The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Category: Articles

“It’s So Berlin!” 8: Tourist Attraction

The eighth installment in our series of photographs and cartoons about Berlin.


09/03/2024

Photo: Rasha Al-Jundi

 

People visit the city for its history, infamous rave or night life and quirky punk-rock identity… They choose to see what they want to see and ignore the increasingly visible “uncomfortable” sightings , such as the homeless… Nonetheless, an accurate census of this group is not easy to come by. Old estimates put the population at 10,000 individuals in Berlin alone.

 

Cartoon: Michael Jabareen

 

Like other sister European cities, the homeless community in Berlin make up a core part of the urban dwellers. Visibly, they can come from any background and many struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. Albeit being a frequent sight on the streets, under bridges and on trains, it is very common for them to go completely unseen by the rest of the people in those spaces.

On the other hand, tourists flock Berlin in large numbers, and in recent years, they are also frequently seen crowding the streets almost all year long. People visit the city for its history, infamous rave or night life and quirky punk-rock identity. Just like typical tourists though, visitors don’t really see the city. They choose to see what they want to see and ignore the increasingly visible “uncomfortable” sightings , such as the homeless.

In this image, the abandoned item is a sink, that seems to have been left for so long that graffiti artists included it in their works that cover the wall in the background.

Titled “Tourist Attraction”, we decided to tackle the issue of the highly visible yet invisible homelessness and ignorant tourism in one frame. A homeless man is featured sitting on the side of the pavement with his scarce belongings while tourists focus on the graffiti on the wall. They directly ignore his presence that he almost seems a part of the graffiti, a typical Berlin “tourist attraction”.

Many civil society organizations work to support the homeless population around the city. Hot meals, donations and psychosocial support are regularly offered. Shelters are also available. Nonetheless, an accurate census of this group is not easy to come by. Old estimates put the population at 10,000 individuals in Berlin alone. Activists also report a visible increase in homelessness among migrants. State sponsored shelter options are hardly enough.

When we asked a few Germans what they thought about the homeless population, their general replies usually took an accusatory tone, stating that people choose to be homeless. Drug or alcohol addiction and mental illness enhance negative stereotypes. While kindness is present among some, reflections among others reek of white privilege.

Living on the streets is a harsh reality and each homeless person has a story behind their reality. As Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote “Think of others”. The privileged have a roof over their heads to do just that.

Image taken in Friedrichshain, Berlin (2023).

Of Women and Resistance in Kashmir

On International Women’s Day, we highlight today the struggle of women in Kashmir living under military occupation.


08/03/2024

Content note: Discussion of military violence and rape

The following text is an excerpt from the book Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? by Essar Batool, Ifrah Butt, Munaza Rashid, Natasha Rather and Samreena Mushtaq, first published by the New Delhi-based feminist press Zubaan in 2016. The book chronicles a case of mass sexual assault and rape committed by the Indian Army in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Kashmir, in February 1991. The day, 23rd February, is also commemorated as Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day.

What is it like to be a Kashmiri woman today? For any woman, fighting the dominance of men is hard enough, no matter where you come from, but in Kashmir we carry the burden of living two oppressed identities. We grow up learning two realities of life, which, however hard you might try, cannot be separated from each other. To begin with, there is silence, unfortunately taught as a survival technique to women across society. Patriarchy seems natural and eternal, it is the governing principle of the lives of women, imbibed through society, religion, tradition and culture. But we bear another burden: the silences of an occupation are even more deafening.

We must not just fight back against the everyday threats, like street harassment and sexism, but also against an occupying force that closely monitors every attempt to speak against it and the multitudes of its uniformed representatives dotting our valley. All Kashmiris of our generation have vivid, early memories of guns, the sounds of bullets, of Hindi-speaking army men entering their homes, and those humongous green, terror inducing, armoured vehicles that often announce ‘rakshak’ in screaming white letters. The earliest memories of her teenage years that any young Kashmiri woman will have are that of angry-looking armed men at street corners, heads covered in black bandanas, staring at any passing girl and jeering and making lewd remarks. To someone asking why we’re accusing the Indian Armed Forces when Kashmiri men in their position might do the exact same thing, we are tempted to say, try and talk back to someone, the muzzle of whose gun is staring at the tiny space between your eyes.

The historian Uma Chakravarti quotes a Manipuri woman who was raped by the armed forces:

“They have the power and they have the guns! I think we better stay silent.” [1] The gun, a symbol of power for them and of fear for the people, is enough to silence voices of dissent, however legitimate they might be. The first thing a Kashmiri woman is taught is to be aware of her vulnerability, to understand the many struggles she will have to undergo to prevent herself from becoming a victim. Dr Yakin Erturk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, has pointed out, “Militarized environments empower both public and private patriarchy.”

The women of Kashmir have borne many losses. Some have lost their lives, becoming the collateral damage of conflict. Others have lost their loved ones, watched them disappear into oblivion, sometimes to have them returned tortured, broken, and destroyed. Many live under the threat of imminent loss and that much dreaded word, rape. Rape has been used as a weapon of war and terror in Kashmir. Kunan-Poshpora is just an obvious and blatant example of the sexual violence that is committed with impunity against women in Kashmir. We live sexual violence in the subtlest forms every day. We stand at the gate waiting for loved ones to return, apprehensive and anxious. We are mothers, daughters, wives and sisters, worried sick for the safety of our families, asking our men for the nth time if they have checked that they’re carrying their I-cards, reminding them to avoid any green/khaki human form, urging them not to get into any trouble; and telling our young women to always be very careful, to only go out if they must, and not alone, and to come home before dark. Avoid the bunkers that house the uniformed men. Take an alternate road. Don’t use that road unless you have to. Apprehension is what we feel on a daily basis. This is how we live. We have had lullabies of bullets drifting us to sleep, the smell of blood waking us up, fear keeping us busy and hope keeping us alive. We Kashmiri women have been at the centre of the conflict, even though we have almost always been portrayed as victims, on the sidelines of the armed uprising. We too have resisted and survived.

We have chosen to resist in ways that range from a simple curse or a kangri thrown at an armed officer trying to molest us, to participation in stone throwing, street protests, and mass funerals, to supporting the armed struggle and organizing and working in civil society to express our political opinions and affiliations.

Anjum Zamrooda Habib, an eminent political, social and women’s activist and author of a jail memoir, Prisoner No. 100, spent five years in the infamous Tihar jail, held on fabricated charges. In an interview with Mushtaq ul Haq Sikander, she remarks on the non-recognition of the sacrifices made by women: “When resistance is amalgamated with politics only power seems to be the concern, plus in the war zone memories are short lived, add to this the fact that the whole world is male dominated and men don’t want to acknowledge the sacrifices of women and all these factors add up to foster this apathy.” The fragility of memory coupled with the general patriarchal nature of society tends to make us forgetful or at least ignorant of the participation of women in resistance.

Aasiya Jeelani is a name known to many Kashmiris: a young journalist and human rights activist who lost her life fighting for justice while on an election-monitoring mission in 2004. She edited and wrote in Voices Unheard, a magazine that was dedicated to the issues and struggles of women in Kashmir. As Suemyra Shah says in her tribute to Aasiya [2], “Aasiya was one of the many ‘behind the scenes’ women who was a living example of the strength of Kashmiri resistance in the face of many ugly years of tyranny and oppression imposed by outside intruders.” There are other such examples of individual women resisting publicly in a strong political voice.

However, there are thousands of other nameless and anonymous Kashmiri women who have together become a single and strong voice of resistance. In her account of the lives of Kashmiri women, Gita Hariharan writes:

“All the women spoke of the unbearable odds against conducting such safe, healthy, normal lives. But all of them, without exception, also spoke, in one way or the other, about their battles against these odds. About their anger and frustration; their protests; their plans of action; their travel in search of support. These women have had to make the language of resistance their mother tongue.”

The younger generation of women in Kashmir has become increasingly participative in the discourse of dissent and resistance.

All of us vividly recall moments from 2008 and 2010 when killing young Kashmiri men seemed to be the favourite pastime of the Indian Army. Protests were held in the women’s colleges we studied in. Nobody stopped us, we were only asked to be non-violent and not indulge in sloganeering of any sort. Anger manifests itself in various ways: joining a protest in a college was one of them. We marched all in white, protesting the brutal, cold-blooded murders; shouting slogans of ‘azaadi’, though we were warned not to, and we rejoiced when similar slogans echoed from the neighbouring boys’ college.

But you don’t have to be a college-going, middle-class Srinagar girl in a protest march to have a political opinion about the occupation. Women have resisted through more traditional cultural channels and have voiced their feelings quite clearly. We have been told of women glorifying those killed by the Indian Army as martyrs, through wanwun, the songs sung at moments of celebration in Kashmir. Seema Kazi states, quoting Rita Manchanda in her book, Gender and Militarisation, that as a cultural expression of resistance, “women would break out into a wanwun, the traditional Kashmiri song of celebration, intertwining couplets in praise of local mujahideen (freedom fighters).” [3] Women have mourned for the men they lost, for the sons who never came back, for the daughters who were raped, and for their beloved and beautiful land under the siege of tyrants. When the women of Kunan Poshpora speak, whether publicly or privately, it is clear that they believe that they were attacked because they are Kashmiri – in the same way as young Kashmiri men are martyred – and the women’s sacrifices are as great as those of any male martyrs.

Yet for years the women of Kashmir and of Kunan Poshpora have been portrayed as victims rather than survivors. The Indian media has shown them as weak burqa-clad women who are passive and voiceless. But lately, even in mainstream media accounts, the Kashmiri woman has been seen in a new avatar, brandishing a stone in her hand, defiantly challenging the Indian Armed Forces on the streets. Sanjay Kak, in ‘The Last Option: A Stone in Her Hand’, remarks:

Until the other day, Kashmiri women were little more than a convenient set of clichés, shown as perpetual bystanders in houses that overlook the streets of protest. When seen outside of that protected zone, they were cast as victims, wailing mourners, keening at the endless funeral processions […] but now an unfamiliar new photograph of the Kashmiri woman has begun to take its place on newspaper front pages. She’s dressed in ordinary salwar-kameez, pastel pink, baby blue, purple and yellow. Her head is casually covered with a dupatta and she seems unconcerned about being recognized. She is often middle aged, and could even be middle-class. And she is carrying a stone.

Kashmiri women are taking over street protests, hurling stones, while breaking traditional stereotypes and inhibitions, and creating a new kind of expression of resistance. Kashmiri women have always been part of mass rallies, and political funeral processions against killings. Soutik Biswas writes, “The coming out of women in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley has been helped by the fact that they have been traditionally freer than their counterparts in many parts of the world.” Thus while Kashmiri political life continues to be male dominated, Kashmiri women are coming to the forefront of the articulations of dissent, of resistance, and of freedom.

One such woman is Parveena Ahanger. Parveena lost her 14-year-old son to the elusive, yet much documented phenomenon of ‘enforced disappearance’ back in 1990. While fighting her case in the Srinagar High Court she, the human rights lawyer, advocate Parvez Imroz, and some relatives of the disappeared persons formed the Association of Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP), an organization that advocates the cause of those like her son who ‘vanished into thin air’. Parveena is the voice of resistance, and of the relentless search for justice. She transformed her grief into a resolve to fight not only for herself but for hundreds of other parents. The women of Kunan Poshpora speak the same language of resistance; they have been speaking it for 24 years now, fighting it out every moment of the day in numerous ways.

We, a group of young, professional women from Kashmir, resisting in our own ways, have a story to tell: the story of Kunan Poshpora that remains a part of the valley, a story that continues to flow with the streams, fall with the rain, and sleep on the restless earth like the snow.

We are five different girls, born and brought up in the land that is the clichéd ‘paradise on earth’; the place they show on Indian television where girls are dressed in embroidered pherans and decked up in heavy silver ornaments, happily singing bumbro bumbro, and dancing the rouf by the Dal lake, with snow-covered mountains in the backdrop. Well, that is not quite the truth. We breathe air that is heavy with the smell of blood mixed with mud, air that resounds with the noise of army boots and gunpowder. We live in a place where the Indian Army mass raped women in Kunan Poshpora in 1991, and describe any protest against the crime a conspiracy to defame them. The valley is full of cries and wails, of the songs of mothers about their sons who are dead, of women who found their world destroyed overnight, raped by Indian Armed Forces, the men in those hideous green uniforms, the sight of which makes you cringe if you are a Kashmiri woman. It’s not easy for us young women to tell this story of the women and men of Kunan Poshpora. This book is our attempt to tell their stories and build on the struggle that they have started. We are the narrators of this story, members of the support group for Kunan Poshpora, and among others, witnesses to the conflict.

The conflict that has seen a brutal military occupation, countless cold-blooded murders, mass rapes, endless enforced disappearances and creation of mass unmarked graves, has nurtured us. We have been brought up in an environment where words like rape, molestation, and any word with ‘sexual’ as a prefix was not to be mentioned ever. We have grown up learning the ‘safe’, and the ‘politically correct’ language, in our offices and universities. Words like ‘conflict’ have to be replaced by ‘development’; we are taught to be blind to the facts. We have gone through a rigorous grind where we are taught that there is no such thing as a ‘human rights violation’ and that you have to be apolitical to survive. This is a place that is free of the freedom of speech. In Kashmir, any expression against the state is met with stern action and hence the success in creating a mass silence. That is just how it is here; life in a cage where you talk only when it is certified as ‘state language’.

We have studied in universities that don’t allow you to choose politically loaded ‘explosive’ topics for research; where researching about the kangri and pheran is seen as Kashmiriyat, the unique sense of being Kashmiri, and where analytical abilities and political organizing by students are kept in check by making campuses absolutely ‘controlled’.

Yes, this is how we have grown up – women kept oblivious of the atrocities committed on the people of our land in the name of our ‘protection’ in the familial sphere, and of ‘national integration’ in the public sphere. It is important that we tell this story no matter how hard it is, for there have been repeated attempts to bury it, to erase it from public memory. That is precisely why we are writing, why we are narrating the tales of that night and the subsequent 24 years – lest we forget. In a conflict-torn place, the repetition of atrocities by the occupying forces is so systematic that you commemorate all the dates of a calendar by some massacre, killing, disappearance, encounter or rape. Public memory tends to become fragile. It is easier to forget than to remember and live each of these atrocities every day. We might choose to push the memories into dark corners of our mind, but the survivors have no such choice; they are forced to live with their memories, day in and day out. This book is a remembrance, a tribute, a movement against forgetting, a way of preserving and giving our memories back to ourselves, of telling the story of Kunan Poshpora as it happened and the continuing attempts of the Indian Army to obliterate the case and its memories.

1 Chakravarti, Uma (2014). “‘They Have the Power, They Have the Guns – We Better Remain Silent’: The Meaning of Impunity on the Ground” in Patrick Hoenig and Navsharan Singh (eds.), Understanding Impunity: Patterns of Human Rights Violations in India. New Delhi: Zubaan.

2 Shah, S. 2014. ‘A Queen of her Times: ‘Aasiya: Martyr of Peace’. Pp. 38–41. Kashmir. Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society.

3 Kazi, Seema. (2009). ‘Gender and Militarisation in Kashmir’, pp. 135–53. Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarization in Kashmir. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.

 

Letter from the Editors, 7th March 2024

International Women’s Day


07/03/2024

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, which is a public holiday in Berlin. To celebrate the day, a number of demonstrations and rallies have been organised between today and Saturday. There are too many to list here, but you can find links to most of them on our Events page.

We would like to particularly recommend 2 Events, both taking place tomorrow:

  • 11am at Oranienplatz Trade Union Demo Feminist, in solidarity, as trade unions organised by a broad alliance of trade unions.
  • 2pm at Under den Linden 21, Down with Imperialist Feminism organised by the Alliance of International Feminists. Colonial and neoliberal powers construct a single model of feminism: the feminism of the oppressors that is limited to a so-called “women’s rights’” framework to serve their interests. This feminism is an accomplice in the system of oppression. Their “democratic” saviorism justifies their wars, occupation, detention centers, murderous borders and walls. This is Imperialist Feminism. CIS men are allowed on the demonstration but asked to march at the back.

Our Palestine Reading Group is back. The next meeting is on Friday at 7pm, where we will be discussing Palestinians in the Diaspora. You can find the selected reading here. The Palestine Reading Group takes place every week, on either Friday or Sunday (partly depending on room availability). Check the page of Events which we’re organising for the coming dates and subjects under discussion. If you’d like to get more involved in the group, and suggest and vote on future subjects, you can join our Telegram group and follow the channel Reading group.  Meetings are currently in the Agit offices, Nansenstraße 2. There is a meeting for moderators (open to anyone who’s interested) half an hour before the meeting starts.

On Saturday, there’s a demonstration Freedom for Palestine. No impunity for Genocide. Since October, the Israeli state has murdered 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which began over 76 years ago and is still continuing today. The German government is making itself an accomplice to the genocide in Gaza in its military, political, and financial support for the Israeli State. Come with us on 9th March onto the streets of Berlin to raise our voice for Palestine. The demonstration starts at 3pm at the junction of Kantstraße and Wilmersdorfstraße.

On Saturday evening, there is a solidarity Event Intifada Bazaar. For this revolutionary 8M, you are welcome to join our post-demo, mini fest, solidarity event for a day of art, music, and live performances. All proceeds will go to different mutual aid and ground relief efforts in Palestine. Kicking off the event, you will be able to enjoy food & drinks and cruise through the bazaar, then we’ll carry on with evening panel discussions curated by @palestinespeaks and another by Dolls4Palestine (& guests!) and a movie room takeover by @berlinmigrantstrikers. The night continues with performance & poetry interventions followed by live acts and a drag show finalising with DJ sets featuring femme power on the decks curated by Thawra. To find the address, contact @diaspora.rising on Instagram.

On Sunday, theleftberlin website (that’s us) will have our latest face-to-face editorial meeting. The editorial board normally has an online meeting to discuss what we want to publish. Every so often, we have meetings like this for longer-term planning The meeting will be from 3pm – 6pm in the Agit Offices, Nansenstraße 2. It is open to anyone who is interested in the website. If you would like to help contribute in the future, this would be a good place to start. There’s a proposed agenda here, but feel free to come along and ask questions and make suggestions of your own.

On Wednesday at 7pm, there’s an online meeting What is happening in Argentina #2? A conversation with representatives of the alliance Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores – Unidad. Since December 10th of last year, Javier Milei, an ultra-liberal economist, has been the President of the South American country. How should his victory be understood in the national and regional political context? What has changed in the first few months of his term of office and what can we expect for the future? The International Politics Department and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Buenos Aires invite you to a meeting with four representatives of the Frente de Izquierda y de Trabajadores – Unidad (FIT-U) – currently one of the most important left-wing movements in Argentina. The meeting will be in Spanish with translation into German. Please register at: international@die-linke.de

There is much more going on in Berlin this week. To find out what’s happening, go to our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events in which we are directly involved in here.

Some dates for your calendars:

  • On Saturday, 16th March, we will be showing the film Aisheen, Still Alive in Gaza in oyoun. The film was originally scheduled for 10th February. The film starts at 5pm, and will be followed by food and then a discussion with Palestinian activist Ramsy Kilani.
  • On Friday, 22nd March, the Berlin LINKE Internationals are organising a public meeting Neosovereignism in the West African Sahel: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger with Prof. Dr. Baz Lecocq, Franza Drechsel (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation), and Dr. Lamine Doumbia. It’s at 7pm in Karl Liebknecht Haus. More information in future Newsletters.
  • Please note: the LINKE Internationals Summer Camp has now been postponed to avoid clashing with a big demo against the AfD. Summer Camp will now take place on 21-22 September, still in the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf.

This week’s Campaign of The Week is Schule fürs Erinnern / School for Remembrance. As parents and educators in Berlin, we are deeply worried about the Neukölln Bezirksamt’s decision to introduce a brochure titled “Mythos#Israel1948” to the schools’ program. The document, produced and published by the external association “Masiyot,” claims to dispel common myths about Israel-Palestine. In effect, this association promotes a vicious kind of historical revisionism. The brochure at hand claims a false and one-sided narrative that trivializes the violent events of 1948 – the Nakba – and exempts Israel from its responsibility for the ongoing displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians since 1948. Share this petition in person or use the QR code for your own material.Download QR Code

If you are looking for Resources on Palestine, we have set up a page with useful links. We will be continually updating the page, so if you would like to recommend other links, please contact us on team@theleftberlin.com. You can also find all the reading from our Palestine Reading Groups here.

In News from Berlin, Berlinale prize winner Yuval Abraham receives death threats, demonstrators for Palestine accused of incitement, Stop Fossil Subsidies group blocks Elsenbrücke bridge, and forest around the Tesla plant in Grünheide occupied.

In News from Germany, Federal Statistical Office reports that migrants are disproportionately in low-paying jobs, and more train strikes announced.

Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.

New on theleftberlin, Nathaniel Flakin reports on Der Spiegel’s transphobic attacks on a Jewish student for showing solidarity with Palestine, in Rasha Al-Jundi and Michael Jabareen’s latest cultural contribution, they look at “friendly” German neighbours, we show a gallery of photos and videos from last Saturday’s demo for Palestine, Ciaran Dodd looks at Eurovision’s complicity in Israel’s terror, Dimiitra Kyrillou in Athens looks a Greece’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, and Phil Butland argues that Gaza is a Health Workers’ issue, and that the Syndikat pub was wrong to ban a meeting of Health Workers for Palestine.

This week’s Video of the Week shows the info talk Rafah: What’s at stake? organised by Palästina Kampagne with Egyptian Diaspora Resists and Egyptian journalist Lina Attalah, editor in chief of Mada Masr.

You can follow us on the following social media:

If you would like to contribute any articles or have any questions or criticisms about our work, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. And please do encourage your friends to subscribe to this Newsletter.

Keep on fighting,

The Left Berlin Editorial Board

Gaza is a Health Workers’ Issue

Why the Syndikat is wrong to ban Palästina Spricht


06/03/2024

I am a long-time supporter of the Syndikat, one of the few remaining left-wing spaces in Berlin. When gentrifiers tried, and ultimately succeeded, to evict the pub from its old building in Weisestraße, I was an active and proud supporter of the campaign Syndikat Bleibt.

For a long time, the Syndi has offered a welcome refuge to socialists, anarchists, and other Leftists fighting against neoliberalism and capitalism. After conducting meetings in the area, the groups I participated in regularly dropped by the bar, enjoying its tolerant atmosphere.

So you can understand my surprise when I learned that all are not equally welcome at Syndikat. Recently, they banned a meeting by Health Workers for Palestine planned for February 3rd. Syndikat justified the ban by saying that the meeting was supported by Palästina Spricht, a coalition fighting for Palestinian rights and against every form of racism. There is a translation of Syndikat’s full statement at the bottom of this text.

Palästina Spricht has been an essential part of the anti-colonial movement for years. Its mission statement says: “Our activism and our activities also extend to supporting other movements (e.g. Black Lives Matter), which also fight for rights and acknowledgement. We aspire towards a political community which stands as an example for the Palestine which we want to build: free, just, humanitarian and without any form of racism.”

Palästina Spricht is an organisation run by left-wing Palestinians fighting for equality in the face of the racist German state. Despite extensive state repression, Palästina Spricht has organised many demonstrations and supported demonstrators arrested by the notoriously racist Berlin police. I am proud to work alongside them.

There is much in the Syndikat statement which I can agree with. I, too, condemn the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the attempts by German politicians to whip up Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. I believe that we need safe spaces where people can gather, free of any fear of racism, sexism or any other form of oppression.

But let us be clear about what the statement means. Firstly, it accuses a well-established Palestinian leftist organisation of relativising and glorifying Hamas terror. This reproduces right-wing racist stereotypes which claim that anyone who opposes the destruction of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine is a Hamas apologist. These are the same tropes which were used to accuse Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian film maker Basel Adra of antisemitism after their film No Other Land won an audience prize at the Berlinale.

Secondly, despite claiming to provide a space where there is “no room for exclusionary ideologies”, the Syndikat is excluding health workers trying to address the dire situation for the two million Gazans left without healthcare after all 32 hospitals on the strip were bombed to rubble. Although the Syndikat claims to support such meetings, their support hinges on the meeting not being endorsed by a Palestinian group.

Gaza is an issue for all health workers. Hundreds of health workers in Gaza have been killed. Last year, Medical Aid for Palestine announced that “the reported number of healthcare workers killed in ten weeks of Israel’s assault on Gaza has exceeded the total number killed in all countries in conflict globally in any single year since 2016.”

On January 9th, the International Middle East Media Center reported that Israel had bombarded the last functioning hospital in Gaza, stating that “the Israeli army gave doctors, patients and those displaced one hour to evacuate the establishment, according to medical sources, even though there were no ambulances or means to transfer them. The UN estimated 2,300 patients, staff, and displaced Palestinians were at Al-Shifa before the Israeli military stormed the medical compound.”

Last week, we saw Israeli troops open fire on starving Gazan civilians waiting for flour in a food queue. Over 100 people were killed and many more were injured. And yet the lack of any health infrastructure in Gaza means that the people hurt by this indefensible attack will not receive the treatment that they need. Surely this is an issue for health workers across the world, including in Germany.

After 5 months of Israel’s bombardment and decades of blockade, experts are now saying that we are just weeks away from full-blown famine in Gaza. In today’s Guardian (6th March), Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, reports a

“famine, which could come within weeks. That is, widespread severe shortages of food causing illness and death in a short time period. The UN has repeatedly said that a quarter of the population already faces starvation, while the entire population of 2.3 million lives with food shortages.”

Thirdly, I would like to point out the absurdity of the Syndikat statement that “Meetings which are organised or visited by such groups cannot take place here” (my italics). This is not just a ban on meetings organised by Palestinian organisations, but any meeting which might be visited by someone who “relativise or glorify the Hamas terror” (a description which, if it is seriously being used to refer to Palästina Spricht surely applies to any Palestinian or their supporters). 

At a time of shrinking spaces in Germany for Palestine solidarity, the Syndikat’s ban cannot go unchallenged. Left-wing venues must provide space for those impacted by racism and state repression, not excluding them. This is particularly necessary at a time when, as the Syndikat statement itself acknowledges, Gaza is suffering from a humanitarian emergency.

I urge Syndikat to educate themselves on Palästina Spricht and to lift the ban. Until then, I won’t be visiting the Syndikat as long as Palestinians and their supporters are not welcome there. The Berlin LINKE Internationals are contacting the Syndikat Collective to express our concerns. What happens next depends a lot on their response.

No-one is free until everyone is free.

Hoch die internationale Solidarität

 

Statement of the Syndikat Collective to a planned meeting on 3rd February in our premises

On 3rd February, a meeting of health workers should have taken place in our rooms. The room request said that the meeting was about organising these workers. Then a call on Instagram supporting the meeting appeared from “Palästina Spricht”. Their participation was not visible before then. As a result, we cancelled the meeting.

We want to say the following about this: we, as the Syndikat Collective want to provide space where there is no place for racism, antisemitism, sexism, hostility towards Queers or any other exclusionary ideologies.

We understand the attack by Hamas on Israel on 7th October 2023 not as legitimate resistance or an act of liberation, but as a terrorist attack on civilians. We condemn any attempt to relativise the act of terror and to instrumentalise it for antisemitic ends.

We also condemn the current Israeli conduct of war, which brings great suffering to Palestinian civil society and has resulted in a humanitarian emergency. We also stand against every attempt to instrumantalise the Israel/Palestine conflict for racists ends and to put all Muslims under suspicion.

Every death is one too many! Our sympathy goes to all civilian victims of violence.

A meeting which serves to organise health workers and to support the civil society in Gaza can of course be held here. Political groups, which relativise or glorify the Hamas Terror are not welcome. Meetings, which are organised or visited by such groups cannot take place here.

Your Syndikat Collective.

Same sex marriage in Greece: for all LGBTQ+ people?

Greece has just passed a same-sex marriage law, but it’s far from the end of the struggle for LGBTQ+ people.


05/03/2024

On the 15th of February 2024 the Greek parliament passed law nr.5089/2024, legalizing same sex marriage and provisions for the families of same sex people. The LGBTQ+ community in the country now find themselves a step closer to equality before the law and the state. Despite a fierce reaction from the church and the far right (including members of the governing party), the vote was clear with 176 out of 300 MPs for the law. Greece has now become the first Christian orthodox country to do so. At the same time, the LGBTQ+ people speak of a limited victory.

Without a doubt, any debate on same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption in the House of Representatives is a victory for LGBTQ+ people and for the entire movement against sexism and homophobia. Opening up the issue of legalizing demands for equality in marriage and family regulations, which until some years ago were a taboo and were excluded as “unthinkable” or worse, part of the “political correctness frenzy” is a victory itself. And it did not fall from sky. It was the result of efforts and struggles of the LGBTQ+ movement and its allies. These struggles are far from over.

How did we arrive at this reform?

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaks of a gracious and necessary reform “reflecting today’s Greece — a progressive, and democratic country, passionately committed to European values”. What he does not mention is that one third of his party MPs either abstained or voted against the law, including several ministers and former PM Antonis Samaras. The law evidently passed with the votes of the center left parties Syriza, PASOK, Nea Aristera (the recent split of Syriza), and “Plefsi Eleftherias”. The ruling party appeared deeply divided, with the majority justifying the necessity of equal marriage as a “humanistic gesture” and downgrading its political meaning, by arguing that the traditional values of Christianity and nuclear family will not be threatened, as the far right and the fascists claimed. In the time leading up to the vote of the draft, Orthodox church party “Niki”, nationalist “Greek Solution” and the fascist “Spartans”, along with the right wing opposition inside the government had been shouting about the imminent demolition of Orthodoxy and the demise of the traditional family. They organized rallies, which, despite strong subsidies from the Church, were not significant and moreover spread hate speech, including talk of “perversity” and even “pedophilia being encouraged by equality in marriage”!

From this point of view, the passing of the law is a blow against them and reveals both the crisis inside the ruling party and the danger of far right demagogy.

The Communist Party of Greece, KKE, unfortunately but not unexpectedly voted against the law, on the grounds that marriage will legitimize LGBTQ+ families which, according to them, is unnatural for the children who, “ought to have a mother and a father” (and not 2 mothers or 2 fathers). This decision can be explained by KKE’s commitment to Stalinism and to its adherence to “traditional values” as a counterweight to capitalist globalization. But for many of its newly attracted voters, it was both a big disappointment and a concession to homophobia, through its embrace of the argument of “normal and abnormal” families. It made obvious that KKE may sound left-wing and militant, but at the end of the day it will not defend the oppressed and their rights.

A history of struggles

What was not said either is that the demand for equality in marriage was the fruit of many years of LGBTQ+ (and their allies’) struggles. A decisive action was taken in 2008, with the “Tilos marriages”, when two same-sex couples proceeded to a civil marriage under the approval of the progressive mayor in the island of Tilos and, despite Greek law not foreseeing such a partnership, they brought the case to the European court and succeeded to create a “fait accompli”. There is a long trajectory of queer activism, militancy and demands, as there is an LGBTQ+ movement rooted inside Greek society. This movement has pressed all Greek governments for democratic reforms and for measures against sexism and homophobia, and for the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ people.

A first victory was the Civil Partnership law in 2015 and the second the Gender Identity Recognition in 2018, both introduced by the government of Syriza. Nevertheless, both laws, despite being steps forward, contain a series of faults and misinterpretations, which still deprive LGBTQ+ citizens from several rights. The LGBTQ+ community had patiently investigated and submitted the required amendments which, if they had been incorporated into the new law for equality in marriage, could have made it a complete achievement for the everyday lives of queer citizens. However, the new law lies far from the fulfilment of such expectations. It brings some good reforms, but lacks full access for LGBTQ+ people to democratic rights.

Some areas that are still lacking:

  • According to the law, marriage is foreseen only for “same-sex persons” and not for “persons of any gender”, which should be in the accordance of real equality and inclusion of all LGBTQ+ persons.
  • Parenthood for the families of trans people is not protected, because the bill does not allow for the amendment of the civil registration records of the children of trans people, once a gender recognition act has taken place, so that they can be consistent with the new data of their parents. Therefore, the kids of trans people are bound to the “dead” data of their parents.
  • Same-sex couples are excluded from medically assisted reproduction (and therefore access to surrogacy). Since 2002, assisted parenthood through surrogacy is not only allowed in Greece, but also facilitated via a series of laws that encourage “surrogate tourism”, either for the purpose of having children by surrogacy or for immigrant women (mostly from Eastern Europe) to work as surrogate mothers. The entire surrogacy question is debated in the country, but what is irrelevant to the recent marriage law is that it retains the exclusion of same sex couples, revealing that it’s not surrogacy in question, but queer people as parents.
  • Requested provisions to allow non-binary people who do not identify as either male or female to obtain official documentation reflecting their gender identity, including the “other” option, have not been included in the law.
  • Finally, the main anticipated benefit of equality in marriage – resolving the cases of child custody in LGBTQ+ families – is undermined by the fact that same sex couples can not establish parental rights based on “presumption of parenthood”, such as the “presumption of paternity” that exists for heterosexual couples.

The main reason for the above faults is not ignorance but that, like the previous laws, this one also was the result of compromises and bargains with the Church, the far right, and the political establishment. On one hand, Greek society has advanced to accept diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity, and this sets pressure for legislative measures to protect LGBTQ+ people. But on the other hand, religion, family values, and heteronormativity are cornerstones of how Greek capitalism has developed so far. The kernel family of father – mother, children and/or grandparents – is an institution too established for an elected government to challenge. The government of Syriza made compromises as well, delaying the introduction of marriage equality, and allowing the right wing New Democracy to present itself as democratic and for “European” values.

These inefficiencies were brought to the attention of the left opposition, with the expectation that Nea Aristera, Syriza and/or PASOK would try pressing the government to adopt the modifications proposed by the LGBTQ+ organizations, especially because the governing party was divided and depended on the vote of the opposition. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Syriza and PASOK kept quite a low profile, criticizing the government on the one hand, but confirming that “the law shall be voted” on the other, resulting to New Democracy escaping its inner problems. The fact that the last six weeks, approaching the one year anniversary of the horrible train accident at Tempi, the government is shaken by anger on justice not being delivered, coupled with turmoil in education against its latest draft bill for private universities, was not used by the opposition. At the same time, the Communist Party’s opposition was evidently aligned with the far right homophobic rhetoric. In the lack of left wing challenge to New Democracy’s manoeuvres, passing the law appeared as the “best deal”, although it was not, and this is the reason why the LGBTQ+ movement speaks of “half” victory.

More important is that, at a rally outside the parliament on the day of the voting, all organizations spoke on the need to keep fighting in the streets and in society. This is the best guarantee that the reform far from pink-washing Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his government is only a step towards real liberation!

Dimitra Kyrillou ua a member of Proud Seniors Greece, Support group for LGBTQ+ people over 50 years.