Please give a basic answer to the questions below and mail them to:

• What is the legal and practical status of squatting in your country?

• What happens when you get arrested?

  • What is the process?
    
  • How long can they hold you for?
    
  • What are your rights?
    
  • What you should and should not do?

• What to do if someone you know is arrested?

• What happens if you are stopped by police in the street? Do you have to give ID, passport? Personal searches? What are your rights?

• What is the situation for foreigners? (different treatment for EC/non EC citizens? Deportations, Special prisons, what are your rights? How useful are the Embassies? Etc.)

• House searches ? What to do? What are your rights?

• On the Streets ? special legal or practical information for demos and actions?

• Anything else you think is particularly important in your country (e.g. use of anti-terrorist laws, hitch hiking)?

• General information about the police (different police forces, common police tactics etc.)?

• Contacts for legal support groups, links to local legal resources?

As part of the international legal guide we are putting together for squat.net, we would also like to develop some kind of international overview of the attacks and erosion of our political space over the past decade. We are therefore looking for analyses of legal changes and strategies of repression of grassroots activism in your city or country over the past five or ten years. We would like to know:

• Has repression and social control increased in your country over the past five to ten years? How?

• What new lasw have been introduced? e.g. Anti-terrorist legislation, Civil Laws (housing, labour etc), Public Order legislation/freedom of assembly (such as the Criminal Justice Act in the UK, or the Codigo Penal in Spain)

• How have those laws been applied?

• How has the practice of social control changed?

• How are they using surveillance? e.g. Patriot Act in US, CCTV, Phone tapping, ID cards and controls, etc.

• Who are the main targets of this repression?

• What impact has this had on grassroots political activity and on society in general?

• Is there anything else you think is important to know about the situation in your city/country?

We are also very interested to receive more in depth analyses of specific aspects of repression in different places. (e.g. CCTV and ID cards in the UK, Phone tapping in Holland, repressive cooperation between different states, such as the "Operacion Cervantes" targeting anarchists in Italy, Spain and Greece). And also international instruments of social control such as Europol and biometric passport systems.

Thank you!