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Month: May 2021

German Government Allows Attack on Indian Democracy

LINKE MPs Question the German Government’s Support for the Modi Government


11/05/2021

On 1 April, the German parliament published answers by the government to questions raised by the parliamentary group of Die Linke, a German political party, on human rights in India. Members of Die Linke—which literally translates to “The Left”—had asked the federal government 45 broad questions on its views and actions on several issues about India. These included questions concerning the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019; the impact of last year’s lockdown to contain COVID-19 on Adivasi, Dalit and Muslim communities; the arbitrary arrests of human-rights defenders; the weakening of labour laws; the 2020 farm laws; and the growth of Hindu-nationalist organisations in Germany. In response to several questions, the German government said it was monitoring the situation in India closely and raising issues with the Indian government. The German government acknowledged that some issues raised by the Die Linke members were valid, but stopped short of condemning the Indian government.

“In the opinion of the questioners, things are bad for democracy and rule of law in India,” members of Die Linke wrote in a strongly-worded introduction to their questions. On 1 April, the Bundestag (German parliament) published the introduction, along with Die Linke’s questions followed by the answers in the same document. Michel Brandt, a member of the German parliament and a signatory to the questionnaire, told me, “India is seen as a strategic partner and as a major market for Germany, so they always think twice before admitting there has been a severe backslide in terms of democracy in the country.”

The 1 April report was signed by Die Linke’s parliamentary group. It specifically mentioned the names of nine signatories from the group as well, including Brandt. Brandt is in charge of India’s affairs as a part of the German Parliament Human Rights Committee. To substantiate their questions, the Die Linke members cited articles—by publications such as The Guardian, The Scroll, The Wire, The Caravan—and reports by advocacy groups and research organisations including CIVICUS, Project Polis and Amnesty International. They also quoted reports by Collective Against the Violation and Abuse of Civil and Human Rights, or CAVACH, a Germany-based activist group.

The introduction to the questions elaborated on the concerns of the Die Linke members about the political situation in India. They said that according to CIVICUS, which defines itself as a global civil-society alliance, “the civil society space continues to close and the quality of democratic processes has been decreasing” since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014. It noted that when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he was “partly to blame for the escalation” of the anti-Muslim riots that took place in the state in 2002. Following the violence, the Die Linke MPs noted, Modi was unwelcome in the United States and some European countries for a few years.

The Die Linke members noted an escalation in authoritarian behaviour after Modi’s re-election in 2019. “The police and the military violently oppose activists and protesters, human rights defenders,” they wrote in the introduction. “Human rights defenders are being … searched and harassed. Freedom of the press is increasingly restricted, and arbitrary arrests, violence, and torture and extrajudicial killings are common. The Indian Government uses a variety of draconian laws operating under the guise of national security to silence government critics and human rights defenders.” The document specifically mentioned the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 2019, the National Security Act and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act of 1978 as tools to restrict the civil spaces in India.

The German government responded to five questions about the deterioration of civic space and attacks on human-rights activists in India in one answer. The government said that it was observing the developments in India, which it identified as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious parliamentary democracy. “At the same time, poverty, traditional caste thinking and religious or ethnic prejudices can fuel human rights abuses,” the German government noted. “The indigenous people (Adivasi), casteless people (Dalits), women and children as well as religious minorities (among others Christians and Muslims) are most often disadvantaged and are most often victims of human rights violations.”

The German government mentioned that it was speaking to the Indian government on various forums on a case-to-case basis. “Individual cases are determined by the federal government, the German diplomatic missions and the European Union delegation in New Delhi and addressed to the Indian government,” it said. The reply mentioned that the delegation of the European Union in Delhi had “expressed concern” about the human-rights activists arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case to India’s National Human Rights Commission on four occasions between June 2018 and April 2020.

Brandt told me that the German government’s strategy of focusing on individual cases was unsurprising. “The German government is generally very careful of criticising countries that have a geopolitical or strategic relevance,” he said. “This is similar to how they deal with Bolsanaro’s Brazil or the authoritarian government in the Philippines, where they will, if at all, only discuss individual cases while ignoring more structural and widespread problems in a country.”

The Die Linke members of parliament also mentioned that Modi is a member of the “paramilitary” Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. They wrote that the RSS has an ideology “inspired by the fascist movements in Europe led by Mussolini and Hitler.” In fact, Die Linke raised several questions regarding the RSS’s activities, both in the Indian government and in Germany.

One such question was on whether the federal government shared the view of the Die Linke members that the BJP’s politics—which the left party mentioned is significantly influenced by the RSS—had authoritarian traits. The members also asked whether the German government saw a link between the BJP’s ideology and the rise of communal tensions, hate speech and lynchings in India.

The government gave one evasive answer for three of the questions on the RSS. “The federal government stands up to all political and social actors in India for democracy, rule of law and human rights,” it said. It added that Modi has spoken against religiously or ideologically motivated violence on several occasions, but did not refer to any specific instances to support this. The German government further mentioned that official crime statistics did not record a significant increase in hate crimes between 2010 and 2017. But it also wrote that the Indian government had not released any data regarding hate crimes in the country since 2018.

Brandt criticised this response. “The uncritical acceptance of the Indian government’s data on hate crimes really shows the interest-driven benevolence that Germany shows towards India,” he said. “That is completely not acceptable.”

The federal government was careful in answering questions regarding the role of organisations of the Sangh Parivar in Germany. The RSS’s international wing, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, has been active in Germany since 2014. It runs five shakhas in the county. The Die Linke members asked the federal government whether it had held any meetings with the HSS—the government replied in the negative.

The Die Linke members also asked the government whether the federal domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, was monitoring the HSS. The BfV is called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in English. It monitors far-right groups in Germany. At one point in time, it had reportedly put the Alternative for Deutschland under surveillance too. The AfD is a far-right German political party often described as Neo-Nazi. The federal government replied that it could not publicly announce if the HSS was under the BfV’s scanner. Brandt told me that the government had separately informed Die Linke later that the HSS was not under the BfV’s scanner.

“The HSS were quite marginal in Germany until a recent influx of white-collar upper-caste Indians to Germany,” Rosa B, an independent journalist in Germany and member of a collective called Berlin For India, told me. He asked not to be identified by his last name. “Normally, right-wing organisations like this in Germany work closely with the AfD,” Rosa told me. “But I think the HSS is careful about their direct involvement with the AfD because they want to pretend they are only a cultural organisation. ”

According to Rosa, the HSS had tried to curry favour with other political parties. A volunteer of CAVACH also made a similar remark. “The HSS has tried to ingratiate itself with various politicians in Germany,” the CAVACH volunteer told me, requesting anonymity due to fear of repercussion. “In July 2020, they tried to hold an event alongside Sanne Kurz, a member of a state parliament of the Green party from Munich. When we heard about it, we submitted a detailed report to her outlining the links between the HSS and the RSS and describing the ideology and actions of the RSS in India. She later cancelled the event.”

Kurz said HSS had not approached her to attend the event. She said that a mother of a kindergarten, “friend of my daughter” had approached her. “Only when the event was promoted I learned that ‘HSS’ hosts this event,” Kurz wrote to me. “A Google search from within Germany brought neither me nor my office to a conclusion [about] what that might be,” she said. Kurz said that in the summer of 2020, she had been an elected MP for just one and a half years, and that she has since learnt “that asking for a maximum of detail is always a necessity.” She told me that she had made clear to the organisers that she only participated in public events. “I was told that would be ok – however, they would not accept disturbance. Which made me a bit suspicious … After I learned about HSS I understood their worries.”

When asked about the circumstances under which she withdrew from the event, she said she did not remember if CAVACH approached her. “In the end it came all down to time. – I was not available,” she said. Kurz added that she did not know if HSS was actively reaching out to German politicians. I asked the HSS about their activities in Germany, but they did not respond.

The Die Linke members also probed the German government about its view on the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Act of 2020, or the FCRA, that gave the Indian government more control over foreign donations to NGOs working there. The German government expressed concerns about the law, and pointed out that the work of “German development and human rights organisations” was seriously affected by it. “Some of these organisations fear considerable effects on their activities in India. This concern is shared by the Federal Government and was therefore impressed upon the Indian government,” the German government’s reply mentioned. It added that in October 2020, the European Union, Norway and Switzerland had also expressed concerns about the move to the Indian government through a letter.

The German government also gave insights on its views about the situation in Jammu and Kashmir post 5 August 2019, when the Indian state read down the erstwhile state’s special status amid a harsh military lockdown. The Die Linke members wrote in the introduction that “the militarisation of the region, extensive repression against opposition leaders and activists through arrests, denial of procedural law guarantees, preventing access to communication facilities and the massive restriction of freedom of press” were common in the Kashmir Valley after 5 August 2019. “While numerous communication services such as telephone, cellular, SMS were restored, the internet remained switched off or limited to 2G,” the introduction noted. It was in February 2021 that the government announced that 4G services were being restored in Kashmir.

For the most part, the German government’s responses to questions regarding the situation in Kashmir seemed to reiterate the Indian government’s position. “After 5 August, additional security measures have been adopted to protect the local population, especially in the Kashmir Valley, but rather has considerably restricted it for months” after 5 August, the German government said. “But the Indian government continues to decrease these restrictions gradually.” It said that some political leaders who had been previously detained have now been released and that in November 2020 district councils were elected for the first time in the union territory.

The German government, however, seemed to ignore a few facts. Nearly half the erstwhile state did not vote in the November elections. Gunfights between the Indian army and militants had claimed multiple innocent lives. An Indian army officer had extra-judicially executed three civilians. In response to a question about the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the German government noted that “NGOs report that human rights violations by representatives of the state … are not adequately pursued or punished.”

The Die Linke members framed one section of their questions on the CAA and National Register of Citizens. Following the first round of the NRC in Assam, approximately 1.9 million people might be rendered stateless. The Die Linke members mentioned that at least 970 people are being held and in detention camps as a result of the NRC, of whom at least 29 people have died in the past few years. They also noted that at least 31 people died in nationwide demonstrations against the CAA.

The Die Linke members pointed to a study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a research institute in Delhi, to support a point about biases in the Indian police. The members said that the study “attested the police to have anti-Muslim prejudices as well as increased willingness to use violence against (assumed) violent offenders.” Further, the members pointed to how members of the BJP and the Delhi police participated in the anti-Muslim violence in Delhi in February 2020.

The German government evaded taking a stand on these issues. Regarding a question on the human-rights dangers posed by the CAA, the government wrote, “The criticism of the change in the law that has been raised in public debate is primarily aimed at that belonging to a certain religion leads to a preference for naturalisation. This is seen as a violation of the country’s secular constitution.” It mentioned that to its knowledge, the Indian government was not currently pursuing the NRC project.

The Die Linke members posed another set of questions to the German government on the Indian state’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It noted that during the pandemic, “the human-rights situation in India continues to deteriorate.” The members emphasised that the 2020 lockdown particularly affected women, Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim communities as well as informal-sector workers. They pointed out that “some states in response to corona-induced economic recession suspended occupational health and safety laws and extended the working day from 8 to 12 hours.” According to the Die Linke members, the suspension of the laws lowered health and safety standards.

In response to a question about the suspension of labour laws, the federal government said that German companies will not only have to respect Indian law, but also meet their obligations under the German law in their supply chains. It mentioned that an alliance of 49 textile companies had written a letter to Modi on 21 July 2020, expressing concerns over the removal of labour laws. The German government said that India has not yet responded to the letter and that Germany has not held talks on the letter either. Responding to a question about the Indian units of German companies, the government said that it would be illegal for any German company in India to discriminate “on the basis of national and ethnic origin, social origin, sexual orientation, age, gender, political opinion, religion or worldview.”

The 1 April document briefly mentions the 2020 farm laws that Indian farmers have strongly opposed. The Die Linke members wrote that an estimated 131 farmers have died while protesting against the law. In their view, the farm laws were brought in “in an undemocratic manner and without adequate parliamentary debate.” According to them, these laws could have “serious effects such as hunger and malnutrition.” But the German government did not take a stand on the laws. It said that to its knowledge “agricultural experts judge the reform as adequate.” The federal government added that it hoped that the Indian government would “continue the ongoing discussions and endeavour to further develop the reform that has been initiated.”

In light of their other observations, the Die Linke members expressed concern that according to the research institute Bonn International Center for Conversion, the German government continued to approve arms exports to India. “Furthermore, in the northern states paramilitary groups implement the interests of the Indian government using German machine guns and pistols,” they wrote. They also mentioned that according to a BICC study, during missions of paramilitary groups, “there are often significant human rights violations.”

In replies to the questions on arms export to India, the German government said, “The federal government is pursuing a restrictive and responsible arms export policy.” It added, “The Federal Government decides on arms exports on a case-by-case basis and in the light of each individual situation after careful examination including considerations of foreign and security policy … Respect for human rights in the recipient country plays a prominent role in the decision-making process.”

The Die Linke members wrote in the introduction, “From the perspective of the questioner, there has to be a rethinking of the German cooperation with the Indian government in which human rights over economic and geopolitical interests are placed.” But overall, it did not appear that the German federal government was on the same page. Brandt, however, appeared keen on pursuing the matter further. “The Hindu nationalist movement troubles us deeply,” he said. “The German government needs to recognise and address the human rights problems in India and act accordingly.”

Anti-fascist groups, human-rights organisations and members of progressive political parties have been taking a keen interest in India since 2019, Rosa told me. According to him, this interest was propelled by two incidents. “Firstly, in July 2019, the German ambassador visited the headquarters of the RSS,” he said, referring to Walter J Lindner, the German ambassador to India. The second occurred in October that year when a group of 27 members of the European Parliament visited Kashmir in what looked like the Indian government’s attempt to garner international support for reading down Article 370. The group comprised two members of the European Parliament from the AfD.

Rosa said that when the CAA was passed later that year, Germany saw “major protests against the fascist nature of the Indian government.” He told me that Berlin for India organised seven or eight demonstrations against the CAA and in solidarity with the protesters in India. CAVACH was born out of the CAA movement in December 2019 too. “Several such organisations that started taking shape across Europe constituted by the Indian diaspora following the passage of the CAA and police brutality against students,” a second volunteer of the CAVACH told me. Rosa said that in January and February this year, marches were held in Germany to express solidarity with those protesting the 2020 farm laws in India.

“Many of these were the coordinated efforts of anti-fascist groups, Dalit studies collectives and other organisations,” he told me. “It is part of a broader network building leftist indigenous resistance to global fascism. It stands against Modi as much as against the Brazilian or Turkish government.” Rosa and CAVACH volunteers said that the Die Linke members’ questions were a result of their activism.

“People in Germany are not as keenly aware of the situation in India as they are about, say, Palestine,” Rosa told me. “And I think that stems from the fact that most of the South Asians here are recent migrants, most of them upper-caste people in white-collar jobs.” He said that things were changing in Germany though. “Now we do have Indians from Bahujan backgrounds here, many who work as gig-workers, precarious workers. They are already being tied into left politics here. There is also a sizeable Tamil and Kashmiri diaspora, all of whom will stand against Hindutva.”

The second CAVACH volunteer agreed. “There is a clear growing awareness about the authoritarian nature of the Indian government, even among politicians in Germany,” the second CAVACH volunteer said. “Members of the Greens, Die Linke and the SPD”—Social Democratic Party of Germany—“do keep informed about the situation there. Even others do know, but these are the parties that are likely to value human rights more than the viability of India as a major trade partner.”

The activists mentioned that people in Germany are more cautious when distinguishing between authoritarianism and fascism. “I think unlike in other countries, both activists and politicians are more scared of referring to Nazism or Fascism,” the first CAVACH volunteer told me. “This is because the horrors of that period are known in detail, and people are wary of using that word flippantly.” The May Day demonstration is a major event in Berlin every year. Rosa told me that this year the May Day demonstration is being led by mig-antifa, an antifascist movement representing the rights of migrants in Europe, and will represent South Asian workers. “Germans have largely ignored what is going in India till now, or at least called it authoritarian while being too scared to use the ‘f-word,’” Rosa told me. “That is changing very quickly.”

This piece was originally published by The Caravan. Reproduced with permission

Colombia is Burning

Colombia’s right-wing president Ivan Duque intended to make the population pay for the costs of the pandemic, escalating a decade-old social conflict

by Franziska Wöckel and Alfonso Pinzón


10/05/2021

About 24 people have died as a result of police violence in Colombia since late April. Hundreds more have been injured. Escalating protests against an unpopular tax reform that would put the burden on the shoulders of the poorest and the middle class, whilst exempting major businesses, are now reaching unprecedented levels.

A new social consciousness seems to be emerging amongst young people in Colombia. This new generation is no longer willing to put up with the great injustices that have been the order of the day ever since the country gained independence two centuries ago. It is a political storm, gaining momentum by the day.

The downfall of oil prices due to the pandemic is the main driver behind Colombia’s steep 7.1 point drop in gross domestic product. This decline has ripped a gaping hole in the national budget, which Duque is now trying to fill. His priority: preventing international rating agencies from downgrading Colombia’s credit rating.

Colombia: A peace process that isn’t one

People are taking to the streets, not only to vent their anger over an unjust tax reform that was ultimately withdrawn (it bore the sugar-coated name “Ley de Solidaridad Sostenible” (Law of Sustainable Solidarity), but also to protest against the “Uribísmo” brand of politics (named after ex-president Álvaro Uribe 2002-2010), as well as poverty and injustice. The protests also target human rights abuses, the government’s political polarization, call for the protection of threatened human rights activists, for the improvement of the social security’s safety net during the pandemic, for police reform, and much more.

These protests have a long history in Columbia mired in a deeply ingrained culture of violence going back for decades, but they also have to do with the 2016 peace agreement. This agreement was signed between Colombia’s government and the FARC guerrillas, intending to end the historic cycle of violence in the armed conflict known as la violencia (1928-1958) and the so-called “Colombian conflict” (1960-present). The agreement committed the state to social peace and a reorganization and reduction of the armed forces, none of which it has implemented.

The police, for instance, are under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Defense and not the Ministry of the Interior. Thus, there is no real separation between police and the military, and as such, the continuous militarization of the police remains unresolved. The conservative right-wing President Duque (in power since 2018) has so far been unwilling to implement demilitarization or any of the other commitments of the peace accord.

Large landholdings and poverty

Other sections of the 2016 peace agreement are in a similar state. This includes land redistribution and agrarian reform, as well as financial support for small farmers. Colombia’s biggest unresolved historical conflict remains the inequitable distribution of agricultural land ownership and its stark concentration in the hands of a select few large and wealthy landowners.

To date, hardly any of these measures have been implemented. Instead, assassinations of exposed activists continue unchecked and government structures continue to operate as if the peace agreement never existed. The power vacuum created by FARC’s absence in rural areas has been filled by criminal gangs and drug cartels. Military counterinsurgency measures are a key strategy in Colombia to guarantee the security of oil companies and protect the interests of large landowners.

Background – the protests of 2019

Duque’s conservative government is a big spender when it comes to keeping the internal war going. In Colombia, the government’s strong, well-equipped military and militarized police allow the suppression of mass-uprisings at any time, which ironically earned the country a reputation of political stability in the region, as far as the West is concerned. Another large portion of military spending goes into counterinsurgency efforts in rural areas, with active U.S. support.

Anger over the liberal economic policies of conservative governments in recent decades, high unemployment, poverty, unequal educational opportunities, the health care system, as well as violence and the ongoing murder of active civil rights activists by the police and security forces have grown steadily. Mass protests and demonstrations already erupted across the country in 2019.

A new movement is born in Colombia

Although the Corona crisis had initially interrupted these protests, it exacerbated existing problems. Under lockdown conditions, things kept fermenting.

The current general strike was initiated by the National Strike Committee (Comité Nacional de Paro) integrating various unions. In addition, the protests are being supported throughout the country by workers, students, countless young people, indigenous groups and environmentalists. For them, nothing less than the future of the country is at stake.

Indigenous people at the center

In Cali, a city of over two million people in the west of the country, the indigenous Misak demolished a statue of the city’s founder, the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar. To them, he is a symbol that represents the horrific and violent era of the Conquista. The indigenous people are protesting against a series of murders of indigenous social activists, massacres and the lack of security in indigenous territories.

Furthermore, protests are increasing against glyphosate aerial spraying, a fundamental strategy of the so called war on drugs. Indigenous and civil organizations have organized sit-ins and petitions. Duque recently reinstated a decree to reinstate these flights, which had been suspended in 2015.

No other country has a higher murder rate of environmental activists than Colombia. When land is developed for mining, agriculture, forestry, or dams to generate water and electricity, people who live there are often perceived as an obstacle to the companies’ plans. And these murders, usually arranged at the behest of these companies, are hardly ever investigated or prosecuted.

Young people, students and the “middle class“

In comparison with earlier events, a few things are new with the current protests: there is broader support and the unrest is better positioned than ever before. Protestors are also younger than ever: many of the protesters are minors, are active on the internet, and have been digitally politicized. Mobilizations and calls to the streets are being circulated on Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. These are students, but also pupils, who are taking to the streets, fighting for their future.

The middle class is also on the streets. Colombia’s “middle class” is not comparable to Germany’s. Many do not make minimum wage. The number of those at risk of poverty has increased considerably with the pandemic. They are all driven by the fear of slipping further into poverty; a fear felt even deeper by the proposed reforms.

For the very first time, the capital’s elite private universities, such as Los Andes or Javariana, are not only encouraging their students to participate in the protests, but are actively organizing protests themselves. College administrations have publicly criticized police violence. This has never happened before. These are the top schools of the elite, who either attend them, or go to the U.S. for higher education.

State violence in Colombia

The state has reacted with inconceivable harshness. Buildings are on fire, the police are apparently firing indiscriminately at protesters. Ex-President Uribe, the leader of the ultra-conservative Centro Democratico party tweeted:

“Let’s support the right of soldiers and police to use their weapons to defend their physical integrity and to protect people and property from criminal acts of terrorism.”

This was not incorrectly understood as a call for violence against the protesters. The tweet has since been taken down.

Government under pressure

Defense Minister Molano toed the same horn, trying to discredit the protests as “criminal” and as “actions financed by the guerrillas” as well as a “terrorist threat”. Meanwhile, calls for Duque’s resignation are growing louder, facing a government that is under fast increasing pressure. Even national icons such as Shakira, Juanes, and Panamanian salsa king Rúben Blades have spoken out, expressing concern as well as calling the government to show moderation.

The role of the pandemic

Those who take to the streets despite the pandemic must have a good reason or be completely desperate. With a population of 50 million, over 75,000 people have died and 3 million have been infected in Colombia. During this past year, the number of people living in poverty has increased rapidly; today, 42 percent of Colombians live below the poverty line.

There are now nearly 7.5 million people living in extreme poverty in the country, i.e. lacking the minimum caloric intake to survive. In addition, there are more than 7 million internally displaced people due to exile and armed conflict.

The Colombian health care system has been privatized, and earlier government subsidies must now to be paid for by the insured. While the vast majority have health insurance, the state now stays out of the equation when it comes to costs, quality and coverage. The government is currently planning further changes, which are also being protested.

The enemy within

The implementation of the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC will be crucial. If the social demands it contains are not implemented, no social peace will ever be possible. Duque broke off talks with the other smaller guerrilla group ELN alongside the FARC in 2018. The guerrillas have since retreated back into the mountains, and their leadership have partially remained in Cuba after negotiations failed. Cuba is eager to continue mediating and the ELN has also signaled a willingness to talk. However, Duque unwaveringly insists on their extradition.

The extreme political right has lost its traditional scapegoat as a result of the peace agreement. Previously, any social movement could be summarily discredited as “guerrilla-sympathizing” or even financed by the guerrillas. Venezuela as an external scapegoat is not enough; the elite requires an internal enemy to blame.

Elections in 2022

Next year’s presidential elections will determine Colombia’s immediate future. The current climate of extreme political polarization will intensify. Overall, there will be fewer right-leaning and more left-leaning voters than in November. The center-leaning ones will be fewer.

This election will be decided between Gustavo Petro, a leftist candidate considered a radical because of his M19 guerrilla fighter past, who could attract a 42 percent share of the vote in the last general election, and his soon-to-be-determined opponent from right-wing conservative ranks.

The constitution prohibits Duque from running again. The right-wing candidate will almost certainly be hand-picked by former President Uribe, who remains the most powerful political force in the country.

First success of the protests

Uribe’s game is based on stoking fear of the specter of communism, fueled by the desperate economic situation in neighboring Venezuela. He has put his son Tomás into the political spotlight, and chances are he will be the candidate to face Gustavo Petro in the upcoming political battle.

Another option would be the current conservative vice president Marta Lucía Ramírez to run, but she would have no chance against Petro, according to current polls.

The fact that Duque has withdrawn his tax reform is seen as a success of the protests. In the meantime, further sociopolitical demands are being voiced. Will the current protests be strong enough to transform into a real mass movement capable of overthrowing the neoliberal oligarchic regime in Colombia? It is certainly too early to tell.

Solidarity with whom?

In any case, it is striking that Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) has remained silent in the face of the state’s deadly violence against protesters in Colombia. In contrast, during the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2019, he was quick to back the coup plotters and sanction state violence.

On the other hand, activists around the world have been organizing rallies and online actions for days, in solidarity with the protests in Colombia. In the coming days, the protests will continue also in Germany (we will update our Events page to let you know about planned actions in Berlin).

This article first appeared in German on the marx21 website. Reproduced with permission. Translation: Franziska Wöckel

How dangerous is Marine Le Pen?

Could a Fascist become the next French president?


09/05/2021

In April 2021, opinion polls suggested French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen could win the presidential elections in 2022. How powerful and dangerous is she, and what are the weaknesses anti-fascists should exploit?

In 2017, Marine Le Pen was defeated by Emmanuel Macron in the second-round run-off of the French presidential elections. She received ten million votes, a terrifying figure which was three million more than her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had obtained in the second round in 2002. Macron, with his new jerry-built party, La République en Marche, won the presidency with seventeen million. That included the votes of very many left wingers who hoped in this way to block the road to the far right.

This huge breakthrough for Marine Le Pen was possible because of the collapse of the traditional governmental parties of Right and Left, the Republicans and the Socialist Party, burned electorally by their pro-business austerity politics. The Republicans got seven million votes in the first round of the 2017 presidentials. The Socialist Party, leaving government, got only two million votes – a historic low. The radical left France Insoumise got seven million votes. Ten million voters stayed at home for the two rounds, and five million citizens did not even put themselves on the electoral register.

The mass reaction to Marine Le Pen’s success was disappointing. Almost twenty years earlier, on the day in 2002 when Le Pen senior got to the second round, many thousands of people hit the streets. Demonstrations went on all night. Our revolutionary group held a dynamic public meeting in a café at three o’clock in the morning! Ten days later, on the 1st of May 2002, at least one and a half million people demonstrated against fascism across the country, school students struck, and anti-fascist rallies were organized every day between the two electoral rounds. However, in 2017, when it was Marine Le Pen who got to the second round, only a few hundred demonstrators were on the streets the same evening. The first of May demonstrations between the two rounds were many times smaller than in 2002.

Mainstreaming the National Front

The difference between these two mobilizations is a sign of Marine Le Pen’s success. Over the ten years since she became president of the (then) National Front, she has managed to bring the party into the mainstream. She changed its name to National Rally (Rassemblement National) because of the connotations of the old name. She expelled her father from the party, because he regularly suggested that the Nazi massacres for racial purity were no big deal (making word-play jokes on “gas ovens”, or claiming that the gas ovens were “a detail of Second World War history”). Although she insisted she was clarifying and not transforming the party programme, support for the death penalty and opposition to abortion disappeared from the manifesto. She switched the official alliance of her party in Europe, to join a less openly extremist grouping, the European Alliance for Freedom, and she abandoned the idea of leaving the EU.

She also succeeded in building new stronghold regions in the de-industrialized North East of France, to add to her traditional regional base in the South East. [1]

The result is that on 29 April 2021, an opinion poll found that fully 34% of French citizens “would like to see Marine Le Pen play an important role in the coming months and years”. This makes her the second most popular political leader in France. Another poll predicted that she might get 44% of the second-round votes if she is again in a run-off against Macron. She is loudly claiming that she can become president in 2022, as a people’s candidate. A quarter of manual workers on the electoral lists voted Marine Le Pen in the first round in 2017 (almost 30% of them abstained).

How dangerous is she? Her programme demands that France make a “patriotic choice” to replace the “globalist choice” made so far. It defends bigger military budgets, and promises 15,000 new police officers and 40,000 new prison cells. It pledges tougher prison sentences, massive cuts in legal and illegal immigration, the banning of state healthcare for undocumented migrants, and of social housing for non-French nationals. The manifesto insists that French nationality should only be available to children of French nationals. A government campaign to encourage French families to have more children is proposed. All mosques suspected of “extremism” should be closed down, the Rassemblement National (RN) says. Since Le Pen claims a Muslim headscarf is “a sign of radicalism”, one can imagine that few mosques would escape her definition of extremism.

Just as important as her programme are her unofficial statements of intent, such as, in early 2021, to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves in the streets, her declaration “I defend the workers by opposing immigration which brings down wages”, or her recent lies that “so many neighbourhoods are now controlled by criminal or Islamist gangs”.

The mainstreaming of her party has been so effective that RN representatives can be frequently seen on all the major TV political talk shows. [2] Journalists are ever more complacent with the RN (“Could you tell us what your economic policy would be?”, “Do you think the Astrazeneca vaccine should be suspended?”, “Will there be a First Gentleman at your side in the Elysée Palace?”, “Who would you choose as Minister of the Interior?”). Younger RN spokespeople, the chirpiest and best-dressed Nazis in the country, can regularly be seen on breakfast TV being treated as future decision-makers.

Obstacles faced by Le Pen

Yet Marine Le Pen’s electoral rise does not reflect any automatic progress of fascism, as some panicked or demoralized people on the Left might feel. There are a number of factors which make it difficult for the Rassemblement National to build. The main recent episodes in the class struggle in France have not gone their way politically. Take first the inspiring Yellow Vest movement (2018-2019). This movement began in regions and in social classes with a high level of electoral support for Le Pen. The lively insurrectionist mobilizations around the country could have become a real force for popularizing the far right: this did not happen. On the contrary, thanks to the tireless work of many hundreds of local left activists and trade unionists, the political tone of the Yellow Vest movement moved very much to the left. Indeed, protesting police violence became one of its main priorities, a cause which Le Pen could absolutely not afford to prioritize (well over half of all police who vote, vote for the Rassemblement National).

The mass revolt over pensions was not good for Le Pen either. High levels of political class consciousness were expressed in the strikes and demonstrations against the new pension law in 2019 and 2020. This movement ended in victory for the working class, since the measures have been shelved indefinitely (using the pandemic as an excuse). As long as defending pensions was at the centre of the political agenda, Le Pen had to keep quiet. On the one hand, defending pensions was so popular that she could not afford to support Macron’s law; on the other, her large base among small businesses did not allow her to support mass trade union action.

The pandemic episode did not particularly help Le Pen either. Although millions have harsh criticisms concerning Macron’s management of the crisis, neither the far right nor the Left succeeded in popularizing a much more effective strategy against the virus.

Marine Le Pen’s attempt to build a solid party structure in towns around the country is also fraught with difficulties. An opposition party which received ten million votes would normally be able to organize street demonstrations of tens of thousands – the RN cannot do this. In 2021, Le Pen even abandoned the RN’s habitual first of May far-right demonstration in Paris, replacing it with an online meeting. The RN has considerably fewer members than it had a few years ago. At the municipal elections in 2020, the party had difficulty recruiting candidates for town councillors, obtaining 1,498 town councillors across France in 2014, but only 827 in 2020. The party has six Members of Parliament, compared with 12 Communist Party MPs and 17 belonging to the radical Left: France Insoumise. In the 2017 presidential campaign, Mélenchon of the France Insoumise could get more than fifty thousand citizens on the Marseille dockside for a mass meeting. Meanwhile, Le Pen’s biggest meetings were of a few thousand people, indoors. All these political and organizational weaknesses could help anti-fascists push back the Rassemblement National.

Reassuring the fascist core

Although Marine Le Pen plans to pass through a stage of building an electorally based far-right party, as the far right in Italy or elsewhere has been able to do, her long-term fascist objective remains. Just like her father with his “jokes” about the holocaust, Marine Le Pen regularly provides knowing winks for the core of Nazi activists in France. When Génération Identitaire, a White Nationalist group, was banned in France two months back for hate speech, and for “building a private militia“, Le Pen defended them. The symbol of the RN is still the flame borrowed from Italian fascist tradition. And in April 2021, when a group of retired military generals called those who believed in “true French values” to be prepared for civil war, she immediately declared that they were right and that her party would welcome them with open arms. The generals’ open letter spoke of the “danger” of decolonial theories, which they claimed would cause a “race war”, and of the dangers of Muslim separatism and of Black Blocs. It concluded: “this is no time to hesitate. Otherwise, tomorrow civil war will put an end to this situation of rising chaos, and you [France’s political leaders] will be responsible for the thousands of deaths which will occur.”

Macron/Le Pen: more of a duet than a duel

What has most helped Le Pen are the horrific and reactionary terrorist attacks carried out in France in the name of radical Islam. Though the attackers generally have few or no links to the mosques and to the Muslim community. The killing of a schoolteacher, Samuel Paty, (for “insulting the Prophet”) in 2020 and the killing of a police station employee, Stéphanie Monfermé, in April 2021 – were manna from heaven for the Rassemblement National.

But this manna was greatly multiplied by the vicious racist initiatives of Macron and his ministers over the last year. A new law “against separatism” is just going through. It includes an obligation for all Muslim organizations to sign a charter of agreement with Republican principles. The aim is purely propagandist – to tell the ten million who voted Le Pen that “we distrust Muslims too, vote for us!”. While the bill worked its way through the Upper House, the Senate, a number of amendments were approved which have little chance of being in the law in its final form, but which encouraged a vast racist media ‘talkfest’. One amendment declared that children should be banned completely from wearing a hijab, another that mothers who wear a hijab should not be allowed to accompany school trips along with other parents.

Macron has also dissolved organizations such as the “Collective against Islamophobia in France”,3 despite zero evidence of any sympathy for terrorism in these organizations. Meanwhile, his education minister, Blanquer, declared that the hijab “is not welcome in French society”, and the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, attacked supermarkets that sold Halal food, while criticizing Marine Le Pen for being “too soft” on the Muslim question!

This cynical ideological campaign claiming Muslims constitute a group which wants to separate itself from wider society is entirely based on lies. For example, the number of Muslim families sending their children to religious schools rather than secular state schools is ten times fewer than the families sending their children to private Catholic schools! There are 9,000 private Catholic schools in France, and around 70 private Muslim schools.

Wider racist posturing is also part of Macron’s recipe for re-election. A moral panic hit the newsrooms when it was “revealed” that student union UNEF sometimes organized meetings exclusively for non-Whites, while thinking about how to fight racism. In rigidly universalist France this is often considered shocking, and the Senate recommended that the student union be banned. Astoundingly, some Communist Party and Green party senators voted in favour of this proposal. In the media the talk was of the terrible danger of “anti-white racism” taking over the country’s youth.

A second racist panic was organized around university teaching and research. The Education minister claimed that “islamo-leftism” was “a gangrene” in the universities, and that good, honest intellectuals were being terrorized by decolonial studies merchants. The lie was effective – over 60% of French citizens in polls said that “islamo-leftism” in the universities needed investigating, even though the extremely establishment Council of University Presidents replied with the angriest press release in its history, accusing the minister of using “peudo-concepts popularized by the far right”.

The division on the Left and on the Right means that nine million first round votes will no doubt be enough to get through to the run-off. Macron has every interest in putting far right priorities at the centre of public debate. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was right to describe the second-round run-off between Macron and Le Pen in 2017 as “more of a duet than a duel”. “Macron represents the system, and Le Pen is its life insurance,” he commented. Faced with a high level of class struggle threatening his dream of becoming France’s Thatcher-figure, Macron, despite coming from a strand of the Right which had not traditionally prioritized Muslim-bashing, is going full-on racist as a diversion from class struggle, and in this manner is laying the basis for a further increase in far-right support.

Fightback potential

Marine Le Pen’s political weaknesses (never giving support to very popular class struggles such as defence of pensions), and her organizational weaknesses (having great difficulty maintaining local party structures and meetings) both give a lot of space to anti-fascists to reduce her support by information campaigns and determined harassment action. There is right now no broad-based national anti-fascist campaign. Each Left party denounces Le Pen and her racism, and some even campaign against Islamophobia, but there is a real need for something more. Specific anti-fascist meetings and rallies have for years been rare, localized and small. Yet the potential is clear: there have been inspiring recent mobilizations by new (mainly non-white led) anti-racist networks, in particular against police racism. In addition, there are plenty of anti-racists among the young and among trade unionists, who might mistrust or not be attracted by political parties, but who would be ready to mobilize against the fascists. National anti-fascist initiatives are sorely needed. As this article was being written (4th May) a group of Left MPs, movement activists and trade unions published a call for a national demonstration against the ideas of the far right. This must become the basis for more ambitious campaigns.

Thanks to Susan, Daniel, Fred, Ray, Stéphane and Ian for comments on an earlier draft.

 

Footnotes

1 The BBC website gives a useful statistical analysis

2 For example, on BFMTV here

Wrangelkiez United

Fighting exclusionary and racist police controls in Wrangelkiez


07/05/2021

We are residents of the Wrangelkiez and we are strongly opposed to the exclusionary and racist police controls in the neighborhood. We are a diverse group: Some of us have lived here all their lives, others moved here only recently. We are in different life situations, belong to different age groups and pursue diverse occupations. What unites us is the daily observation that the police in Görlitzer Park and Wrangelkiez use the unlawful practice of racial profiling and often violence, some of which we ourselves are affected by.

We know about the different opinions in the neighborhood. We see the existing conflicts linked to issues such as gentrification, homelessness, the asylum and drug policy, and the aggravation of social problems by Corona. We are also annoyed by some things in our neighborhood. But we know that police violence does not help against poverty, against work bans for asylum seekers or against high rents and displacement. Repression, criminalization and displacement by the new focal point unit of the police therefore cannot be the solution. We are against a reflexive call for more police, and for a reconceptualization of alternative ideas for solutions.

We want to live in a neighborhood of solidarity, which does not simply react to conflicts and contradictions with police and exclusion, but rather searches for solutions together. That’s why we have joined forces to add some perspectives and ideas to the discussion.

What you can do

Copy and distribute our flyer. Get creative! Make banners and signs and hang them from your windows or balconies. Don’t look away when you see racist police controls and say aloud what you think of them. If you feel alone and powerless, speak to people around you. Take videos / photos and send them to us with details of the date, time and place for documentation purposes.

Keep your distance, behave in a de-escalating way, and document that too. Although it is legal to observe and film/photograph police activities, police officers are reluctant to have their racist behaviour seen and documented and often use flimsy accusations (obstruction of police measures, coronavirus prevention, resisting arrest, etc. ) against observers.

We don’t want any racist controls and we don’t want a permanent police presence in our neighbourhood!

Wrangelkiez united! ★ Contre le Racisme!

Alliance with Fascists in Madrid

Pablo Iglesias is leaving active politics after the right wing won a majority in the capital on Tuesday


The early regional elections in Madrid have rocked Spanish politics. The leader of the Left party Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, fully resigned from all his offices. As expected, his party – in coalition with the United Left under the name Unidas Podemos (UP) – came in last place of the parties elected to parliament. UP received 7% of votes, and now has 10 deputies – 3 more than in 2019. As on a national level, the aim was to achieve a progressive majority, and to form a coalition with the social democrats (PSOE) and the regional split from Podemos Más Madrid. This aim was not met.

In contrast, the right wing People’s Party (PP) increased its share of the vote from 22% to 44% and now has 65 delegates in the regional parliament. The background to this success is the crisis of the neoliberal party, Ciudadanos, which lost all of its 26 seats. In the regional election in Catalonia in February, Ciudadanos’ representation fell from 36 deputies to 6.

But also the PSOE lost 10 percentage points and 13 seats in parliament and now sends only 24 deputies to the chamber. It is now as Iglesias feared: the PP can govern, but only with the fascists from VOX, who now have 13 seats, one more than in 2019.

The left wing Más Madrid has 24 seats – the same number as the social democrats. Their candidate Mónica García declared, “This evening we have shown that there is space for improvement in Madrid, that there is a feminist, left, and Green Madrid that wants representation.” The popular 47-year old doctor has led her party to second place behind the PP. Más Madrid received 4,000 votes more than the PP.

For the former Podemos leader Iglesias, the fact that the Left block did not receive a majority is a personal issue. Iglesias had resigned as Vice President to stand in these elections. On the evening before the election, he declared that the right wing had made him a “scapegoat.” He said that many people were deterred because he was a candidate in the elections. The hostility and accusations of the right wing media and politics had an effect. Iglesias explained his decision by saying, “if someone is no longer useful, he must stand down.” Many critics – also from the Left – had accused him of only seeking office.

This has taken care of itself, but the Spanish Left has lost one of its most important and wise heads, who has not just made a progressive government in the country possible, but also organised a successor – the Communist who is one of the deputy presidents. Yolanda Díaz is not even a Podemos member, but her leadership quality and popularity in the left wing alliance UP is without question. Iglesias is leaving politics at 42 years old, and will probably work again as a university lecturer.

Meanwhile, the VOX candidate – the extreme right winger Rocío Monasterio has announced that the election will lead to changes on a national level. The PP candidate and election victor Isabel Díaz Ayuso assured her support. The People’s Party already rules the city of Madrid with the help of VOX.

The conservatives are fighting accusations that their Francoist history means that they have downplayed the dictatorship and stand in continuity with the fascists. At an election meeting on Saturday, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, declared “we may be fascists but we can govern.” This does not seem to disturb cooperation with the European People’s Party, of which the PP is a member.

This article originally appeared in German in the junge Welt. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.Trial subscription of the junge Welt available here.