WORLD WORLDWIDE GERMANY News Journal Update - (en) Germany, LIKOS: On the street against deportation and police violence - speech (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Speech at the demonstration "On the streets against deportation and police

violence" in Osnabrück on March 16, 2023 ---- On the subject of police violence,
it's so terrible, we have to say something about it: ---- When racist and fascist
attacks, from insults to murder, are turned through the mills of the German
police and judicial machinery, more critical people quickly get it There is a
suspicion that the authorities in question are "blind in the right eye". But
often nothing or very little happens after reports of this kind and certainly
nothing to protect the victims. And when the police themselves are blamed, things
look even worse. We would like to take this opportunity to talk about the fact
that these processes, or rather, these "non-processes" have nothing to do with
closed eyes but with institutions that stare at refugees and all other people
labeled "foreigners" through "right glasses".

In contrast to the description of the Osnabrück police headquarters, it also
looks like this here in the "peace city" Osnabrück: where in October 2020 a
19-year-old was the victim of racist police violence, where police officers*
deported a person in an exceptional psychological situation directly from the
AMEOS Klinikum, where cops cover for their colleagues when another Nazi chat is
found. The self-proclaimed "friends and helpers" show with great regularity that
when it comes to right-wing violence and racism, they tend to keep silent, turn a
blind eye and get involved.

Anyone who now recoils in a typical civic reflex, who feels the inner urge to
defend the organs of repression, is reminded of the NSU's series of terror and
the role of the police and secret services in this context.

For more than 10 years, this complex of intertwining, cover-up and trivialization
has been fermenting unsolved, while in the decade before the NSU was blown up, an
unprecedented mockery of the victims' families was carried out by the
authorities, with the police completely one-sided against them and determine
their social environment.

The still unsolved arson attack on a refugee accommodation in Lübeck in 1996
should also be mentioned here - in anticipation of the official handling of the
NSU murders, a resident of the house was held responsible for the death of ten
burned and suffocated people and for years by the lack of justice, although three
Nazis with singed eyebrows had been arrested nearby on the night of the crime.

Unfortunately, not much has changed from 1996 to the present day. Research by
comrades from Bochum has shown that in 2022 alone 36 people died as a result of
police violence. However, the German authorities only speak of 21 people who lost
their lives in connection with police operations.

An indication that the German police do not draw the connection between deaths
and their actions or deliberately cover them up.

What can now serve as a viable explanation for the criticized behavior of the
police and judiciary? Are simply a majority of cops, prosecutors and judges right
wing and racists?

There are undoubtedly many of them. For example, a study by the Free University
of Berlin in 2003, in which members of police unions were interviewed, came to
the conclusion that 19% of the study participants* held right-wing extremist
views. The situation today, in view of the aggravation of racism and right-wing
sentiment in society as a whole, is likely to be even worse, even if,
significantly, there are no more up-to-date studies on the overall situation with
the police.

However, an explanation focused on right-wing and racist ideologies in the minds
of individuals within the state organs is not sufficient, as it does not explain
the institutionalized racism, i.e. the racism created in the authorities themselves.

Because police racism has structural reasons: According to the law, the
population must constantly be divided into people with a residence permit and
those without, so-called "illegal foreigners" - that is one of the tasks of the
police. But people don't see what's in their papers by looking at them, which is
why police officers, out of their state mandate, necessarily switch to the
practice of racial profiling, i.e. a selection of people who need to be
particularly controlled based on external characteristics, above all skin color,
perform.

The state's claim to power to divide people into "legal" and "illegal" results
directly and inevitably in racist police practice.

The political background to this logic of sorting and exclusion is twofold - on
the one hand, the state, as a monopolist on the use of force, wants to exercise
absolute control over who is on its territory. People suspected of being loyal to
other nation-states are always suspect.

On the other hand, the state, which is dependent on the success of capital growth
at the national "Germany location", carries out a calculation that can only be
described as utility racism.

People who can be easily exploited by capital and who, in the eyes of the
dominant society, are considered "easily integrated", such as well-trained but
cheap skilled workers, should be allowed to come into the country, while everyone
else, no matter how great their need, should in principle stay outside .

This then includes their drowning in the Mediterranean as well as their wasting
away and dying in decaying states that have been left behind by the world market
and whose wars and conflicts are also fueled with guns and tanks from Germany,
the world's fourth largest arms exporter.

This misanthropic state logic means that police officers "ex officio" have a lot
in common with fascists and other rights: The fundamental distrust of all
"foreigners" and concern for the nation as a state-created forced collective.

The structural racism of the police authorities is also shown directly, as they
repeatedly emanate brutal violence, up to and including murder, for example in
the case of Oury Jalloh or Mouhamed Dramé, who was attacked by police officers
with pepper spray and tasers in the courtyard of his residential group in the
north of Dortmund was attacked and finally murdered with more than 5 shots from a
submachine gun.

In the case of the murder of Mouhamed in particular, the police promised a quick
clarification. This should take over the police from Recklinghausen, which,
however, also murdered a mentally ill person during an operation the day before.

However, the esprit de corps of the cops and the unwillingness of public
prosecutors to investigate usually succeed in keeping racist police violence out
of the public eye and protecting perpetrators in their own ranks.

In view of the above, no one should be surprised if the German repressive organs
often doubt, deny or downplay the right-wing and racist background of attacks
against people with a migration background, and if they actively participate in
their cover-up.

So it is our task in anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles to highlight and
fight racist police practices. We have to show solidarity with those affected,
hear their experiences and make them public. We must support people like the
comrades of No Lager in their diverse struggles and fight together to make this
world a world worth living in for everyone. In Osnabrück, in Europe and all over
the world!

For the liberated society! No Borders! No Nation!

https://likos.noblogs.org/2023/03/17/auf-die-strasse-gegen-abschiebung-und-polizeigewalt-redebeitrag/
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