Schroeder-Schily attacking democratic rights
For weeks the German press has been agitating against the “First Arab Islamic Congress in Europe” which is scheduled to take place from 1 to 3 October in Berlin. Against any evidence also the German authorities continue to speak of forces related with what they use to call “Islamist terrorism”. Actually the organisers belong to the Arab nationalist current trying to address also European Muslims. Politically they were asking for nothing more than the elementary democratic right to national self-determination. As legitimised by international law, they defend the struggle against foreign occupation in Iraq and Palestine.
The fact that the conference´s organisers used to talk of American and Zionist terror disturbed the Western corporate media. But how else could one define the systematic ethnic cleansing, extralegal executions, demolition of houses, uprooting of olive trees, pumping off water, bombing civilians, residential areas and site of worship, the construction of the apartheid wall, torture other than terror?
Germany is following the call of the transatlantic big brother prohibiting free speech and the political defence of democratic rights, stipulated by international law, as terrorist. The authoritarian minister of interior, Schily, has announced to impede the congress by “all possible means” which apparently also include the breach of their own laws.
Fadi Madi, one of the promoters of the Berlin congress, was arrested on September 18 on the Berlin airport, interrogated for 12 hours and then expelled to Lebanon. According to Madi beside Schily there were Israeli and US “security personnel” present. Those trampled and spit on the Koran and used other methods of interrogation violating both international conventions and national law.
Fadi Madi is married with a German wife and has been living fore more than 5 years in Germany. He got valid residence. The justification for the illegal deportation by Berlin´s minister of interior Koerting: “Who is agitating from the soil of the Federal Republic against other states [meaning to criticise the US and Israel] and who is endorsing terrorist attacks [meaning to defend the resistance against occupation] forfeits his right of sojourn in Germany.”
The Anti-imperialist Camp declares its solidarity with Fadi Madi and the organisers of the conference and herewith announces its participation. The reason therefore is the defence of the elementary democratic rights, namely a) that of the oppressed peoples to fight foreign occupation in order to gain self-determination and b) that to free expression of thought in Europe especially to express political solidarity with the liberation struggles.
The permanent war of the American Empire attempts to destroy those rights. As Anti-fascists we call to draw the lessons of the past. Form German soil already two wars of conquest have been waged. Germany must not become once again instrument of another imperial war to enslave the majority of mankind.
One must be aware that the US adopted the Nazi state apparatus in Germany in anti-communist function – as Schily * had been pointing out prominently before turning to become part of this apparatus himself – and the German regime continues to be the most important pillar of Americanism in Europe. If the henchmen of Washington in Germany thus succeed to impede the congress, the Anti-imperialist Camp will invite the organisers to come to Vienna where we will host them.
Down with the American Empire!
Victory of the Iraqi and Palestinian Resistance!
Anti-imperialist Camp
Vienna, September 19, 2004
* Schily used to be the lawyer of the militants of the “Red Army Fraction” (RAF) who not only fought the German regime because of its continuity with the Nazi state machine but was also regarding itself to be an auxiliary support force for the liberation movements and most prominently the Palestinian one. As lawyer he was accused of being part of the RAF. Later he turned to the Green Party to eventually join the Social Democrats. Today he one of the most hard-line advocates of the reduction of democratic rights and the strengthening of the police state in line with the US.
