Germany: mass uprising against police repression

2007-06-01

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://fifthinternational.org/index.php?id=187,1157,0,0,1,0

Germany: ³We are all terrorists!³
10 May 2006
Thousands protest against criminalisation of Anti-G8-movement

³We are all 129a!³ shouted more than 5000 demonstrators in the streets of Berlin
yesterday evening. Paragraph 129 is the ³anti-terrorist³ clause of the German 
Federal constitution, the Grundgesetz. On 9 May the Gereralbundesanwaltschaft 
(the general federal attorney) ordered about 1000 police to raid more than 40 
left wing centres, bookshops and flats searching for ³proof³ of the ³formation 
of a terrorist organisation³ against the G8.

This vicious onslaught on activists planning demonstrations against the G8 is an
onslaught on the social and anti-capitalist movement in Germany. It gives a 
bitter foretaste, of what the German imperialist state will do when faced with a
developing movement of struggle and resistance. Clearly, the aim was to 
criminalise activists, intimidate larger strata of people wanting to protest 
against the G8 and isolate the movement by branding it ³terrorist².

But the governments and the state¹s plan backfired. Thousands and thousands took
to the streets, more than 5000 in Berlin, around 4000 in Hamburg. In at least 
another 20 towns or cities hundreds if not thousands angrily demonstrated 
against this outrageous assault on democratic rights. Political groups, 
anti-war, anti-capitalist, antifascist organisations and trade unions from all 
over Germany issued protest statements, press releases and called for joining 
the actions that evening. Demonstrations and pickets are also called in other 
European cities, like Vienna (today) or in London and Edinburgh (tomorrow).

And these were a big, big success. They showed an important way to combat state 
repression and intimidation ­ massive solidarity action, taking the streets, 
turning the criminal, repressive onslaught into a political defeat for the 
ruling class.

Arbeitermacht, German section of the L5I, and REVOLUTION participated in the 
demonstrations, calling for an end to all the repression and intimidation, the 
immediate release of all those arrested, the return of all material taken by the
police, the withdrawal of all charges against the activists.

Resistance against the G8 is not criminal, but a democratic duty. The GB 
leaders, men like Bush, Blair and Putin are war criminals and terrorists on a 
truly mass scale. The German government are also ³terrorists² engaged in 
attacking our movement, supporting imperialist occupations, promoting racism; 
fostering neo-liberal attacks on our jobs, pensions, and social welfare.

Thus when they meet in June in the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm, behind
the usual perimeter fence and exclusion zone, guarded by a vast array of 
military, naval and air forces, it is just laughable to think that it is they 
who are the potential victims of terrorism. Rather it is those people trying to 
exercise the democratic freedom to assemble, to demonstrate, who the state 
forces will try to terrorise. The answer to such threats is to turn out in even 
huger numbers to combat them. The state has, by its clumsy and brutal raids, 
reported right across the German media, inadvertently conducted propaganda for 
the Anti-G8-protests from 2 - 8. June. Millions who scarcely realised that the 
G8 were coming now know. Let¹s give the exploiters and warmongers both a 
reception and a send-off they will long remember, with militant demonstrations 
and blockades!
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