Int’l law and free expression = danger for public safety
In spring of 2006 Awni al Kalemji, spokesman of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA), was scheduled for a tour which should have brought him to address conferences in Berlin and Hamburg. He had been invited by the German “Free Iraq Committee” as well as the German section of the Anti-imperialist Camp.
The police, however, prevented the tour to take place blocking the venues with massive deployments. Kalemji was arrested and expelled from Germany. The police claimed that he had called for criminal acts referring to his support to the Iraqi resistance.
Kalemji took legal action which eventually was turned down confirming the expulsion from which flows the denial of any future entry. The arguments put forward by the German justice shows how much they side the US terror war violating democratic rights. Germany as an anti-communist front state has a long repressive tradition in continuity with Nazism. Real and even alleged antagonist forces ranging from communists to the Kurdish nationalists were always denied full political rights.
Kalemji is being accused that politically supporting the Iraqi resistance damages the “public safety and order of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)”. The judge even concedes that Kalemji was exclusively putting forward his political opinion. So there is no reference to any criminal offence according to a democratic penal code. The judge quite frankly admits that reason of state goes before political liberties: “Kalemji’s endorsement of the Iraqi resistance damages the interest of the FRG, especially when foreign relations to Iraq and the US are concerned.”
Where rational arguments lack, Kalemji is simply labelled “radical Islamist” despite the fact that he happens to be known as a secular nationalist with leftist leanings. As Islam has already been established as the public enemy which can hardly be questioned any more, the judge hopes, by employing the term “radical Islamist”, that he will be exempted from rationally elaborating his sentence. The paragraph used against him stipulates that foreign citizens who endorse crimes against peace or humanity, war crimes or terrorist acts can be penalised by expulsion. In a written statement Kalemji has by return accused the USA to actually have committed all these enlisted crimes. This political argument, while being followed by millions of Europeans and the grand majority of the world’s population, is turned into a prove that Kalemji “did not renounce his radical Islamist position”. Like in the mediaeval witch processes the hermetic circular argumentation is armoured against any objection. Thus also the reference to international law and the UN charter which explicitly legitimate resistance against foreign occupation, including an armed one, is simply not taken into account.
The climax of cynicism is reached where the objection, that the constitutional right to free expression is violated, is dismissed by explaining that the verdict did not apply to all the parties to the Schengen treaty. Freedom of speech yes, but not in Germany!
The move against Kalemji shows once and again that Germany completely subordinates to the US and its imperial war violating international law. Euro-America is criminalizing the active resistance against the imperial power claim as terrorist thus systematically curbing the democratic rights. The terror war against the oppressed people is accompanied by a war against the antagonist opposition within the empire transforming it more and more into an open tyranny.
Anti-imperialist Camp
