The Left Berlin News & Comment

News from Berlin and Germany, Thursday 2nd February 2023

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany

The Left Berlin
02/02/2023

NEWS FROM BERLIN

French citizens insulted and beaten in Gesundbrunnen

Several French citizens were attacked and beaten outside a bar in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen on Saturday night. The police reported that the eight French citizens living in Berlin were attacked because they were talking in their mother tongue. According to the statement, they were approached and insulted by a group of 10 to 15 people. During the ensuing scuffle, one of the perpetrators hit a 22-year-old man in the face. A man of the same age and a 35-year-old woman were also beaten. The attackers escaped unrecognised. Source: faz

Getting distant from the Greens and the Left

Berlin’s governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) is distancing herself from her left-wing and green coalition partners two weeks before Berlin’s repeat election. “There are very different views in this coalition at key points about what is the best way forward for this city,” she said in an interview with the Tagesspiegel. She claimed that the statement is completely non-judgemental. According to Giffey, the fundamental differences of opinion in the coalition are also the reason for the dissatisfaction of many Berliners with Red-Green-Red in the capital. According to polls, only 24 percent are satisfied with their work. Source: tagesspiegel

Election with reservations

The repeat elections for Berlin’s House of Representatives and district parliaments on 12 February can go ahead as planned. In its decision announced on Tuesday, the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) refused to issue an interim injunction against holding the elections. It will consider the constitutional challenge against the rerun at a later date. The repetition of the election had been decided among others due to the complaint of the satirical party Die PARTEI. “After the unambiguous ruling won by Die PARTEI before the state constitutional court, the BVerfG can hardly rule otherwise,” mentioned its MEP and direct candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives, Martin Sonneborn. Source: jW

Vonovia stops the building of 1,500 apartments in Berlin

The Vonovia housing group, the largest landlord in Europe, has announced it will not start any new construction projects this year. Plans in Berlin and Dresden are particularly affected. In the capital alone, this affects around 1,500 planned apartments. The reason for this is the increasingly difficult conditions, said the group’s press spokesman, Matthias Wulff. Among those conditions are inflation, interest rates, and construction costs. This applies to apartments planned for the Vonovia core brand and for the real estate companies Deutsche Wohnen and Buwog – in which Vonovia is the majority owner. Source: rbb24

NEWS FROM GERMANY

First nationwide reporting centre on antifeminism

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation has set up a nationwide reporting centre on anti-feminism. This will be the first time a civil society organisation will collect and document incidents of sexist hostility and physical attacks, according to the Berlin-based Amadeu Antonio Foundation. Experiences with anti-feminist attacks and incidents can be reported immediately on the website www.antifeminismus-melden.de. These include sexist hostilities, physical attacks, and organised campaigns against equality and gender self-determination. The results of the documentation and evaluation will be anonymised and published in the future in the form of an annual report. Source: dw

Hans-Georg Maaßen: right-wing radical in the highest positions

Hans-Georg Maaßen is the former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and a former CDU politician. However, members of the association “Werteunion” – which is not part of the CDU, but simply an association – elected Maaßen as chairman. So, in a way, a right-wing radical flip towards the CDU. From 2012 to 2018, when he was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen passed on confidential information to the US National Security Agency (NSA), sued journalists, and met with AfD representatives, among other things. Source: nd

Refugees and Upahl

A small community in northern Germany, Upahl, is to get a container village for refugees. Opponents of the project say it is too much of a burden. They oppose a planned shelter for 400 refugees that is to be built in the community of 1,600 inhabitants. Some days ago, when the refugee area was discussed, about 700 people demonstrated in front of the town’s assembly hall. Among them, was a group with known right-wing extremists. In the end, 120 officers cordoned off the building. Nevertheless, it looks like Upahl will get the container village – despite all the protests. Source: dw

France: Movement to defend pensions building up steam

Eye witness report from yesterday’s protests

John Mullen
01/02/2023

In Paris and in 267 other towns around France, there were angry protests on Tuesday 31 January against Macron’s attempt to raise the standard retirement age from 62 to 64. This is eighteen more towns than mobilized ten days ago in the previous day of action. And in every town, numbers were considerably bigger than last time (and last time even the government said more than a million people had hit the streets).

Rail and metro workers, civil servants, energy and oil workers, construction workers, culture industry workers, town hall and hospital workers, and many more struck. Many dozens of high schools were blockaded by school student protestors in order to allow pupils to go on the demonstrations. In dozens of universities, mass meetings are beginning to bring students into action on the issue.

Lorry drivers joined the protest by blockading ring roads earlier this week. Even at football matches, banners defending pensions could be seen. Collections for strike funds, rare in French strike movements, are becoming more common. And in a couple of dozen towns there were evening torchlight demonstrations last week in an aim to keep up momentum. So the movement is still building up steam, despite the refusal of union leaders to call for more than one day strikes.

Three years ago, eight successive huge days of action over a couple of months, and longer strikes in some sectors, pushed back Macron’s attack on pensions, forcing him to make concession after concession before shelving the whole plan. Macron pretended that his retreat was because of the pandemic, but striking workers knew better. To win this time, more determined strike action will be needed.

Macron is shaken. He has just decided to abandon a particularly vicious attack on vocational high schools which would have put them under the control of business interests. This is because the pensions revolt is bigger than he was expecting. Still, three days ago, Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne declared that the plan for two years more work before retirement was “not open to negotiation”.

Macron’s new right party does not have a majority in the National Assembly. To pass the law he needs the support of the traditional right-wing Republicans. They had looked solid, but are now wavering as big demonstrations march in medium sized, traditionally conservative towns across the country.

The latest polls show that Macron’s plan is even more unpopular than it was a couple of weeks back. 61% of the entire population support the strike movement, and the opposition to the movement is concentrated among richer people and those who have already retired. Electricity and oil workers have started a series two and three day strikes, and rail workers are intending to launch a “renewable strike” (where mass meetings of strikers decide every day or two whether the stoppage will continue) next week.

One of Macron’s reactionary ministers, Darmanin, says the Left is trying to “screw up the whole working of society” and blames the protests on “lazy bohemian leftists”. We need to pull out all the stops to make him panic even more.

Two more days of action have been called for Tuesday 7th and Saturday 11th February. I will be reporting on these on theleftberin.com in the coming weeks.