written by Flüchtlingsinitiative Möhlau Wittenberg deutsch
A man and a woman joining together to form a family is the fundamental evolution of the existence of human nature and human beign has to move freely without limitation "freedom of movement". Having build families from which we got villages, cities, local government and states called "country" some were greedy, egoist and tricky because of political. Social economical, and financial system to which they created themselves to depend on.
These contributed to victimise some countries leading to political instability and crises, to poverty and hunger, to cronik sicknesess and death, to wars and missery, states bariers wherby each states has its own legitimate laws which could contradict the other states to which the cosequence would be surferd by "Human being", but human beings were meant to live on planet earth peacefully with one another to have one objective of positive thinking and solidarity.
Lets take for instance african continent as a whole, where enermous natural resourcesses found itself and states have been build through colonial structures and elitism, independent follows as from 1958 after surfering an immense set backs and confusional repression, identity, economical,.political confusion despite that, they managed to establish the so called "countries" with lots of colonial accord to which some of these accords contribute to contradict the continents developement of today.
Political system was established which comprises a lots of institutions to which other members states have to recognise as legitimate, bound together to function the world political system with the objective of achieving world peace and order, stability.
The financial institutional system was established in Africa, to which the competent institution has to regulate the african monetary mechanism which is related to the international monetary system. To generate a so called medium of exchange in other for people to use it to aquire their daily needs. But the forced loans with intrest, leads some of these countries to have an enermous foreign debt to which they could not be able to pay back because of the per incom capital and state revenue and could not be able to compete withe so called established industrial states.
The consequence leads thier money value to be devaluated and despite the fact that it makes it dificult for african farmers to sell thier product to the international market, states subsidies to thier famers by the industrial states would not be excludes as one of the problem, icluding trade barriers forwarded to them by the so called industrial states, inflations emerge as a result including unemployment which relates to extreem poverty explosion and corruptions in africa.
At the same time some african state import quotation exceed export quotation- that means some african countries becomes indirectly consumers with high unemployment quote- the industrial states goods would be sold in african market while african goods would be restricted in thier market.
These factor affects some african state political system ,to which the states policies would be affected, the political parties would be affected, also could leads some states to be dependent on external financial assistance and suport. This could equally leads to indirect exploitation of the posesed resourcess of a state by the industrial states in exchange of financial assistance which would also be used to pay an unfinished foreing debt. It also contribute to make good governance impossible therefore the eradication of poverty, hunger political crises,war, political persecutions becomes a problem.
These mechanisms mentioned contributed to the political instability in africa, conflicts, hunger and poverty, political persecution, dictatorships etc. And as far as it persit to exist refugees become victim.
Therefore we are calling the industrial states for solidarity, to stop deportation! And to give apprioprite protection to all refugees and put in consideration thier lives and human dignity. They are also the members of the world and needs protection.Refugees dont need isolation, resident restriction, dont need to be excluded without working permision. they need to be intergrated in the society, so as for refugees to contribute to the days to days activities which would be beneficial to the local governement.
On June 27 and 28, 2009 we - a delegation of the network of the CARAVAN for the rights of the refugees and migrants from Wuppertal as well as members of THE VOICE Refugee Forum from Jena and refugees from Apolda - visited the isolation Lagers in Gerstungen and Gangloffsömmern in Thuringia. This delegation visit is the beginning of a row of further visits of the isolation camps located in Thuringia and lasts up to the action conference „united against the continuation of colonial injustice in Germany “, which is organized in September 2009 in Jena, Thuringia. In the following we document the experiences of the first visit.
Arrival in Gerstungen
On June 27, 2009 at about 4:30 p.m. we drove altogether from Jena to Apolda in order to drive direction Gerstungen together with refugee activists of two isolation Lagers. Gerstungen lies in the west of Thuringia at the motorway A4, in the Werratal, in the district Wartburg. Shortly after Eisenach the motorway forms the border between Thuringia and Hessen. A sign at the motorway tells of the fact that one lefts Thuringia. Shortly after the exit Gerstungen comes. We take the exit and arrive at Untersuhl. Untersuhl is a small village bordering on Gerstungen. Obersuhl, the neighbour village, lies some hundred meters further in the west and already lies in Hessen.
In Untersuhl we take one of the roads at the edge of the city and arrive at the Lager. The building resembles from a distance many other camps which we have already seen: neglected, many satellite dishes as one of the few connections to the world outside. At the entrance sits a doorman who wants to see a document of identification. An acquaintance shows its document of identification, the name is noted and we to go into the yard. In front of the house we see about ten cats sitting there all with a view on the kitchen and wait for a “Happen” which might come flown down. Behind the house is a row of garages. Many of the former and current inhabitants perpetuated themselves here through wall sayings at the garage gates in different languages. „Everyone sees my laughter through “stands there written, probably a cry of a young person from the isolation experienced in the Lager.
In the entrance zone in the house we become acquainted with the prohibitions: “The course tracks may not be crossed”. It is forbidden by the police and dangerous and in addition a fine threatens. Further we learn that in Gerstungen floor checks are accomplished: „In order to avoid problems around the next cash dispensing, announce yourselves once daily at the guard!! “Both prohibitions are translated into German, English and French. According to what the inhabitants say about 80 persons live in the home. Those which we met come from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Iran, Sierra Leone, Syria. They hardly speak one of the West European languages. At the notices we also learn something about the health care. Each person must pay part of the travel expenses for doctor visits. In the month this can amount to 6,71Euro per person. Appropriate forms are needed in order to confirm the physician visit. All tickets etc. must be presented to the social office. For visits at specialized doctors a certificate of treatment must be fetched at the social office.
Subsequently, we go into the kitchen in the ground floor. At the moment three Azerbaijani refugees and some Iranians are cooking. The kitchen has three rinses without tray surface on the left side. On the right side are the cookers. The walls are hopeless and the trashy lemonade advertisements from the beginning of the 20th century at the wall don´t not make it look more beautiful.
We sit down in the room of an aserian refugee and talk with him and some others. Presence controls are daily. If someone does not stay in the Lager for two weeks he or she is unregistered. Nearly everyone in the Lager receives coupons at a value of 126 euros. Many receive no cash at all. The foreign authority district Wartburg is in ´Bad Salzungen´, about 30 km south of Untersuhl. The trip there and back alone costs 6 euros. The tolerances of residence (Duldung) are usually issued for 6 months.
Freedom restriction by residence obligation law (Residenzpflicht)
One of the aserian refugees told us that he wants to visit his child. However, this is refused by the foreign authority on account of the Residenzpflicht law. Once, one of the two social workers from the Lager called the foreign authority to describe the problem, the foreign authority of the administrative district Wartburg replied: „Nevertheless, it is all the same to me whether he has a child or not, he should be deported anyway.“ Two other young aserian men tell us that they made purchases at Rewe in Obersuhl. There they were controlled in front of the supermarket by police officers. Now a punishment of 40 Euros threatens them. Each of them has received a letter from the police of Eisenach. Later, a father of a family, Kurd from Syria, tells us that he had to pay fines already twice because of Residenzpflicht. The first time 40 Euros and 95 Euros the second time. The Residenzpflicht is one of the main problems in Gerstungen. Since it is situated directly at the border to Hessen, the refugees of the isolation Lager in Untersuhl, Gerstungen, have direction north, west and south a movement radius of 1000 meters. In the north is the motorway A4, in the south the course tracks whose exceeding is forbidden. Practically they can just move to Untersuhl, Gerstungen and eastward. This restriction in a small district is particularly absurd in united Europe without borders and makes clear that after the law two classes of humans exist in Europe; for the one class there are no borders, for the other one each district can become an obstacle and limits them in their freedom. Felix Otto sits behind the bars in Thuringia for his natural right on freedom of movement.
Besides the freedom restriction the Residenzpflicht has further material, health and residence legal consequences for the refugees from Gerstungen. Since they can not go shopping to Obersuhl, they sometimes must drive with public transport to the next localities and pay 4 Euros additionally from the little money which is at their disposal each month. The dentist in Gerstungen refuses the treatment of the refugees because the welfare agency does not pay enough for the treatment of the refugees. In Gerstungen and Untersuhl no refugee´s aid offices like Caritas and Diakonie exist to which the refugees could address their problems. We spoke with several families and unmarried people in the second floor. A woman from Aserbaidschan told us that she was threatened by deportation. She already had to experience many deportations in the daybreak here and has fear to be deported herself. Her man died in the Lager. Now she lives there alone with their child. She does not know how she is to get along in Azerbaijan alone.
We spoke with a Kurdish family from Syria. The parents and their four children live together. They have been living in Germany for seven years. They would actually like to get away from this isolation Lager immediately. The 20-year-old daughter told us her heart has become black here. The sons are 19 and 17 years old. The latest child is their 7-years old daughter. The family feels restricted in the rooms. The older brothers and sisters share a room. The daughter and the brothers must come to an arrangement not to injure the intimate sphere of each other. One of the sons suffers from an illness which is caused by the accommodation at the Lager according to the treating doctor. Not to strike at school, he must take a shower every morning before the school. However, at six o'clock in the morning there is not enough warm water in the Lager. The oldest daughter does not feel fine at the Lager among single men. When going to the bath she is accompanied by her mother. All of the children had to watch the police action which was directed against a refugee. More than 300 policemen came, helicopters circled and all rooms were searched. The children and also others still seem traumatised of it.
The applications for a rearrangement all fail because the family does not present a passport to the foreign authority. The fact that the Kurds in Syria receive no rights, not even a birth certificate, apparently does not interest the authorities. Since the agreement over deportation with the Syrian government Germany has increasingly started to deport Syrian people to Syria.
The young men from Azerbaijan and the Kurdish family from Syria had cooked. We ate in a room together with other home inhabitants. We exchanged and became acquainted. After midnight, after having eaten together we leave Untersuhl, Gerstungen direction Apolda and Jena and sorrow remains. It is the same feeling which speeds us up every day. It is the injustice which is daily carried out no matter where in the world and which gnaws at us permanently… It is the conviction and the fury which grow stronger in us and drives us to remove everything which restricts, limits and destroys us. It is the determination to change in order to build up a world which is made by humans for humans. A world in which we are not dictated by an abstract market und that splits us in countries and borders, in religions and genders for the interests of others.
Visit at Gangloffsömmern
In the morning, on Sunday the 28th of June 2009, we drove from Jena to Apolda in order to drive with the friends from Apolda to Gangolffsömmern. Gangloffsömmern is a municipality in the district of Sömmerda in Thuringia. It belongs to the central administrative body of Straußfurt. The village consists of beautiful small houses embedded into a beautiful landscape. On this beautiful summer day we looked for the Lager. We finally found the lane and turned into it from the main street. Behind the first house front which was very beautiful a large, for years not reconditioned, run down building hid itself in the second row. A friend of THE VOICE appropriately meant: „Such looks a ghetto in the middle of a village!“ We stepped into the yard and there already waited a man. A Kurd from Iraq. Others came and in the yard we spoke about life in Gangolffsömmern.
While we were speaking three other Kurdish refugees came out of the building and after we had welcomed and introduced ourselves they walked in the court. We had the feeling as if these were prisoners who were walking in the court. More than 20 refugees live in the Lager. They come from Azerbaijan, Iraq, Iran, Chechnya and Vietnam. Most are single men. However, there are also two women living there with their children.
„One gets crazy here!“ said a Kurd who is not there for long yet. The refugees in Gangloffsömmern also receive vouchers and about 10 to 40 Euros in cash. However, in the village there is no shopping possibility. The next supermarket is in Straußfurt. The tickets there cost two Euros, i.e. for every purchase 4 Euros must be additionally considered. It maybe does not sound a lot for some people at first sight but with a monthly available sum of 130 to 140 Euros every Euro has another value. In Gangloffsömmern the rooms in the Lager are for three to four refugees. The refugees cannot make a lot of purchases at once because then they have no space in the single fridge in the room.
In the village there are neither social workers nor some caricative, church advisory boards. The foreign authority is in the city of Sömmerda. The tickets there also cost two Euros. The authority employees are very degrading. They do not talk with the refugees. The doctors are in Straußfurt, the social office is in Sömmerda.
The isolation is the biggest problem in Gangloffsömmern. A young Iranian refugee whom we knew from Freienbessingen said: „Freienbessingen was better than here. There we all were one family.“ Freienbessingen were former barracks in the middle of the wood beyond a city. Here, however, in the middle of a village, one is nevertheless isolated. „I greet the people but they don´t react. Meanwhile I have given it up!“ he says. He tells us that he once wanted to kill himself. Pamella, a Cameroonian woman who is meanwhile in Hamburg has seen it and told him: „Why do you make this? You have experienced so much! If you kill yourself you throw away your life completely. Let it be.“ He usually watches German television, he says, in order to improve his German in the isolation. However, at the moment he just pursues the Iranian transmitters because the events in Iran touch him very deeply.
The Kurdish refugee tells us that he would like to go to the Caritas in Eisenach. However, he does´t do this because of the Residenzpflicht (Residence obligation law). He was once in Sömmerda when he realised that the last bus already left and that the does not get to Gangloffsömmern at night. He took the train to Eisenach in order to take the regional train to Gangloffsömmern. Yet in Eisenach he was controlled by police officers and had to pay 123 Euros because of violating the residence obligation. He said: „We do not have much to live from!“ However it is even worse that we are also locked up here. „Here I can´t buy any calling cards in order to speak with my relatives in Iraq!“ The calling cards for cheap international telephone calls are available in Eisenach. He says: „Do you think that I am here to eat and sleep? Do you think that in Iraq we are no humans and have no other problems?“ Rage spoke from his words. He and the others said: „You come here as a human with dignity and if you remain here for long you become another person! “
For a while we spoke about this and that, about the threat of deportation against the Iranian refugee, about the friends who were in Freienbessingen and then we said goodbye. We drove direction Wuppertal and the friends from THE VOICE drove to Apolda and Jena. Before we drove off we exchanged contacts. We arranged to see again and talk about the problems and search for ways of solution.
On the way back our outrage about the isolation Lager was biting. We talked about the humiliation and the destruction of people. The big words about integration and human rights felt like slaps. We wished that many people would visit the people in spite of the long distances in order to see how systematically they are worn down. We wished that more people in this society would look for each other and build bridges of solidarity to those who are deprived of rights, are humiliated and isolated.
Spring has returned to Europe and with it the calm waters of the Mediterranean. With calmer waters, many more desperate human beings in search of their right to life and dignity will try to make their way into an ever brutal Fortress Europe. Of them, thousands of human beings with names and lives, with families and memories, will forever sink into the depths of the ocean; like the over 300 people drowned on the Libyan coast in the last couple of weeks. Human beings whose lives have been added to the ever increasing list of victims of colonial injustice.
For those of us who have made it here to Germany we are all too familiar with what our dreams of finding human dignity and decency and a better life have meant. Like the thousands of people who Europe would rather have decaying at the bottom of the Mediterranean, the dream of a better life in Germany or Europe virtually perishes upon arrival, exterminated by the racist arrogance and inhuman abuses lashed at us merely based on our origins or the colour of our skin.
Just so because we come here and instead of comprehension for the trauma we have faced for even leaving behind our friends and loved ones, of having escaped war and the horror of poverty, we are fingerprinted, interrogated and subjected to deliberate abuse. In doing so, we are frequently laughed at, screamed at, humiliated and looked down upon and taken advantage of. We are made to bear the brunt of their annoyance and the consequences of their ill-advised and inhumane policies. We have become their ‘whipping boy’ - destined to be punished for whatever is wrong in the society-be it crime, unemployment or social spending.
They think they are better than us; they have falsely and crudely taken us for their Untermensch. We, who come from such rich cultures. We, whose wealth has been brutally vandalised and expropriated to feed the insatiable greed of Western consumers. We, who have braved their abetted dictators and their dubious, unscrupulous economic policies. We, who in spite of the increasing militarization of our countries and their own borders, have courageously confronted them and escaped their attempts to imprison us in the horror they have created for us at home. And we, who have dared to stand up for truth, justice, and our principled beliefs, while maintaining human dignity and decency all through.
Seeing that we have broken through their fortified borders, they take our fingerprints on arrival and then send us to the ‘Lager’; where they confidently and surely expect us to ‘waste’ as human beings which should serve as a lesson to others not to come to Germany. In the Lager, numbers of adults are cramped into single rooms like sardines in cans- welcome to further abuse and humiliation that is Germany, goodbye to privacy and any hope for human dignity.
Then comes how we are made to live. In some cases, what is not considered good enough for their dogs are considered the best food for us while at the same time; they make it illegal for us to cook our own food. Not to mention the food packets with the expired dates on them. In fact in many cases, the feeding system is used as a method to control our presence in the Lager and a way to separate the ‘good’ and ‘obedient’ refugees from the bad and rebellious ones who have yet to learn to accept the rule of continued colonial power. On the basis of such rebellion, we are considered ‘unfit’ to live in this society, while those considered good and obedient are told they have no right to stay here as they are not really useful.
For they believe that if we do not rot at the bottom of the ocean then we should certainly rot in their isolated and abandoned military barracks located in the forests, away from regular human beings and any urban centres. It is easier to control and slowly destroy us that way and out of sight of (any?) prying public or media.
Lager and control mentality
This Lager and control mentality that underlies the asylum system in Germany has a long, devious and brutal history with far reaching consequences. From the general to the specific, the strategy is to isolate, stigmatise and then persecute. From the various notorious Lagers under the National Socialists through the Lagers for Guest workers, the Lager and control mentality has been a consistent and perverse feature of the German system in dealing with those that are either considered not directly useful or those that are out rightly unwanted. It should be recalled that in the erstwhile DDR, many contract/guest workers were also similarly kept in Heim and even couples amongst them were separated to ensure that they did not raise families. The story is told of some women guest workers who were sent home because they were pregnant and refused to abort the pregnancy. The rule was that you were either here to work as demanded or required by the state or you are out of here to ensure that not even family issues were to obstruct that requirement. You are either useful for our economy or you’re out. Through all these phases, the Lager and control mentality is sustained. And was it not this control mentality that was also evident in the Nazi requirement of foreigners to obtain permission to even have children? Interestingly disturbing to note how deep and ingrained the control mentality is in Germany-so little attitudinal changes in the many years that have gone by.
But why is that?
Good question. It may not have been necessary beyond academic inquiry to re-visit this question now if many of us are not currently re-living the hash realities and the bitter consequences of this mentality and its attendant system. When the darkest and bloodiest history of this country was forcefully prevailed upon in the mid-forties, the so-called Allied were determined to set up a system different from the one they just defeated. But the new system was set up perfectly to accommodate and rehabilitate majority of the dramatis personae in the very regime they just defeated, blurring over all these with the Nuremberg Trials. So, the rehabilitation and continued presence of highly placed people under the National Socialists in basically all fields of endeavour also meant that there was enough room to accommodate some of the policies of the Nazi past in Germany. As the old culprits settled more comfortably into the new political system with their cohorts, the easier it became for them to re-lapse nearer into their old frame of mind. We should remember here that we are talking of the Lager and control mentality. And nowhere in the Western world is this more demonstrated than in Germany.
History records the restriction of movement placed on Jews and other foreigners in 1938 and the consequent fine for violation of that restriction. While world outrage and condemnation have since been rightly heaped on this and the more horrible crimes of the era, since 1982, this obnoxious restriction has been replicated on all asylum seekers throughout this country in the form of the so-called Residenzpflicht. That for a refugee to leave her/his immediate District s/he needs a written permission from the Foreigner’s Office-else a fine or possible jail term awaits upon police control is a startling reminder of that 1938 restriction. Now, what does it cost Germany (culturally or economically) if refugees or asylum seekers can move freely within the country like normal human beings? NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING!!! But it is the German Lager and control mentality that is at play here. Just to clarify this with one more example. Many studies by independent investigators have shown that it is much cheaper if refugees are accommodated in private housing. And even different governmental sources have acknowledged this. But the authorities baulked at this cost effective measure and rather continue to take pride in maintaining the humiliating Lager system; that defies human dignity and denies privacy to refugees. The same is true of food coupons-the “Gutscheine”. It costs the government more than the value of the Gutscheine that is actually paid out. And with all the unwanted attention, humiliation and the problems associated with Gutscheine, one wonders why the authorities insist on using Gutscheine and not cash, which is cheaper, easier and better for all. It has to do with the Lager and control mentality-encrusted old habits!! They die hard it is said.
Duldung-the permanent asylum-life suspense!
Did you know that of all of the thousands and thousands of us who apply for asylum in Germany, less than 1% of us are actually granted asylum? And what does that leave us?
Duldung-the permanent asylum-life suspense. No work. No studies. No right to move beyond your local District. No advancement in life-only stagnation and slow but steady waste of life. Just eat and sleep, eat and sleep until the perversity of their cruelty destroys you, enters into your brain like a tumour, destroying your will to live and thus your will to fight back. Like those drugged up in mental hospitals, they attempt to put us into a vegetative state until we are either deported or, if we have enough will left in our souls, go back to our countries ‘voluntarily’.
In the meantime they give us their Gutscheine and their Residenzpflicht, racist police controls and forced isolation. They put us at the mercy of the most ignorant and vile of their kind, who feels empowered by our purported weakness and subordination. Yes, it makes them feel good. A little like someone feel good when one is able to send some money home one’s family or when you can help out a fellow human being, that's the way they feel when they realise that you are feeling bad about the treatment you get here. But it eats at their souls whether they know it or not, leaving them as living, breathing robots with no hearts and thus with absolutely no human comprehension. Frantz Fanon stated these years ago with the bloody French rule in Algeria and it is still true today in Germany with refugees.
Our Words, Our Voice - A Voice for Truth and Justice
And because words are power and because they intend to maintain us in permanent subordination, their position is that we should never be given the power of words, the power to determine the way our past and present are interpreted and spoken about. They not only want to ‘make’ our history, they also want to write and re-write it according to their taste and in their own words. And here lies the problem. Those of us who have managed to retain our sanity in the midst of their insane policies and who have remained courageous and confronted them in the midst of their intimidation, persecution and unparallel means of violence have become ‘their criminals’. They attempt to criminalise us in every step that we make hoping to silence us. And because they know they cannot win any argument of principles, truth and justice when faced with the facts, they resort to intimidation, violence and brutality against activists to prevent us from standing up for our principled beliefs. They question why we are here and ask us to leave if we don’t like how we’re treated here. But they should be reminded of the African adage which says: You don’t hit a child on the head and ask the child ‘why are you crying?’ If they still have not got it, “we are here because they destroy our countries”. How we talk about this destruction and their continued violation of our inalienable rights here is non-negotiable. We will always say it the way we feel it. There can be no compromise about this.
This was exemplified in the Oury Jalloh case. With no proof and where the facts of the case actually indicated the contrary, they spoke of suicide, that Oury Jalloh killed himself. That was it. And then we got reproached by some of our purported supporters when we said NO! NO! OURY JALLOH… DAS WAR MORD! Oury Jalloh, who was chained at his hands and feet to a fireproof mattress, yet they said we had no proof and that he set himself on fire. We refused to accept how they wanted us to speak about it and insisted that we’ll speak about it in our own terms. We imposed our words-the truth, our truth. Then they finally began to let up and though not in agreement, at least they lost the battle of imposing how we speak of Oury Jalloh's murder. And just like the thousands of our brothers and sisters whose lives have been stolen while attempting to even make it to this so-called Fortress Europe, this was a life that was snuffed out at its prime for no reason other than racism and police brutality.
Yet you can fool some people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. And so we resist. We say no to their controls, no to their Residenzpflicht, no to their Gutschein, no to their isolation camps, no to their abuses and no to their racist police controls, brutality and MURDER!!!
And how do they react? What do these good, civilized, enlightened people of Germany do in the face of our protest against abuses which violate the spirit of both their constitution and international law (but not the letter, which they have modified in order to continue imposing their colonial relations)?
They criminalize us for daring to stand up for truth and justice. They oppress us to keep us subjugated and they try to intimidate us to undercut our support. But they will fail as they did before. None of us should ever forget the sacrifices made by Mouctar Bah in his monumental fight for truth and justice for the murder of his friend Oury Jalloh. We see also the racist oppression which had been visited upon him because of it. We see how they persecute him and levy false charges against him. They can try all they want but truth is on our side, the facts bear it out therefore history and justice will vindicate him. In this we trust!!!
And what about Katzhütte, where are we today?
We are not only here because of the isolation and the moulding walls, the psychological torture and the prolonged punishment for the "crime" of being unwelcome in Germany, but because when we protested against their inhumanity they reacted by justifying it to their people and ILLEGALLY oppressing those of us who speak out. And we still stand, still strong and proud of our collective fight for the dignity of all. This fact has permitted us to see deeply into their plans and beyond the veil of lies they try to construct through their snake-like language. Yet like we have with their borders, we have survived their attempts at oppressing our resistance. We have seen and learned a lot.
For instance, we all know that Europe and the United States are the ones that prop up the dictators in our countries, arm and train those who oppress us in our own countries and finance the wars they wage in and on our countries. We also know that it is their economic policies, which are now coming back to haunt them, which have destroyed our economies and raped us of our resources with reckless abandon. Through the IMF and the World Bank the Western countries also forbid governments in our countries to provide us with, for example, the right to education. That's right, they prefer that we remain ignorant-thinking that this is the way they can maintain control over our resources and our bodies.
Isn't that what is happening in each and every one of our countries? Isn't that exactly what we fled from? Didn't they promise us one way or another that these were the countries of wealth and human development, of human rights and basic decency, civilization and progress? Yet is that what we have seen? Is this what democracy looks like? Does it look any different than the "democracies" of Cameroon or Egypt, for example?
And in spite of everything, in spite of their over five hundred year attempt to subjugate us and impose their will, their logic and their language, they have not been successful. In fact, they are failing both because their colonial project was designed to fail from the very beginning and because their racist arrogance does not permit them to even develop solutions which could confront the serious crises facing humanity as we speak
Like they have done for so many years to the countries of the so-called Third World, Europe and the United States have dismantled their own economic systems in an all-out race for profit. As long as the rich continued to get richer, and anything could be bought on credit, it was an anything-goes environment. But like their alleged superiority, the putrid foundations of their adventure began to bring down the veil of economic soundness. What is left is a world order in decay and both Europe and the United States struggling-together-to maintain their colonial privileges which have been built on endless quantities of bloods and tears of the very same people who are not and never will be welcomed into their "paradise of fantasy."
But as their instruments of exploitation and dominance becomes more brutal so too do the pangs of capitalism clutches harder. A new world is now emerging, one whose shape and future has yet to be determined. But we should not expect any respite from this system. However, because we are and have always been historical actors of our own destiny, the world to come will be defined by us. And no matter their continued barbarity and profound ignorance of human essence, our destiny is in our hands. It is we, who will determine our future. Not their debased policies and border regimes.
We must never forget that those of us who have been converted into refugees and migrants come from regions of the world that make up the great majority of humanity. And we are not, contrary to the filth and poison injected into our minds for the last five hundred years, in any way inferior. On the contrary, human history will remember the so-called Western Civilization as the most cruel, destructive and exclusive imperial power to have ever existed. Will we ever know how many billions of human beings directly or indirectly perished because of it?
Here in Germany, we have taken steps. The fight against deportation, for truth and justice in the case of Oury Jalloh, the unconditional closing of all Lagers, respect for the right to freedom of movement and the right to life, these have all been the cornerstones in the foundations we have laid together for an end to the barbarity and a better tomorrow for us all.
And we will continue. We will continue to fight together so that we are all respected as the normal human beings that we are. We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by those cruel and greedy lots of the world. And we will not remain silent; if for nothing, that they may never get their wish. We will remain warriors for human dignity and warriors for an end to colonial injustice. The unbearable pains and suffering they have inflicted on much of humanity will not go unquestioned and they will answer for it, sooner or later.
Together we are breaking the silence and the chains that keep us enslaved in these colonial relationships! Together we will overcome their racist ignorance and cruelty!
Long live the struggle!
Long live those who struggle against the oppressive system!
Felix Otto, cameroonian activist of The Voice Refugee-Forum, who has been imprisoned in Suhl-Goldlauter / Thüringen since March 2009, first for „Residenzpflicht“ movement restriction law, later on for deportation, shall be deported on Tuesday, 25th of August 2009, at 10.40 a.m., together with other cameroonian refugees in a mass deportation charter-flight from Frankfurt to Cameroon.
With the charter-flight deportation, Felix Otto and all the other refugees concerned shall be deported as quickly and effectively as possible. Beyond any public perception and without any chance for resistance.
A mass deportation charter-flight means: The public, and even other flight passengers, are excluded from any possibility to witness what is happening to the people who are getting deported. Heavy police forces are in place to crush refugees' resistance - if necessary by making use of pepper spray, beatings and dogs. Any possibility for the refugees to stop their own deportation by protesting inside the plane shall be violently suppressed.
Felix Otto was imprisoned 5 months ago for violating the „Residenzpflicht“ movement restriction law because he had made use of his human right for Freedom of Movement. His case strongly rose public awareness and many people supported the struggle for his immediate release and for his freedom. Anyhow, the responsible migration authorities at Schleiz / Saale-Orla Kreis Thüringen are strongly determined to let Felix Otto disappear.
This must not happen! Come and join the protest action against the deportation of Felix Otto and against the mass deportation charter-flight to Cameroon at Frankfort/Main airport on:
Date: Tuesday, 25th of August 2009, Time: at 9.30 a.m.! Place: Halle B, Bus Station in front of Frankfort/Main airport
The Charter Flight of Shame must not take off! Felix Otto and all the other cameroonian refugees must stay here!
Here a couple of images which show how bad it is to be in Pagani, and a short video clip we produced with different material taken inside. It shows that even youngest kids are imprisoned. You also see detained women demanding freedom, and some young men show that their room is so overcrowded that they not only sleep on the ground, but also beneath the other beds.
He is sentenced to eight month imprisonment, because he has violated the so called “Residenzpflicht”. He only has taken his right, what according to the international declaration of human right is a basic human right, the right of free movement. Now he is punished double. The responsible Foreigner Office is additionally preparing his deportation to Cameroon. The Administrative Court of Suhl ordered accordingly his deportation detention. To do this all rules of a fair trial were excluded. Just two days before the hearing in the administrative court of Suhl Mr. Felix Otto, who is in a bad psychological and physical condition, was informed about the hearing. The hearing itself took place without his laywer, because the Foreigner Office did not inform the court that Mr. Otto has a legal representative. The chance was not given to him to prepare himself for the defense with the help of a legal expert and consultant.
As an asylum seeker and as a member of the refugee self‐organization “THE VOICE Refugee Forum“ in Germany he is in danger to be persecuted in Cameroon due to his activities as an oppositional. Cameroon is a country in which human right violations and corruption rule. Real opposition and political opponents are silenced with brutality. People are arrested arbitrarily and without a legal basis. The freedom of expression and the freedom of assembly are massively limited. Human right activists and journalists are intimated brutally or even killed. During the protests against thegovernment in February 2008 at least 100 people were killed on the streets by the security forces. Amnesty international warns from an increase of brutality prior to the presidential elections in 2011.
A deportation to Cameroon not only means a threat to the life of the deported but as well a silent acceptance of the human right violations.
In a discussion yesterday at Daily Kos, one commenter – we’ll presume he or she is, as self-described, Honduran or of Honduran descent – typed the following words:
“You obviously do not know us. We may be a poor country but we are very proud and will not be pushed around, even by the ‘great colossus to the North.’ Remember, we went to war over a soccer game...
“Zelaya has violated the Constitution. The term limits of the Presidency are not subject to referenda and Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”
This comment is fairly representative of many similar ones across the Internet. And it is instructive as to the attitude of what I call the Oligarch Diaspora that drives the deep disconnect between how coup defenders see themselves and how everybody else sees them.
Note the emphatic uses, in the comment, of the words, “we” and “us.”
“You don’t know us… We are very proud… We went to war over a soccer game.”
It’s as if the commenter personally was a combatant in the brief Honduras-El Salvador “Soccer War” of 1969, which I very much doubt. (Interestingly, the intervention of the Organization of American States, or OAS, was required to bring that conflict, which had no military victor, to an end).
And when OAS chairman José Miguel Insulza arrives today in Tegucigalpa for the last-ditch diplomatic effort to persuade the Honduran coup plotters to stand down and let democracy resume with its elected president restored, the attitude expressed is “Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”
The Honduran Constitution of 1982 is a series of 375 Articles – most of them just a sentence or two long - divided into seven sections. It has been amended 22 times since its enactment, and it is the country’s twelfth constitution since 1838.
In that light, the kernel of the coup’s charges against President Zelaya – that his efforts to convene a Constitutional Convention (“Constituent Assembly”) were somehow illegal – are bizarrely extreme in a land where the Constitution already gets rewritten and amended with such rapid-fire frequency.
My point is that it doesn’t require any kind of divine birthright or special genetics to read and understand that document. In fact, two non-Hondurans, North American professor Greg Weeks (“Honduras: Summing Up Some Basic Points”) and Salvadoran attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen ("Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal") have offered, so far, the most astute analyses of how the Constitution applies to the current crisis in Honduras.
Attorney Insulza – widely respected throughout the world for his diplomatic skills and intellectual toughness – is not someone who would have any problem at all reading and analyzing the Honduran Constitution as it applies to the current crisis. The suggestion that he has something to “learn” about the document that can only be provided to him by those the commenter calls “us” reveals more about the commenter than the Constitution.
Insulza, part of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 when it was deposed by military coup, who later spent years of exile in Mexico, could inform many throughout the world, including in Honduras, about the nature of coups d’etat from his unique personal experience. Historic events like that – unlike legal documents – are more difficult to understand without direct lived experience. But, no, coup defenders in Honduras largely view his travels to Tegucigalpa today to be sessions in which, like the commenter said, he has to “learn something about our Constitution.”
The generalized problem with the oligarchies throughout this region is that "we," to them, doesn't include the people they look down upon, which is pretty much everybody that isn’t in their economic-social class. To them, "we" does not mean a nation, but, rather, those who purport to own it.
I think I have already mentioned somewhere the story of the Cuban exile in Miami who said, "Before Castro, everybody had a maid!" Well, unless the maids also had maids, not everybody had a maid. Think about that. “Everybody,” in the oligarchic mind, doesn’t include, well, everybody, certainly not servants and the rest of the working and poor population.
I've witnessed these attitudes first hand in Mexico, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil... It’s widespread among a certain class that is the distinct minority in each population, but that has its hands more firmly on the economic levers of power in each country.
The current behavior of upper class Honduras and its aspirants brings to mind a scene from an episode of the television series, House M.D., in which Dr. Gregory House is on an airplane and a passenger falls ill. The other passengers go into a shared panic as suddenly everybody else on the plane begins complaining of, and even exhibiting, physical symptoms of what they thought – errantly, it turned out – to be a contagious illness.
There is precisely that kind of 30,000-feet-above-sea-level, in a closed and claustrophobic space, hysterical, shrieking tone to the pro-coup defense: That only "we" at these altitudes understand our Constitution; that "we" have to educate the rest of you, etcetera.
And it is from that zone of shared hallucination that their claim - "Zelaya has violated the Constitution" – arises.
They’ve demonstrated that they simply can't believe that anyone but members of their group (the “we” they frequently cite) would dare even try to interpret what only the educated and propertied classes of their milieu "know": in this case the Honduran Constitution.
A wisdom one learns when traveling and reporting in so many different lands: People aren't all that different from country to country. There are good and bad in all of them, and generally the different demographic types resemble each other very well across international borders. I've heard this “we” rap from the educated classes before but more to the point: I've lived alongside their attitude long enough to recognize it rather quickly when it surfaces.
There is something about elites – and its especially visible in this hemisphere – that demonstrates a kind of superiority complex wrapped around an inferiority complex, and all the while dripping with absolute bloody hatred and resentment toward "those people," the ones that don't see things as they and their demographic group see them in their shared hallucination. That's true of elites in the United States, in Honduras, the whole world over.
Insulza – who walks into that snake pit today – has also seen and heard people like that before, and lived the consequences of when their frenzied and shared hallucinations inflict upon society in brutal and violent ways. I’m fairly certain he has no illusions about changing the coup leaders’ minds with facts and reason: oligarchies are too often caught up in those shared hallucinations to be influenced by facts they perceive as external. Today’s visit is more likely to simply demonstrate that there will be no back-room deal from the OAS, that the return of the elected president is a non-negotiable demand, and perhaps to lay out explicitly what the consequences beyond Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS will be for continued intransigence by the coup.
The coup “president” Roberto Micheletti continues to labor under the illusion that he can negotiate a solution, which is why he is loudly proposing early elections and other trial balloons. But the nations of the hemisphere – and a significant swathe of the Honduran population – are not going to fall for such tricks by which an illegitimate coup government administrates an “election.” Nobody believes that such a vote could be fair or free, and to agree to such a scenario would only embolden other aspiring coup-plotters in other countries of America to then adopt the Honduran model to derail elected governments.
From the standpoint of the hemisphere, anything short of the unconditional return of Zelaya to the presidency would unleash a domino effect of coup attempts in other lands.
And, so far, in the shared hallucination of the coup defenders, they seem to believe they can bluff their way into forcing a negotiation still.
And this touches close to another misconception in some other circles that is being spoken: that if only the United States would cut off all aid to Honduras, the coup would instantly fall. (A related spin is that if only the United States had instructed the coup plotters in advance that said aid would be cut off – something that may have well occurred anyway - the coup would never have happened.)
That kind of analysis falls short for two reasons:
One, the hallucinatory nature of how the Honduran elites see themselves includes a willingness to destroy their own economy in a blazing attempt to assert their hallucination upon Honduras and the world. True or false, the pig-headed coup adherents really seem to believe they can survive and remain in power without that aid, or at least they seem willing to try for a while.
Secondly, Washington’s announcement that it has already put all but humanitarian aid “on pause” - the flow of money is already cut off - pending a decision on whether to legally define the regime in Honduras as a “military coup” isn’t having that effect.
From this vantage point, it’s strange to see people who I thought opposed the concept that Washington should dictate events in the hemisphere basically insisting that Washington should now dictate them. They seem to disregard the advances of the last decade that have made it impossible for the US to rule the hemisphere by decree anymore, something we should all celebrate.
And all this leads to the coming weekend – Sunday, to be exact – when President Manuel Zelaya says he will return to Honduras, and the coup regime says it will mobilize 25,000 people plus an arrest warrant to stop him.
This big game of chicken awaits one side or the other to blink. If neither side blinks, Zelaya will return and be imprisoned, sparking a rapid escalation of the conflict inside Honduras that might turn extremely violent. And Washington will certainly, in response, trigger the full cut-off of all US aid.
If Zelaya blinks, and doesn’t return to Honduras this weekend, he will lose popular support much in the same way that other legitimate presidents denied in this hemisphere - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas after 1988, Al Gore after 2000, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador after 2006 - lost popular steam from perceptions among their own supporters that they did not resist the electoral frauds against them with sufficient force.
If the coup blinks, it won’t be because of the penalties from OAS or the US, but, rather, because of internal divisions, specifically from two groups: the Armed Forces, and/or the commercial media. The first group, to me, seems a more plausible source of mutiny than the second, because the Honduran military – which, importantly, is not made up of members of the economic elite (and therefore is not caught up in the shared hallucination), but, rather, has long struck a deal to service them in exchange for certain privileges and powers – does, unlike the civilian coup plotters, know that it is Washington that pays its rent and bar tab.
(I only mention the commercial media – such as the pro-coup daily newspapers in Tegucigalpa and their owners - because they are so mercenary and corrupt that they could likely be bribed into temporarily turning on the coup regime. That’s an option that, if I were the OAS and its nations, I would carefully consider. They come relatively cheaply. The problem is, with them, that as an important sector of those elites, they are caught up in the shared hallucination, too, and thus if a higher bidder then comes forward, they are capable of switching allegiances on alternate days. The Armed Forces would be, if secured, a more reliable alliance of convenience.)
What Zelaya needs to land in Honduras on Sunday without being arrested is an airfield or border entry point that is sufficiently protected either by large crowds or a sector of the Armed Forces loyal to him (which means, practically, both, since one will follow the other). If he can pull that off, he’ll quickly be president again, and the coup plotters will be seeking exile in other lands.
If he doesn’t have that, Zelaya still has to go and subject himself to arrest, which will spark another chapter in this saga that could turn more violent yet. But not to do so would ensure a much greater and permanent violence: the maintenance of an illegitimate coup regime that has already proved its contempt for the most basic of freedoms, ripping up the very Constitution that it claims it has rallied around.
Whatever happens this weekend, I'm certain of this: it will be no soccer game that comes next.
The Oligarch Diaspora shouts, again and again, in its flailing attempt to convince the Honduran people and the world that its coup d’etat was somehow legitimate, “we want democracy!”
Well, here’s a powerful example of the kind of “democracy” they apparently want.
In November of 2008, the voters of San Pedro Sula – with a population of one million, it's the second largest city in Honduras – elected Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunseri (right, in the photo above) to be their Liberal Party candidate for mayor, with 63 percent of the vote.
Another candidate in that contest – William Hall Micheletti (left, in the photo above, and doesn't that last name sound familiar?) – garnered just 16 percent, coming in third.
Padilla went on to win the mayoralty.
But when your uncle Roberto Micheletti is the newly installed dictator of your country, coming in third is good enough!
At 11 a.m. this morning, workers and citizens in and near San Pedro Sula City Hall heard gunshots and explosions, while riot police attacked a crowd that was demonstrating outside against the coup. More than 50 citizens were reportedly arrested. And nobody has seen Mayor Padilla ever since.
So who is now “mayor” of the city? Telesur reports: the coup “president’s” nephew, William Hall Micheletti.
Ain’t their version of “democracy” grand?
Watch the coup's soldiers taking Channel 36 TV off the air:
Watch the coup's soldiers force Radio Progreso 103.3 FM to cease broadcasting:
That scene is from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, after the station had reported that a coup d’etat had taken place. Spontaneously, listeners of the station in the nearby neighborhood gathered outside its gates to find out what happened. That turne d into a demonstration in defense of the radio station, with chants of “People! Unite!”
At seven minutes into the video, a radio station employee comes out and says “we’ve decided to stop broadcasting.”
Here’s what happened next:
A radio station employee explains how they were convinced by the soldiers to stop broadcasting. A local citizen then addresses the crowd: “Radio Progreso is the voice of all the people of Progreso…. They are informing us that to avoid confrontations… they have decided to close operations... They are going to close the radio frequency… Radio Progeso asks that the people organize ourselves.”
Then a group of soldiers leaves, heading for one of the various trucks they arrived in, as people yell “get out, get out.”
Despite the best efforts of what I call "the Oligarch Diaspora" to flood the Internet with near identical messages that the Honduran coup "is not a coup" and that was a "constitutional succession" (cough, cough) dressed in the blue-and-white flag of Honduran democracy, the coup regime bared its fangs today. And like any vampire, it's coming out at nightfall.
The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti as the coup "president" today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country's constitution:
1. The right to protest.
2. Freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.
3. Freedom of association.
4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.
5. Freedom of transit in the country.
Tomorrow morning's papers are already out across the ocean in Europe, and correspondent Pablo Ordaz of the Madrid daily El Pais has reported from Tegucigalpa about the Coup Congress' decree:
"Minute by minute, step by step, Honduras moves farther from its freedoms..."
Read the defenders of the coup and they are united by one powerful feeling: fear. They're afraid of the growing demonstrations in the streets, like the in the capital city this afternoon captured in the video above, where despite the brutal repressions against the people, each day the opposition crowds grow larger, more emboldened, and better organized. In the defiant but smiling faces of the Hondurans opposing the coup you can see the palpable difference between their passion and the lack of it from the passive bumps on a log that attended yesterday's pro coup rally.
The Congressional decree specified that only at night may those five freedoms be disappeared. And so tonight, a new reign of terror begins.
The coup defenders are afraid, they say, of Honduras becoming another another Cuba, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, of losing their "freedoms" and their "democracy." But today, in one fell swoop their leaders erased those very freedoms, atop all the other ones they've already burned alive - freedom of the press, freedom to elect their own president, among them - and buried democracy with it.
For democracy is not possible unless a people has freedom to protest, freedom from unwarranted invasion of their homes, freedom of association, rights of due process under law, and freedom of travel in its own country.
That's over now, and will be as long as the coup regime remains in power.
The Oligarch Diaspora will not likely blink, comforting themselves with the Kool-Aid that this attack on civil rights and freedoms is not (well, not yet) aimed at them, but, rather, at "those people," the workers, the poor, the farmers, the indigenous, the rebel students and youth, their social organizations, organizer priests, defense attorneys, human rights observers and authentic journalists, the ones that want their democracy back so much that they risk life and limb now each time they say it.
The Oligarch Diaspora will continue spamming the Internet with their hysterical claims that the rest of the world "just doesn't understand," that the coup was "legal" (attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen made mincemeat of that claim today), that they represent a majority (unsaid is that they are afraid to let that majority vote on a non-binding referendum, revealing that even they know they are not), that "Honduras wants the coup." But if the opposition were so small would the Coup Congress really have needed to enact the State of Siege and its repeal of those five basic freedoms?
The Oligarch Diaspora - and hey, Larry Birns (yes, you to whom I sent that memo on Sunday) didn't you and your organization COHA find out the hard way this week how they swarm and leech upon NGOs and media organizations to spread their falsehoods, causing your organization to have to issue another embarrassed "clarification"? - will continue to deceive the gullible into thinking they're really of democratic and freedom-loving tendencies.
But what they don't tell you is that they don't want those freedoms for all Hondurans, just for the ones with money and property and political power and privilege: themselves. The rest must be subordinated to them and controlled, by force if necessary.
Article 69: "A persons liberty is inviolable and can only be restricted or suspended temporarily through process of law."
Article 71: "No person can be arrested nor kept incommunicado for more than 24 hours without being placed before a competent authority to be judged. Judicial detention during an investigation must not exceed six consecutive days from the moment that the same is ordered."
Article 78: "Freedoms of association and meeting are always guaranteed when they are not contrary to public order and good customs.
Article 79: "All persons have the right to meet with others, peacefully and without weapons, in public demonstration or transitory assembly, in relation to their common interests of any type, without necessity of notice or special permission."
Article 81: "All persons have the right to circulate freely, leave, enter, and remain in national territory. No one can be obligated to change home or residence except in special cases and with those requirements that the Law establishes."
The Oligarch Diaspora says that the democratically elected president was removed by force because he supposedly "violated the Constitution" by proposing a nonbinding referendum to ask all Hondurans if they wanted the chance to vote about whether they wanted to rewrite it through a Constitutional Convention.
But the coup leaders the Oligarch Diaspora defends just rewrote that same constitution today without any formal process of consulting the people at all.
They claim they're fighting for their constitution, but they just ripped it apart.
Gone. All gone. Everything they claim to be defending is gone now, destroyed and in tatters at the hands of the very political class that claimed it was protecting them.
And now, with the Congress' invitation to enter the people's door, the vampires begin to come out... tonight.
