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Month: March 2021

Free Ahmed Samir

Campaigning for the release of the political prisoner in Egypt


19/03/2021

Free Ahmed Samir advocates for the release of Ahmed Samir Santawy, a master student in Central European University in Vienna who has been arbitrarily detained in Egypt on trumped-up charges since 1 February. He was denied access to legal representation and contact to his family

Ahmed is studying anthropology at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, doing research primarily on women’s rights and the history of reproductive rights in Egypt. After Ahmed left for his family in Egypt for the semester break, he was summoned by the police in Cairo. On February 1, 2021, officers arrested him. Ahmed was detained and interrogated for five days without any contact with his family or legal counsel.

Ahmed was formally charged with “joining a terrorist organization”, “deliberately spreading false news and data”, and “use of a private account on the Internet to spread false news or data”. These charges are based on screenshots from a Facebook account which allegedly belongs to him. His pre trial detention has already been extended 3 times without a hearing or lawyers. This prolonged pre-trial detention is often used in Egypt to arbitrarily detain human rights activists, journalists, lawyers and opposition politicians.

During the February-6 hearing, Ahmed reported that he had been subjected to beating, and ill-treatment by the National Security Agency during his interrogation on February 1, 2021. He was reportedly slapped on the face and severely beaten during the three-hour interrogation, in order to force him to confess crimes he did not commit. He was blindfolded and handcuffed for prolonged periods of time in the days following the interrogation. His lawyers requested his referral of to the forensics in order to verify the allegations of ill-treatment, but the prosecution did not order it and no investigation has been opened into these allegations.

Ahmed’s detention is the latest case in a series of imprisonments of falsely-accused international students and researchers. The actions against Ahmed coincide with the one-year anniversary of University of Bologna postgraduate student Patrick George Zaki’s illegal imprisonment, and echo the cases of PhD students Walid al-Shobaky and Giulio Regeni.

The targeting of scholars and students by the Egyptian security apparatus is part of a larger agenda to silence open discussion and intellectual production. Ahmed’s academic work deals with the history of family planning in Egypt, and advocates safe and legal access to healthcare procedures for women. His work is an example of the critical importance of scholarship for the present that we all inhabit. We refuse to stand for the Egyptian state’s attack on academic freedom, in Ahmed’s case in particular, and the cases of all persecuted scholars, in general.

Ahmed Samir Santawy is a prisoner of conscience. He is innocently in custody and must be released immediately. He was arrested for doing research, for pursuing knowledge and being curious. Academic freedom and the ability to pursue knowledge is vital to keep us progressing, Ahmed should not be in prison, he needs to be free. Free Ahmed!

On Saturday 20th March, there will be a protest in Berlin for Ahmed’s freedom. It will take place at 3pm at the Rathaus Neukölln. Please go down to show your support.

Here is how you can also support the campaign:

  • Sign the petition for Amnesty

  • Follow the campaign on social media Free Ahmed Samir

  • If you have any media/political/NGO contacts, please contact us at freeahmedsamir@gmail.com

#free_ahmed_samir

End violence against women

Sue Talbot has been threatened with a £10,000 fine for writing an article about male violence. She tells her story.


The murder of Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman walking home along main roads in London, throws into sharp relief the continuing reality of sexual harassment and abuse and, ultimately, the possibility of murder, faced by every woman, every day of our lives. It happens everywhere: at work or socially as “banter”; at home in the rising incidences of domestic violence; in flats, “health clubs”, in palaces and alleyways as victims of trafficking from men of all classes. It also happens on the streets, by opportunistic abusers who could be anyone from a passing pre-teen, a drunk, or a member of the diplomatic protection corps.

In 1973, as a 15-year-old schoolgirl, waiting for my bus in genteel Lytham-St Anne’s, a man muttered horrible words to me. As children, we girls learned to avoid a local sweet shop, where “that man lifts you up to look at your knickers”; baffled and embarrassed I avoided my elderly next door neighbour on the bus who took it upon himself to berate me, age 12, for “the effect [I had] on men”. These are only the least of my experiences; I really do understand how frightening it is to be a girl, a young woman, and an adult woman— for these experiences don’t stop with advancing age.

I reached adulthood in the late 1970s at the time of the “Yorkshire Ripper,” but also at the time of mass feminist protests. Inspired by the equal pay strikes of women Ford workers and the Grunwick women (Asian women, memorably supported by Yorkshire miners) by protests against Miss World in 1970, we campaigned for abortion rights, for equal pay, for maternity pay, for employment rights, against domestic violence, against racism, for the right to refuge from domestic violence, for the housing rights of women fleeing violence, for LGBT rights. We supported the Miners’ Great Strike whilst arguing with them that their sexism undermined united working-class fightback against the bosses.

Decade after decade, women have been told that we should not wear short skirts or tight jeans; that we should “stay at home after dark”, “walk in pairs”, “stay sober”, “take the safe route”. We’re told that we ”asked for it”, that “it” doesn’t happen to “respectable women”, and conversely that sex workers “can’t be raped”. Sarah Everard, a professional woman in her 30s, was walking home, sober, dressed in loose trousers and an anorak at 21:00h on a main road. And yet a man felt entitled to kidnap and kill her.

In south Leeds, where I live, opponents of a Managed Zone of sex work, demand “more police on the streets”, but it appears that it was a policeman who killed Sarah Everard. So the issue isn’t police presence or absence. And it isn’t what women wear or don’t wear. It isn’t how we walk, whether we’re drunk or sober, whether we wear high heels, tight jeans, flat shoes or trousers, whether we are “respectable women” or sex workers. The issue appears to be an ingrained attitude among some, too many, men who think women of any age, any shape, and any class are “fair game” and that sexual harassment and abuse of women is just fine.

Like thousands of other women, I was outraged when police first attempted to ban the vigils called to honour the memory of Sarah Everard. Hearing of plans for a local, socially distanced and masked vigil, I wrote an article for a local news site, expressing these sentiments and telling readers about the event. I said I’d be attending, that no woman is “fair game”. There is no excuse for male violence against women. No excuse for rape or sexual assault. No excuse for sexual abuse. No excuse for physical or verbal sexual harassment. Banter is not funny.

Overnight, the Courts delivered an ambiguous judgment and local RTS groups began to back down, telling protestors to stay at home and protest online. The Leeds demo was replaced by an online vigil. But we don’t reclaim streets and the night by going online the moment the police and government challenge the right to protest. We reclaim by being on the streets. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Myanmar.

Home is the most dangerous place for women: 118 women in the UK have been killed during lockdown this year alone, and you don’t reclaim the streets by staying at home. We cannot “end male violence” by cowering in our homes WHERE MOST MALE VIOLENCE HAPPENS!

In Clapham Common in London, thousands peacefully attended the vigil for Sarah Everard. Despite media claims that people observing the vigil caused trouble, the real trouble came from the police wading in and disrespecting the lived experience and repressed grief of women who were blamed.

Meanwhile, in Leeds, I was woken on the following morning by a visit from the police who “advised” me that under the Coronavirus Act I was liable to be perceived to be an organiser of an illegal demonstration and to be fined £10,000. He conceded, however, that it was legal for me to take my 1-hour state-sanctioned exercise in the park where the vigil was to have been held, at 18:00h, and to speak – socially distanced – to anyone I met there. There were to be “no speeches” though. So that’s what I did, and so did 20 other people from our small area of Leeds, laying tributes in memory of Sarah and all the women killed by an institutionally sexist society.

Three days after the vigils, the British government voted in favour of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The bill would give cops the power to block protests that cause “serious disruption” to an organisation or have a “relevant impact” on people nearby. These vague clauses give the cops a green light to stop any action that has an effect – and it’s clear that protests such as ours will be targeted.

We should not live our lives in fear, for a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. I refuse to live in fear.

News from Berlin and Germany: 20 March 2021

Weekly news roundup from Berlin and Germany


Compiled by Ana Ferreira

 

BERLIN

Director of Volksbühne resigns after accusations of sexist harassment

On Saturday, the taz published a detailed article about the Volksbühne, in which female theatre employees accused artistic director Klaus Dörr of repeated assaultive behaviour. On Monday afternoon he resigned, with immediate effect and in agreement with cultural senator Klaus Lederer. Since the beginning of the year, there had been confidential discussions with the women and also with Dörr in the cultural administration. Ten female Volksbühne employees had previously filed a complaint with Themis, the office of trust against sexual harassment and violence. The Volksbühne case was discussed at length in the cultural committee on Monday. Source: tagesspiegel

Police report criticized for structural racism

On the international day against police violence, when numerous initiatives in Berlin criticise racist police controls, the Berlin State Office of Criminal Investigation published the “Situation Report Clan Crime 2020”. What does one have to do with the other? Civil society initiatives as well as the Left Party have been criticising police actions against alleged “clan criminals” as structurally racist for a long time. The document reports 1091 criminal charges and 5631 administrative offences. How the police arrive at this assessment is unclear. Besides, to speak here of “ethnically isolated structures of Arab origin” is for the initiative an “ethnicisation of crime”. Source: nd

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Transport companies ban junge Welt posters

The spring campaign under the motto “Who is afraid of whom?” has invested more than 100,000 euros in advertising so for. Despite this, more and more obstacles were put in the way of junge Welt. The BVG in Berlin plus transport companies in Hamburg, Cologne and Leipzig refused to put up jW posters about this campaign. The reason given in those cities was usually the same: “Both client and motif do not correspond to our political neutrality.” So far, nothing has been heard of other daily newspapers being affected by such boycott measures. Source: jW

Court process against refugee

Judge Andreas Welzenbacher would have already pronounced the verdict on Tuesday. But in the case against the refugee Lazare M. the public prosecutor wanted some time to think about this case. Lazare M., who fled to Germany from Cameroon, refused to leave the counter room at the office in Dedersdorf on last November 4 2020, until he was paid the 310 euros he was entitled to for one month. However, because he did not show up for a scheduled appointment, he was supposed to receive only 103 euros. There, he was handcuffed by private security guard and stabbed with a pen. Source: nd

CSU politician allegedly collected one million euros in mask deals

There is a lot of money in the Sauter case, which further incriminates the CSU in the affair about the procurement of Corona protective masks. As if everything were not bad enough for the CSU. First there was the Swabian member of the Bundestag Georg Nüßlein, who brokered protective masks to several ministries in the federal government and in Bavaria and allegedly received a commission of 660,000 euros for this. Now, the Munich Public Prosecutor General’s Office has extended its investigations to five accused, including Alfred Sauter, on the grounds of initial suspicion of bribery and corruption of elected officials. Source: süddeutsche

Greece: Repression, resistance and a hunger strike

A combination of police repression and Covid-19 has provoked strikes and demonstrations which threaten the Greek government


18/03/2021

Last weekend (March 13-14), thousands of Greeks gathered in the main squares of the neighborhoods of Athens and other cities with one main focus point: Stop police repression! The slogan “Πονάω” (it hurts) is a free translation of “I can’t breathe”. The protests were called by grassroots organizations of the radical and anti-capitalist left and found broad support at the localities, in some occasions they were even called just via social media! All were peaceful, militant and political and sent a strong message to the right wing government of New Democracy (ND) and PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that his strategy of using the pandemic to repress civil rights is not tolerated any more. The slogan “Down with New Democracy” was heard all over the country.

A calendar of protests

These mobilizations did not fall from the sky. They are the culmination of resistance to the attacks of ND and, for the first time since the start of the pandemic one year ago, they seem to bring different movements together and cause damage not just to the image of Hellenic Police, but also to the prestige of the government and its ability to go on with its policies.

The spark for calling the weekend’s protests was one (more) incident of police brutality, which took place last Sunday at the square of Nea Smyrni in Athens, after policemen attacked and leveled a family with 300 € fines for simply drinking their coffee sat on a bench! Passers-by defended the family, only to be beaten with iron bars and arrested, while the media were claiming that “policemen were attacked by a mob of 30 people in Nea Smyrni”!

Following an impromptu protest on Sunday evening, Tuesday saw an organized massive demonstration of more than 10.000 marching around the streets of the neighborhood. At the end of the protest and using the injury of a policeman as a pretext, the notorious riot police special forces (MAT) unleashed a violent pursuit through the streets, beat and arrested dozens of young people. Some face now charges of attempted homicide.

One day earlier, the 8th of March was a successful day of strike and work stoppages for women’s rights and demonstrations took place in the city center, reinforced by the Greek #metoo moment, young people, feminist groups and left organizations.

One day later, on Wednesday morning, thousands of students and teachers took the streets to protest against the reactionary reforms that the government has just voted. The most provocative is the establishment of special police units in campuses, to impose “law and order”, which is allegedly lost in Greek universities.

This is a symbolic as well as substantial gesture. Greek universities have historically been bastions of resistance and left-wing thought and action. The fall of the military junta which ruled the country from 1967 until 1974 started with the uprising of the Technical University (Polytechnio) on the 17th November 1973. After regime change, campuses have been police – free, offering a sort of political asylum to citizens.

This principle was banned by ND, together with a bunch of neoliberal reforms, such as the introduction of private higher education and binding university studies with big business. The reforms provoked massive student demonstrations and squats, they braved repression by MAT, but were so massive, that finally broke the government bans on public gatherings in the context of covid -19 measures. They are repeated almost every week since early February.

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, one more massive demonstration took place outside the parliament, calling for defending democratic rights and in solidarity with the hunger strike of life imprisoned Dimitris Koufontinas.

Mass struggle and individual terrorism

Koufontinas had been second in rank and hitman of the defunct urban guerilla group “17 November”. He went on hunger strike for 66 days to protest the government’s refusal to his just demand to serve prison in Korydallos, at the special section for members of terrorist groups. This is a case which under different circumstances may have nothing to do with the mass movements, as 17 November, even at its most influential days would always act as an agent of the people and was never connected with rank and file struggles. However, at this political timing, Koufontinas’s call found a resonance not narrowly in anarchist groups, but in wider audiences, human rights groups, even sections of the center right expressed their wish for a fair handling of his case.

17 November was dismantled in 2002 after an explosion that exposed one of its cadres, Savvas Xiros. Shortly after, Koufondinas turned himself voluntarily to the police, undertaking the political responsibility for the actions of the group, including 22 executions of (in)famous politicians, of which he had conducted 11. Among the targets were officers of the military regime who had been torturing political prisoners, British and U.S. embassies military attaches, capitalists and politicians. The brother in law of Kyriakos Mitsotakis was one of the latter.

The government therefore had personal motives to want to smash him, but it was more than this: For the narrow minded think-tanks of New Democracy, Koufontinas represents mistakenly not a particular political practice, but the entire Left. By smashing him, they fantasized themselves and their more conservative voters that they can impose law and order, which had promised to do and also marginalize the Left. They caused the opposite: Sympathy for Koufontinas and deep concern for sustaining the democratic rights in the country.

The Hellenic League for human rights, Amnesty International, observatories and socialist lawyers managed to raise the issue, not on the ground of any sort of political agreement with terrorism, but on the case of human rights to be defended when arbitrarily and revengefully denied. At the end of the day, people made comparisons with Bobby Sands and the Irish freedom fighters in British jails in 1981! This dynamic is connected with the resistance to the government and the state and constitutes the real alternative to the undemocratic methods of ND.

The government of New Democracy has failed completely

Last June Greece exited the first wave of Covid-19 with low number of casualties. The main reason is that the vast majority of the population respected willingly the lockdown measures, demanding though that the government would keep its promises for strengthening the National Health System and support the people who had been redundant, or even lost their jobs during the Covid crises. On the contrary, Mitsotakis’s government arrogantly concluded that they had the consensus to impose any policies they and their friends, the Greek capitalists wished. They counted on tourism, the country’s “heavy industry” for a recovery of the economy and failed to deliver to the working class.

The result was that by the arrival of the second wave in October, the country was still completely unprepared, but this time the virus was in. Despite stricter and occasionally ridiculously hard lockdown restrictions (e.g. a curfew at 21.00 on weekdays and on 18.00 in weekends), this time infections and deaths are soaring (4 digit numbers daily), the sparse ICU units are all full, the economy is in a deep slump (10% at least), thousands of jobs have been lost and working people in redundancy have to survive on a mere 530 € subsidy per month.

Discontent has been rising and several sectors have been striking despite restrictions. The response of the government was more repression: They banned all public meetings and encouraged the policemen to issue fines and arrest citizens, allegedly for failing to meet the measures. People are squeezed inside crowded metro wagons to go to work, while the government spokespersons insist that this is ok, but sitting on a park bench is infectious, and so is laughing and speaking loudly!

All these failings constitute the ground on which anger is building up and, although ND controls all mainstream media and injects more and more state money to them, resistance keeps growing. Social media have provided an alternative to the lies and cover-ups of the media, as activists publicize through them not only criticism and opinions, but also facts and proves of police brutality, like in the events in Nea Smyrni.

Mitsotakis attacked publicly the use of social media as one-sided, but he and his family would soon be exposed by the following incident which leaked through social media: A video outside the house of parliament shows a police driver serving in the security of Dora Bakoyannis (sister of Mitsotakis) behind the wheel of a car that collided with a motorcycle on Friday March 12, leaving the 23-year-old rider brain dead at the hospital. For 48 hours, mainstream media were silent, until the leaked video became viral, showing that, not only did the driver abandon the victim unconscious, but also traffic police at the location intimidated protesting passers-by and sent them away. Dora Bakoyiannis tried to make up for the awfulness, but only after the events had gone around the country. Patience for the government is being exhausted and more and more people are infuriated.

The only good news for ND is that Koufontinas ended the 66 day hunger strike on March 14, but it’s doubtful whether the government can rejoice on this. On the contrary, he made his legal demand visible, so his lawyers speak of a clear ethical and political victory over ND. I would add that it was a good timing that his just cause managed to merge with the on-going political battles.

Most importantly, the long struggle goes on inside Greek society, trade unions, universities, neighborhoods. On the 17th and 18th of March, hospital workers are on strike once more, students are still in mobilization and on the 20th we take the streets together with immigrants and refugees against the racist policies of the government.

No more compromises

Founded by a Black feminist and led by grassroots activists, a new party is challenging the Dutch establishment


17/03/2021

I have never been as excited for a general election as I am for the one this year, and many other members of minority groups in the Netherlands feel the same way. Finally, we see a chance for a voice in parliament that will truly advocate for us.

In the Netherlands, we have a multi-party system, which usually means that no single party can get a parliamentary majority by itself. Instead, parties have to form coalitions to get to the threshold of 75 seats of a total of 150 seats. There are several benefits to a multi-party system, the most obvious one being that it is virtually impossible for one party to rule a country without regard for other parties’ interests. Making compromises – or, as the Dutch call it, ‘polderen’ – is an essential part of the multi-party system. Yet, for all their apparent differences, these parties all prioritise the welfare and comfort of those already closest to power, while the concerns and interests of those who are unrepresented / under-represented are sacrificed. This paves the way for highly racist, Islamophobic, and queerphobic policies to be pushed, with little to no interference.

The most recent example of policies that target those who are already marginalized is the ,racist child welfare scandal. Mark Rutte, the prime minister, and his government claim to have taken responsibility for the racist child welfare scandal by resigning. However, the obvious reason for their resignation two months before the elections is that none of the parties involved (which includes parties on the left) want this scandal hanging over their heads during election season.

To make matters even worse, the prime minister’s party, VVD (The Peoples’ Party for Freedom and Democracy), promises in their campaign to create a blacklist, of ‘fraudulent individuals’. Rather than addressing the exposed injustice, this will entrench the racism that helped cause it. Fun fact: the same prime minister, who has been ‘leading’ the country for the past 10 years, has been ,convicted of ethnically profiling Dutch-Somalis in 2007, back when he was the secretary of state for social services. In the last 10 years, Dutch policies, especially those targeting migrants and refugees, have also become even more inhumane. The way the Dutch system treats LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers has cost people their lives. The most recent victim is ,Angel, whose suicide was a direct result of the way she was treated by this system.

In theory, under the multi-party system, any new party that wins enough votes during the elections can get a seat, or seats, in parliament. In reality, the number of hoops a party has to jump through just to get on the ballot makes things very difficult for new parties. In the past twenty years, only eight new parties have been elected into parliament, two of which have since disbanded. Seven of them were founded and led by white people. And most of these new parties are on the radical far-right. Some are even openly fascist and follow Nazi ideology.

Then comes ,Bij1, a grassroots party, founded and led by Sylvana Simons, a Black feminist. Bij1 has no institutional support, is unapologetically anti-racist, addresses structural and institutional injustice, and is not afraid to call a Nazi a Nazi. In conversation with feminist writer ,Sophia Seawell, Simons said about Bij1: ,“We’re an activist party. It’s not that we’re a political party that sometimes joins a demonstration; it’s the other way around. We are activists who have joined forces to become political”.

Bij1 wants to immediately increase the minimum wage to 14 Euro, appoint a minister specifically to battle racism and other structural injustices, introduce free national healthcare funded by taxing the wealthy, declare climate change a national emergency and make the Netherlands carbon-neutral by 2030, dissolve FRONTEX (The European Border and Coast Guard Agency) and begin payment by the Netherlands of colonial reparations.

To say that the white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal system in the Netherlands is stacked against a party such as Bij1 would be a gross understatement. In spite of all of this, Bij1 managed to win one seat during the local Amsterdam elections of 2018. And in the past 2 years, Bij1 has been a true advocate in the Amsterdam municipality, for those who have been made voiceless by the system.

During its short time in office, Bij1 has made significant material policy changes as well as passed significant motions showing its commitment to change. Some examples are: policy decisions must always consider the impact on the climate, vacant real estate owned by the city must be put to cultural and social use, and streets named after colonial figures will have visible signs stating any atrocities associated with them. Other measures have directly supported single parents, trans people, sex workers, and vulnerable children and students. Because of Amsterdam Bij1, I realised even more how massive the systemic issues of injustice are in my city, which is hailed as ‘the most liberal city in the Netherlands’.

But finally, with Bij1 on the ballot in all 20 electoral districts of the Netherlands, I don’t have to vote for a white liberal party that pretends during election season to care about those who are pushed to the margins of society. These parties use people from those communities as tokens and put them in unelectable low positions on their candidate lists, only to forget about them as soon as they are in office. Finally, there can, and I believe will be a voice in the Dutch parliament to advocate for those in our society hit the hardest by right-wing and inhumane policies, which have only worsened in the past 10 years.

Bij1 in the Dutch parliament will have an impact not only on Dutch politics but on those all across Europe, since European countries like Germany and France also have a multi-party system and grassroots parties such as Die ,Urbane Partei. I firmly believe a party like Bij1 getting elected into Dutch parliament will debunk the commonly accepted narrative that electability for a left-wing party means ‘not being too radical’. The alarming success of the radical right shows how misguided this is.

Am I saying that Bij1 is the perfect political party? No, because there is no such thing and it is important to stay critical. But Bij1 is a party that stands out, compared to any party in the current Dutch political climate, especially on the left. Where most parties on the left are moving towards the center, Bij1 firmly and proudly stands all the way to the left. And that is what we need right now.

Racism and Anti-racism in the Netherlands

Addendum

Some months after he wrote this article, Axmed Maxamed made the following observation:

“As the writer of this article I’d like to add an addendum that sheds a different light on the values of the party leaders, which I now know contradicts my writing of earlier this year. Here is a short post about this.”

Axmed Maxamed is a Queer Diasporic Somali activist, organizer and music nerd. Axmed was born in Xamar, Somalia where he spent his early years until his family had to flee during the civil war and ended up in the Netherlands. He spent his formative years in Breda in the south of the Netherlands until he moved to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam Axmed co-founded ,Dance with Pride, a queer initiative which aims to re-unify dance music with its queer roots and has been raisning money for and awareness around grass roots queer initiatives, with the fund-raiser parties and sales of the Dance with Pride T-shirts. He co-curated the music compilation ,Place: The Netherlands which raises funds for and awareness around LGBTQIA+ refugees in the Netherlands. Axmed also co-organises the ,first Somali LGBTQIA+ gatherings in the Netherlands. In addition to that Axmed is involved in other queer initiatives, with focus on QTBPOC. And together with Ladan Maandeeq, Axmed started working on ‘Queer Somali Pasts and Presents: A Storytelling and Archival Research’ which will focus on the lives of Queer Somalis in the diaspora and Somalia, both in the present day and the past. Axmed addresses ,systemic inequalities in Dutch society and in the underground dance music scene, which pave the way for harmful practices such as ,cultural appropriation and the white washing of Black music.