The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Month: July 2022

News from Berlin and Germany, 21 July 2022

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


21/07/2022

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Increased number of homophobic and transphobic offences

The Tagesspiegel reports that there were more homophobic and transphobic offences last year than in a long time. There were 645 cases of so-called hate crimes based on sexual identity or orientation. 64 suspects were sentenced. Most cases involved personal injury, insults and incitement. This Saturday, half a million people are expected to take part in the CSD parade and 43 other events in Berlin. Source: Berliner Zeitung

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

AbL advises farmers to distance themselves from right-wing agitation

For weeks, farmers in the Netherlands have been protesting against drastic tightening of environmental regulations by the government. A third of the farms fear they will go out of business. In Germany, too, there is support for these actions in many places. Moreover, according to Georg Janßen, national director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL) e.V., right-wing populist parties and extreme right-wing organisations are already trying to hijack the protest movements and unhinge democracy at the same time. Nevertheless, in his opinion, “mere defensive struggles” are not enough. Farmers should act more proactively towards politicians and civil society. Source: Wochenblatt

Federal government expects five floating liquefied natural gas terminals

The German government is pushing ahead with the construction of liquefied natural gas terminals on the German coast. In addition to the floating terminals in Brunsbüttel and Wilhelmshaven, two more are to be built in Stade and Lubmin, the Ministry of Economics announced. An additional, privately financed terminal is to be built in Lubmin. The floating terminals are essentially liquefied gas tankers, but they can return the fuel to its gas state themselves. This means that no complete port is needed, but primarily only a connection from the ship to the pipeline on land. The government has rented a total of four of those special ships. Source: jW

Bayern and the digitalisation of state

The CSU and the Free Voters are giving to Bavaria its “first digital law”. It is supposed to comprehensively regulate the digitalisation of state, economy and society. The question is if this will become a model for the entire republic. It seems Even the traffic-light-coalition shows no objections to the basic idea. Up to now, digitisation in this country has been regulated, if at all, in many individual laws that are hard to keep track of. The agenda for the bill covers 15 areas, which sounds self-evident in the year 2022. Source: süddeutsche

Climate crisis costs 6.6 billion euros annually

Man-made climate change has caused damages averaging 6.6 billion euros every year in Germany since 2000. This is the conclusion of a project commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection on the costs of climate change impacts in Germany. According to the study, heat, drought, and floods caused by the climate crisis will have cost at least 145 billion euros by 2021. The two heat summers in 2018 and 2019 alone, as well as the floods in 2021, would have cost more than 80 billion euros. Besides, some of the costs cannot even be quantified. Source; tagesschau

Airlines profit from deportations

In 2021, the federal government commissioned 206 mass deportations via charter flights with the support of the EU border agency Frontex. The costs amounted to 21 million euros. The federal government has not revealed which airlines earned money from this, saying that rhe companies should not be “exposed to public criticism”. One possible consequence would be that no airline would accept the deportation orders any more. Deportation Alarm, a working group of the No Border Assembly initiative, took it into its own hands to out the airlines responsible. This will be published on the website www.deportationalarm.com. Source: nd

Lieferando Workers Collective (LWC) Berlin

Independent workers of Lieferando organizing


It’s election season for Berlin workers. From August 2nd to August 8th, Lieferando couriers in Berlin will elect a workers council (Betriebsrat) at their company. Forcing this election is the latest achievement of a years-long organizing push within Lieferando, spearheaded by the Lieferando Workers Collective (LWC).

The LWC has fought for, and won: unlimited contracts for couriers, the right to stop work (and be paid) in bad weather conditions, and proper compensation around using one‘s own phone, data, and bike. The LWC helps their colleagues know their rights and assert them.

Both these accomplishments and the self-organized structure of the LWC challenge business-as-usual at companies like Lieferando. The courier business model relies upon atomization, isolation, and increasingly precarious work conditions; if couriers don’t know their rights, Lieferando profits.

It’s no surprise, then, that the LWC (and the Election Council) have faced sabotage from management, ranging from individual harassment to arbitrary lawsuits.

The Lieferando Workers Collective is an integral part of the current wave of worker self-organization in Berlin. Their members were instrumental in supporting the Gorillas Workers Collective last year and the Flink Workers Collective this year.

There are several support actions planned for the run-up to the election. If you’re interested in supporting, message @mokuh on Telegram.

For links to LWC social media, and updates for the latest support actions, visit this page. Expect some news from around 8pm this evening (Friday, 22nd July) about planned actions this week-end.

Why is the Egyptian Dictator Abdelfattah el-Sisi visiting Berlin?

Germany is courting a murderous régime. This is an insult to the many political prisoners in Egypt’s jails


20/07/2022

“Russian President Vladimir Putin fears the “spark of democracy” spreading to his country”
Olaf Scholz, 2022

“What unites us is our shared values: democracy, human rights, peace and freedom.”
Olaf Scholz, 2022

“We must protect our democracy from populists and stand up for the rights of minorities”,
Olaf Scholz, 2019

In spite of those shiny statements made by the German chancellor against dictators and populists, on 18th July 2022, he warmly met with the strongman of Egypt. Mr. Abdelfattah el-Sisi, who led the 2013 coup that toppled the first ever democratically-elected government in Egyptian history, who killed democracy in his country – and probably the entire region — is being given red carpet treatment in the German capital.

Mr. Sisi is also notorious for spearing the worst massacre in Egypt’s modern history, when his forces stormed Rabaa & Nahda sit-ins, reportedly murdering 1,200 – 2,000 protesters in broad daylight in Cairo, some of whom were burned alive while in their tents.

In 2015 Mr. Sisi’s visit was met with negativity from some parts of the German democracy. Although then-Chancellor Merkel received Sisi warmly, Norbert Lammert, at the time the President of the Bundestag, refused to meet him due to his human rights record.

Between 2015 and now the situation definitely hasn’t gotten any better. Under his reign 16 prisons were built to accommodate the reported 60,000 – 70,000 political prisoners held in inhumane conditions, many of whom are tortured and convicted without fair trail — and most without any trial at all. Egypt ranked third in the world for executions carried out in 2021, directly below China & Iran. Human rights groups have documented 1,163 deaths inside detention centres in Egypt since 2013.

The visit in 2022 is of more importance than the one in 2015, as Mr. Sisi could potentially be a solution to German fears of gas cuts from Russia — and Scholz doesn’t only have his sights on gas from Egypt, but also hydrogen.

Germany, whose weapon sales to Egypt hit an all time record in 2021, has a lot of leverage over the Egyptian regime. In addition to this, German companies are carrying out mega-infrastructure projects in Egypt, and to top all that off, Germany is a potential buyer of fuel from Egypt. It’s about time that Germany uses this leverage for the interest of not just the Egyptian people, but also for the interest of the stability of the region on the doorstep of Europe.

Outside the doors where Scholz met Sisi stood Sanaa Seif, whose imprisoned brother is on a 108-days hunger strike. While international outcry to release him wasn’t strong enough to secure his freedom, Sanaa reminded Mr. Scholz and the world that Sisi is acting this way because no one stands up against him. The German and western governments are openly supporting a dictator that the Egyptians haven’t chosen and should better use their leverage to promote human rights.

We want to remind the German government that stopping the fuel supply from one dictator and replacing it with fuel from another dictator is merely a ticking time bomb, especially when the dictator in question blackmails Europe by using the plight of refugees as a leverage in order to enforce border regimes if he doesn’t receive financial support.

We demand that the German government suspend all arms sales to Egypt and undertake a human rights review. We demand that the German government exert all efforts to pressure the Egyptian dictator to respect human rights and fix the political system in Egypt.

The Egyptian initiative for personal rights has issued a list of 7 demands, including freeing all prisoners, stopping the execution sentences and lifting the states of emergency. You can read more about the initiative here.

Sources:

Gallery – protests against El-Sisi in Berlin, 18th July 2022

Photos: Hossam El-Hamalawy and Amr S

A Rotten Political Dynasty Falls in Sri Lanka as Global Crises Intensify

Ali Khan argues that the collapse of Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa government should be celebrated while also being cautious of wider global trends.


19/07/2022

The rapid fall of the Rajapaksa dynasty in Sri Lanka through the popular mobilisation of the once ethno-religiously divided island nation has become international news and among leftists as a cause célèbre. Here is a once invincible tyrant, who was only recently consolidating totalitarian powers in his office, being ejected from power by the masses overrunning his palace. A Buddhist majoritarian country, that spent 26 years waging a brutal war of subjugation against its Tamil citizens in addition to oppressing its Muslim population, experiencing a moment of ethno-religious solidarity has given hope to some of a better future in Sri Lanka. In the so called Liberal Democratic world of thinktanks and international institutions, there is some cause for celebration as well. The fall of the Rajapaksas is a model they dream of being emulated in the case of Vladimir Putin.

The reality is more sobering. In the current age of interlocking global crises, it is intuitive that the most exposed states will be the first to collapse. Sri Lanka’s economy was caught like a deer in the headlights when monetary policy began to tighten in response to the inflationary pressures brought on by the post-shutdown surge in global demand and the invasion of Ukraine.

The confidence of the global financial order in a country’s economic prospects are expressed in the 10-year yield rates for government issued debt. For example, a 10% yield means that if I buy $100 of a government’s debt on 1st January 2020, I expect to be paid back $110 dollars on 1st January 2030. The higher the yield, the less optimistic the market is in realising the advertised return, therefore the greater yield it demands on accepting that risk. The war-ravaged economy of Ukraine currently has a yield of 43.7% while Sri Lanka’s is 37.4% (as of 15 July in the FT). Absent a devastating invasion, how did Sri Lanka’s economy collapse so dramatically?

The neo-colonial relationship of Sri Lanka in the world economy is the fundamental driver of this situation. Sri Lanka is classed as an “emerging market” which implies that it is on the path to full industrialisation and primarily relies on producing raw materials that are upgraded into value added goods elsewhere in the world. To emerge fully from this gestational state, it is said that what is needed is the standard suite of “reforms” that entail a “rules-based” fiscal and monetary policy, incentives to investors home and abroad to develop industrial production, and the imposition of labour relations conducive to global economic competitiveness (a race to the bottom in wages and conditions).

In practice, this prescription has a history of entrenching the neo-colonial relationship of emerging markets, crippling their ability to chart an independent path to economic prosperity while also removing the ability of these states to provide their citizens with basic necessities that maintains social cohesion. The Rajapaksas rose to power through their feudalistic power base in rural southern Sri Lanka, where they defined themselves in opposition against Colombo’s IMF compliant policies (in addition to their role in perpetrating atrocities against Tamil rebels during the civil war).

For Sri Lanka, a tropical island nation reliant on the export of cash crops and tourism, the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine struck critical blows to the economy. To make matters worse, ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa instituted a blanket ban on chemical fertilisers and pesticides in 2021. This would be an ill-advised foray into agronomy for any nation, but for Sri Lanka the short-lived ban injected a one-off pulse of dramatically reduced crop yields which acted synergistically with prevailing economic headwinds.

The original agrochemical ban was meant to reduce the burden of rapidly appreciating import prices spurred by the gas supply shock, instead it exacerbated it by necessitating importing food into a once food independent country. Furthermore, it destroyed the Rajapaksas’ popular legitimacy in rural Sri Lanka. The interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve obligated other economies to follow suit (otherwise investors would drain their bank accounts and park the money in the Fed) and made the cost of debt repayments denominated in dollars even more expensive. Lastly, the tourism sector has suffered an annihilation due to the pandemic as well as the 2019 Easter Bombings. Seen in this light, the agrochemical ban acted like a pulmonary embolism in the arteries of the Sri Lankan economy, sending it into cardiac arrest.

It is in this condition of hunger and destitution across the full spectrum of Sri Lankan society that has mobilised against the Rajapaksas. They lacked a cohering political ideology or a programme for structural reform for the country. The peoples’ response is that of a populace that has been exploited to its limit screaming for relief. Sri Lankans have fulfilled a necessary but not sufficient condition for forging a new, more equitable Sri Lanka.

There is talk about Pakistan, the country of my birth, being one to watch out for a similar crisis. I think this is misguided. The power structure of Pakistan is much more complex and it does not lend itself well to decapitation. The military controls about a third of the economy directly, the industrial capitalist class is fragmented between Lahore and Karachi, the rural elites between the agricultural lands of Punjab and Sindh, the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa present their own socioeconomic complexities, and China has too large a geopolitical stake in the country to let it collapse like Sri Lanka.

Pakistan is vulnerable to shocks like any other debt-distressed emerging economy pincered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Chinese public/private finance. It is more likely that these stresses will usher in an intensification of authoritarianism to suppress any nascent political revolt. Egypt under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has already established a model of extreme political repression coupled with strategic government subsidies financed through larger geopolitical benefactors. As much as the Western Liberal democratic order may salivate at the thought of corrupt, authoritarian rulers falling on their swords one by one with Vladimir Putin serving as the grand finale, it is more probable that these regimes will be bound even tighter together. Their methods will converge and this in turn will converge their common interests.

It would be simplistic to apportion the blame for this state of affairs exclusively to the IMF and the World Bank. The US Federal reserve has no reason to raise interest rates to reduce inflation when the inflation is being driven by global supply constraints and not excessive economic activity. Vladimir Putin is destroying Ukraine and irrevocably harming dozens of countries. Climate change is a catastrophe engineered by capitalist excess. However, the model of economic management, the structural vulnerabilities that plague emerging markets, and the permanent neo-colonial relations of production within these countries has been built up and maintained through the shackles of debt.

Emerging economies have been put in economic straitjackets that prevents them from effectively responding to these crises. Those countries that avoided the debt trap through luck or ingenuity have fared noticeably better. For that, the blame lies squarely with these institutions.

Frontex must stop facilitating Human Rights Abuses in Greece

Open Letter from Refugee Organisations, based in Samos, Greece


18/07/2022

18th July 2022, Samos, Greece.

Addressed to:

  • Executive Director ad interim of The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Aija Kalnaja
  • Frontex Management Board Chairman, Alexander Fritsch
  • The Fundamental Rights Officer, Jonas Grimheden

To the attention of:

  1. The Consultative Forum of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency

Frontex is obliged to monitor and ensure the compliance with fundamental rights during its operations. This stands in stark contrast with its operations in Greece, where Frontex both directly engages in and facilitates systematic human rights abuses. For this reason we, the undersigned organisations based on Samos, demand the agency trigger Article 46 of the European Border and Coast Guard Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 and take first steps towards terminating operations and operational support in Samos and in Greece.

There is sufficient evidence to prove a consistent and generalised practice of Greek national authorities infringing EU law, consisting of a pattern of violence, pushbacks against migrants and failure to fulfil search and rescue obligations

Article 46 paragraph 4 provides that: “The executive director shall, after consulting the fundamental rights officer and informing the Member State concerned, withdraw the financing for any activity by the Agency, or suspend or terminate any activity by the Agency, in whole or in part, if he or she considers that there are violations of fundamental rights or international protection obligations related to the activity concerned that are of a serious nature or are likely to persist”. The undersigned organisations note that Article 46 is neither an optional nor a discretionary power. Instead, the executive director is obliged to act where violations of fundamental rights or international protection obligations are of a serious nature and are likely to persist. We submit that pushbacks from Greece fulfil the criteria of violating both fundamental rights and international protection obligations, and are of a serious nature and are likely to persist. As such, Frontex must terminate any activity by the Agency in Greece.

There is sufficient evidence to prove a consistent and generalised practice of Greek national authorities infringing EU law, consisting of a pattern of violence, pushbacks against migrants and failure to fulfil search and rescue obligations. As published by Solomon and Forensic Architecture, from March 2020 to March 2022, “the Greek authorities carried out 1,018 deportations in the Aegean Sea, with at least 27,464 asylum seekers as victims […] The majority of illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers to Turkey are recorded in the wider Lesvos region, where 386 incidents are attributed. Samos follows with 194”. Likewise, in 2021 alone, Mare Liberum detailed the pushback of 5,000 people in the Aegean. 2022 has only seen pushback practices intensify, with pushbacks reaching their brutal zenith with people drowning after being pushed into the water without life vests. These are just a few examples of the overwhelming amount of information on the structural and flagrant disrespect for key provisions of the EU asylum acquis, as well the fundamental rights protected in the Charter. This includes information of the type referred to in the case law of the ECHR, including its numerous interim measures, and the CJEU, such as judgments by national and European courts, reports by UN and Council of Europe bodies, NGO reports, but also independent media coverage.

In March 2022, a pregnant woman lost her baby after being illegally detained by the Greek police on Samos who denied her appropriate medical treatment

Article 34 of the FRONTEX Regulation, which inter alia provides that: “1. The European Border and Coast Guard shall guarantee the protection of fundamental rights in the performance of its tasks under this Regulation in accordance with relevant Union law, in particular the Charter, and relevant international law, including the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol thereto, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and obligations related to access to international protection, in particular the principle of non- refoulement.”

Evidence From Samos

As human rights organisations on Samos we have an abundance of evidence that attest to Greek security forces pushing people back either by intercepting boats with asylum seekers or abducting those who reached Greek islands to set them adrift in Turkish waters; a clear breach of fundamental rights. For example, over a quarter of undersigned I HAVE RIGHTS’ beneficiaries report being subjected to at least one pushback from Greece. Most of these cases include treatment amounting to torture and inhuman treatment such as: severe beatings, some of which were so severe they brought on epileptic fits and in one case a premature birth following a pregnant woman being kicked in the stomach by the Hellenic Coast Guard; sexual violence; strip searches; being abandoned at sea on motorless life rafts; and the theft and destruction of belongings.

On Samos, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) regularly reports on groups they find in urgent need of medical treatment. On 6th June 2022, MSF reported that only in the last 10 days MSF assisted 135 people on Lesvos and Samos, who were hiding out of fear of being pushed back to Turkey. On 27th June 2022 MSF, reported providing medical first aid to a total of 84 people, including 7 pregnant women, 1 of whom gave birth in the forest, while hiding there fearful for their lives and security due to the real risk of being pushed back. In March 2022, a pregnant woman lost her baby after being illegally detained by the Greek police on Samos who denied her appropriate medical treatment. She had been among a group of refugees who had landed on the island a few days before, and had fled to hide because the Hellenic Coast Guard started shooting at them indiscriminately to try and catch them to push them back. Only last month, in June 2022, Alarm Phone documented two pushbacks, affecting a total of 56 people from the island of Ikaria and Greek waters close to Samos.

NGOs on Samos, as in other locations, receive messages from newly arrived asylum seekers who wish to contact the authorities in order to claim asylum. When these messages are passed to the authorities, MSF reports that in approximately 20% of interventions, no people are found. NGOs on Samos also routinely inform Frontex when contacted by new arrivals on the island. At the time of writing, none of the undersigned organisations has ever been informed about further steps Frontex has taken to ensure the guarantee of new arrival’s fundamental rights. This is despite the fact that the whole island of Samos falls under Frontex’s operational area. Instead we receive no response from the agency, including the Fundamental Rights Officer.

It is well documented that Frontex both directly and indirectly engages in pushbacks. This is despite these practices breaching key provisions of the EU asylum acquis, as well the fundamental rights protected in the Charter and Frontex having an obligation to “guarantee the protection of fundamental rights in the performance of its tasks”. [see for example the recent ECHR ruling Safi and Others v. Greece (application no. 5418/15)] As reported by Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, SRF Rundschau, Republik and Le Monde, Frontex was actively involved in the pushbacks of at least 957 asylum seekers in the Aegean between March 2020 and September 2021. These actions were later disguised as “prevention of departure”.

Frontex is complicit in countless violations of fundamental rights committed by the Greek Coastguard, with Frontex’s own reporting system being “used to conceal pushbacks in the Aegean & gloss over agency’s involvement”. See for example, “FRONTEX, the European border and coast guard agency, was found to have been directly involved in 122 of these cases, while it is understood to have knowledge of 417, having logged them in its own operational archives, codified and masked as ‘preventions of entry”.

As well as facilitating fundamental rights violations, Frontex has systematically and on a mass scale failed to guarantee the protection of fundamental rights during their operations, as laid out in Article 34 of the Regulation (EU) 2016/1624. Therefore, the undersigned organisations on Samos, call on Frontex to trigger Article 46, as per subparagraph 4 regarding the violations of fundamental rights or international protection obligations, and take first steps towards terminating operations and operational support in Samos and Greece generally until the systematic practice of pushbacks ceases.

Signed:

  • I HAVE RIGHTS.
  • Samos Volunteers
  • Samos Advocacy Collective
  • Just Action
  • Europe Must Act
  • Still I Rise
  • Human Rights Legal Project