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Dates:
Closing arguments: 2nd and 5th of December (Rallies will be held outside of the court) Verdict to be read by Judge Steinhoff: 8 December (Rally and demonstration)
Oury Jalloh Initiative Rally and demonstration, 8 December 2008 in Dessau
09:00Uhr Rally
11:30 Press Conference
12:00 Demo
Landgericht Dessau Willy-Lohmann-Str. 29
On January 7, 2005, Oury Jalloh and Layé Konde, both of Africa, lost their lives at the hands of the German police. This video tells the story of how Oury Jalloh burned alive while chained at hands and feet to a fireproof mattress in Cell No. 5 of the police station in Dessau, Germany.
Even until today, the authorities have sustained the thesis that Oury Jalloh set himself on fire. Refugee, migrants and anti-racists supporters have fought hard for the last 34 months to see that justice is done. Although successful in forcing a trial, the proceedings have been plagued with racism, cover-up, complacency, bias and impunity. It still remains a mystery just how exactly the fire in Cell No. 5 actually started.
After almost 60 hearings, the trial is now slowly coming to an end, with the verdict expected on December 8th. The only outcome which can be expected is the continued injustice which has characterized both this case as well as the treatment of refugees and migrants in general.
Nevertheless, the struggle continues and, perhaps with your support, we will still see that the truth is made known, that justice is done, and that the family of Oury Jalloh is compensated for having tragically lost the life of their beloved son.
But however the outcome, the struggle itself is already a victory for all of those who have fought and continued to fight it.
BREAK THE SILENCE!
Initiative in Memory of Oury Jalloh
TUNIS – Trade unionists arrested and tortured. Protesters shot dead by police during demonstrations. Journalists in jail. And a great censorship to prevent the spread of protests and protect the international image of a country which was visited by 6.7 millions tourists just in 2007. We are speaking about Tunisia. A country which is also known for his emigration. Since many years, thousands of Tunisians cross the Mediterranean towards to the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Pantelleria. During the first half of 2008 some 1,287 Tunisian landed on the Italian shores. They look for a better life. But what do they leave behind? To understand what Tunisia has become, we visited one of its hottest regions. The mining area of Gafsa, 400 km southwest of Tunis. Here it started - ten months ago - the most important social movement of the Country during the last 20 years. A spontaneous and popular movement which keep on struggling despite the repression and censorship.
The region of the mines looks like a lunar landscape. But under the grey mountains among Moularès, Redeyef, Mdhilla and Metlaoui there is a treasure: 600 millions tons of phosphate. The mines are held by the public Phosphate company of Gafsa (CPG). In 2008 the price of a ton of phosphate rock has doubled because of the growing demand of fertilizers in China and India. Tunisia is the fifth producer in the world and has still reserves for the next 100 years. Yet the region of Gafsa is one of the poorest. The technical modernization of mining reduced by 55% the number of employees in the past 20 years, from 11,000 to 5,000. And it caused a serious economic crisis in the towns of miners, built from scratch during the French colonization to house the workforce in the early twentieth century. Today, unemployment affects 40% of young people. Young people who often have no other way out except burning the borders, as they say in Arabic. 
Reinforcements were sent from Tunis to the mining area. Police checked all the accesses to Redeyef. And plainclothes agents monitored the main actors of the protest. On June 6, police opened fire on a demonstration. A guy, Hafnaoui Maghzaoui, was shot dead. And 27 people were injured. One of them, Abdelkhaleq Aamidi, died after three month in hospital, on September 14. Within a few weeks, two hundred people were arrested. Trade unionists as well as ordinary people. The night between June 21 and 22 the leader of the protest Adnan Hajji was arrested again.
The movement was beheaded. But no woman was arrested. And so the women, the wives of trade unionists and activists in jail, returned on the streets, on July 27, demanding the release of prisoners. Among them there was also Zakiya Dhifaoui. Born in 1966, she is journalist and teacher. She came from Kairouan to write a report on the opposition newspaper Muatinun. But her report will never be published. Because that day Dhifaoui was arrested. Her arrest was a message sent to all the Tunisian journalists: don’t come to Redeyef and don’t write about it. It is the other side of the repression: the censorship of any sensitive information. Dhifaoui was sentenced to four and a half months of prison. But she is not the only journalist in jail. Actually it is the freedom of expression itself to be judged.
Without any doubt this is one of the greatest political trial under the presidency of Ben Ali . A presidency which has been lasting uninterrupted since 1987. In November 2009, there will be the presidential elections. The deaths of Redeyef will not be enough to undermine the power of the Constitutional Democratic Party (RDC). Nor to revive the opposition after years of repression of dissent. The defense lawyers know it, that the judgement has already been written. But in the history there is an accumulation... says one of them under anonymity. Actually the Tunisian poet Abou el Kacem Chebbi, told it a century ago: "When people choose life, fate must respond, night must brighten and chains must break".
