negative press" throughout Germany,
according to Mahlberg, who asked that "Duisburg be rid of a heavy
burden." Although Cebín remained in office for a few months, he has
now been retired on age grounds.

After the Love Parade was cancelled last year in Bochum for security
reasons, those responsible were under tremendous pressure to hold the
mass event this year. The event organizer, McFit, which acquired the
rights to the Love Parade, had millions invested in an advertising
campaign for its fast-growing fitness empire. The politicians of the
city of Duisburg and the Ruhr area were concerned with the image of
the region. The health and lives of thousands of young people who
wanted nothing more than to celebrate a party were ruthlessly put at risk.

The responsibility lies not only with the CDU, which holds the office
of mayor in Duisburg, and until two weeks ago led the North
Rhine-Westphalia state government, but with the Social Democratic
Party (SPD) and the Greens as well. Insofar as they expressed any
objections to the Love Parade, these were only on financial grounds.
The supporters of the Love Parade also included North
Rhine-Westphalia's newly incumbent interior minister, Ralf Jäger
(SPD), who comes from Duisburg.

As is often the case with such disasters, which appear at first to
have unique origins, the state of the society as a whole is reflected
in the tragedy in Duisburg. The profound irresponsibility towards
hundreds of thousands of mainly young people, with no one showing any
concern for their welfare and security, is not limited to Duisburg
and the tragic events of last weekend. It characterises large
portions of the ruling elite in business, politics and public
administration. It is the hallmark of a social system that places the
profit interests of the ruling elite far higher than the vital
interests and welfare of the vast majority of the population.

Especially in the Ruhr area, once the largest industrial region in
Europe, with many coal mines, steel mills and large factories, the
social impact of the crisis of capitalist profit system has been
particularly devastating.

The demise of the collieries, in which almost a million miners were
employed after the war and which had formed the backbone of Germany's
"economic miracle," had already started in the 1950s. At that time,
the protests of the Ruhr miners shook the government of Ludwig
Erhardt (CDU) and led to the entry of the SPD into the federal
government as part of a grand coalition. Through the creation of new
industries (such as auto manufacturer Opel), the construction of
universities and the extension of the public sector, the SPD and the
unions were able to bring the situation under control.

But the decline continued. In the 1970s and 1980s, not only did all
the coal mines disappear, steel mills were also shut down one after
another. Again there were weeks of strikes, as in Hattingen and the
Duisburg district of Rheinhausen, that were eventually sold out by the unions.

The SPD, which governed North Rhine-Westphalia uninterrupted from
1966 to 2005, became specialists in leading the unemployed by the
nose. It is no accident that Wolfgang Clement, who as labor minister
under Gerhard Schröder pushed through the Hartz welfare "reforms,"
comes from the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. Before he moved to
Berlin, he was state premier for four years in Düsseldorf.

The arrogance, inhumanity, and bureaucratic ruthlessness with which
millions of those on welfare were treated, regarded as mere cost
factors to be pushed around, is matched by the irresponsibility shown
towards the participants in the Love Parade. The differences between
the CDU, Free Democratic Party (FDP), SPD, Greens and the Left Party
are merely nuances. None of these parties has a response to the
continued decline of the Ruhr area.

This decline has long since adversely affected the infrastructure
that was established in the 1970s. Mass unemployment and the
impoverishment of the cities and municipalities is palpable
everywhere. One austerity programme follows another. Youth clubs,
sporting and recreational facilities, district libraries, community
colleges, theaters­everything is being closed. The long-term impact
of this systematic social decline is no less dramatic and deadly than
the events of last weekend.

To counter this social devastation it is necessary to systematically
concentrate available resources and establish a programme of public
works that would create millions of new jobs and billions in
investment in the infrastructure. But none of the major parties are
prepared to undertake such a policy. To do so would mean confronting
the financial oligarchy, which is creaming off billions and which
dictates increasingly tougher austerity measures to the government
and the municipalities. Such a confrontation is not desired by the
SPD, the Left Party or the Greens, and certainly not by the CDU and the FDP.

Instead, they conduct campaigns about improving the Ruhr's "image,"
and other lofty projects, such as building new shopping centers, the
organization of major events and expensive advertising campaigns that
provide lucrative earnings for a few politicians and their clients.
Meanwhile, the mass of the population confront low-wage, temporary
jobs and devastated neighborhoods.

Ruhr.2010, with the Ruhr metropolis of Essen as its "European Capital
of Culture," has as its slogan: "New energy is being encouraged here.
It's called culture." But this has little to do with culture in the
traditional sense, as witnessed by the crumbling schools and
universities. The Love Parade was part of this "image" campaign, and
in the past few years was held in the Ruhr cities of Essen and
Dortmund, and was scheduled for 2011 in Gelsenkirchen.

The decay of the official parties is shown by their relationship to
the Love Parade festival organizer, McFit President and CEO Rainer
Schaller. Whereas the SPD and trade unions had bowed down before the
billion-dollar steel concerns in the 1970s, today the Ruhr
politicians have put their hopes in Schaller, who came into fast
money through the development of cheap fitness studios, Germany's
largest chain.

Unlike the 1970s, no major party now is willing to invest money in
new universities, public institutions and well-paid jobs. Instead,
cuts to the bone and ruthlessness are the order of the day. With the
Love Parade disaster, Duisburg has reached the end of the line, but
similar disasters are inevitable if society continues in the same direction.

While the drama in Duisburg has drawn the attention and aroused the
horror of millions, the little dramas that occur every day in private
or in the workplace as a result of unemployment, poverty and
government harassment remain largely hidden from the public.

A new political orientation is necessary. This requires the building
of a new party that places the interests of society higher than the
profit interests of the banks and corporations, and that fights for a
socialist program. The Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist
Equality Party), the German section of the Fourth International, is
building such a party.

.