Germans Protest Their Government's Support of the War on Terror

American Voices Abroad (AVA) Military Project

Citizens from All Walks of Life Demand a Break with U.S. Policy

BERLIN - Yesterday afternoon demonstrators from all over Germany
marched in Berlin to protest a proposed new "War on Terror" law that
would permit monitoring and documentation of internet and telephone
communications in Germany. The new law would make communications of
ordinary citizens available to German police and secret service
agencies, which could also pass them on to foreign governments,
including the U.S.

The three opposition parties in the German Parliament (Bundestag),
the FDP and the Left and Green Parties, are also opposing the new
security measure, which was introduced by the ruling coalition
parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Christian Democrats (CSU
and CDU). The proposed new law will be voted on in the Bundestag
later this month.

According to the organizers of the demonstration yesterday, nearly
20,000 participated; the police counted 8,000 participants. There
were some altercations between police and demonstrators. Several
demonstrators were arrested and/or injured, and police said late
yesterday afternoon that at least one police officer had been wounded.

One of the organizers of the demonstration, Dr. Martin Granduszus, a
medical doctor who said that he is a conservative, remarked that
"Germans don't usually protest in the streets like the French do. But
today you see citizens from all walks of life here, particularly
young people." Dr. Granduszus cited Article 20 of the
constitutionally mandated German basic law, which states that "all
power derives from the people, and the state cannot abrogate this
power from the people."

A young man at the demonstration, who gave only his internet nickname
"Spartacuss," said that he and many other young people were
demonstrating because they like to communicate via the internet and
do not want government surveillance. He explained that the yellow T-
shirts worn by many, with a picture of German Interior Minister
Wolfgang Schaeubele and the words "Stasi 2.0," were meant to
criticize the increasing "police state" measures in Germany, which he
said are reminiscent of the “Stasi” secret service under the former
East German Communist regime and are "nearly as bad as the
surveillance laws in the U.S. today.”

The demonstration yesterday followed a nationwide protest in Berlin
on September 15th against German military involvement in Afghanistan,
organized by peace organizations and by the German Left Party, which
has just under 9% of the votes in the Bundestag. The peaceful
demonstration on September 15th had 10,000 participants, according to
the organizers, while the police counted 5,000. The relatively low
turnout on September 15th was symptomatic of the present difficulties
of the German peace movement in attracting the young Germans who
demonstrated so vigorously in Heiligendamm against the G-8 this past
June and who came out in large numbers for the demonstration in
Berlin for civil rights yesterday.

However, on September 15th, there was also an important -- possibly
historic -- nationwide meeting of the German Green Party, held in
Goettingen, which overturned the decade-long German Green Party
policy in support of military alliance with the U.S. The meeting
took place upon the demand of the Green Party membership, which
challenged the Green leadership's policy, initiated in the 1990s
under the then foreign German Foreign Policy Minister of the Green
Party, Joschka Fischer, who supported German military intervention in
Yugoslavia and later in Afghanistan. In Goettingen the insurgents in
the Green Party prevailed by a wide margin with their resolution that
the Green Party members in the Bundestag be prohibited from
supporting extension of the mandate for the German surveillance
aircraft, the Tornados, in Afghanistan, which is linked, for the
upcoming vote in the Bundestag, to the mandate for German
participation in the U.N. mandated, NATO-commanded, International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission.

Like the Left Party, the Green Party has slightly less than 9% of the
votes in the Bundestag. The Left and Green parties and elements of
the Social Democrats (SPD) are competing for the support of the large
segments of the German population which are decidedly pacifist.
According to recent surveys, between 52% and 66% of Germans are for
immediate withdrawal of all German forces from Afghanistan.

The International Herald Tribune reported on September 16th that the
upset in the Green Party is leading to serious discussion in the SPD
to end the mandates for German military involvement in Afghanistan.
The SPD is in the ruling government coalition together with the
Christian Democrats (Chancellor Merkel’s party, the CDU).

The extension of the mandates for German participation in the ISAF
mission in Afghanistan and for the Tornados will come to a vote in
the Bundestag later this month and will likely be upheld, despite
strong popular opposition. However, many observers expect that the
mandate for German participation in the U.S. led Operation Enduring
Freedom (OEF), which is to come to a vote on November 15th, will be
defeated by a majority in the German Bundestag, where there is strong
criticism of the U.S. “go-it-alone” approach and of the killing of
many Afghan civilians by U.S. forces. Those supporting withdrawal of
all German troops from Afghanistan, such as the Left Party, say that
the U.N. mandated NATO-ISAF operation also kills many civilians and
is seen by the people of Afghanistan as an unwelcome occupation force.

At the demonstration on September 15th, several German professors who
are peace leaders and a trade union leader spoke, as did Tariq Ali,
the Pakistan-born U.K. peace leader and author. Mr. Ali recalled his
participation in the historic Vietnam Congress in Berlin in February,
1968, when the student peace movement in Berlin was an inspiration to
anti-Vietnam War activists throughout Europe. During the 1968 Vietnam
Congress in Berlin there had been declarations of solidarity from
peace activists from many countries, including a statement read on
behalf of anti-war GIs then stationed in Germany by a U.S. citizen
Elsa Rassbach living in Berlin, who was also on the steering
committee of the September 15th demonstration. For the September
15th demonstration,19 U.S. war resisters in Canada, including
veterans of the war in Afghanistan, and a U.S. based veteran of the
Afghanistan war sent statements of support.

Mr. Ali said on September 15th that the legendary German student SDS
leader in the 1960s, Rudi Dutschke, who organized the 1968 Vietnam
Congress and who co-founded the German Green Party shortly before his
death in 1977, would be standing with the demonstrators against
German military involvement in Afghanistan – a remark highlighting
the Green Party meeting in Goettingen the same day. He said that
while the majority of Germans were against the demonstrators in 1968,
today the majority of Germans support the demand for German
withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The demonstration against the war in Afghanistan on September 15th
was preceded by a protest a few days earlier by a newly formed
International Women's Coalition of women from 17 countries who now
live in Germany, including members of such well-known international
organizations as Code Pink and Women in Black. The women speaking at
the main demonstration on September 15th were Tahera Chams, an Afghan
immigrant to Germany who is active in the Afghan-Iranian women's
organization March 8th; and Kelly Campbell of the U.S., whose brother-
in-law died in the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon and who
co-founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

Ms. Campbell is also on the national steering committee of United for
Peace and Justice (UFPJ), with 1400 member organizations the largest
U.S. peace coalition. She told the German demonstrators that while
UFPJ's "immediate focus is to end the war in Iraq, we also oppose the
war in Afghanistan and are beginning to develop a long overdue
analysis of the situation and to address our responsibility as the US
peace movement to challenge the US military occupation of
Afghanistan. We are eager to learn from and work with the German
peace movement and others around the world to address these issues
that affect us all." Several German peace leaders last week praised
the September 15th demonstration in Washington, D.C., organized by
the Answer coalition, and also called for more collaboration between
the U.S. and German peace movements.

On September 20th, Malalai Joya, an Afghan women's rights advocate
and political leader who has twice been elected to the Afghan
Parliament and twice banned from it by the ruling government, spoke
in the Bundestag to the Human Rights Commission and the Commission on
Economic Cooperation and Development. Ms. Joya was invited to Berlin
by the parliamentary group of the Left Party. She testified in the
Bundestag that Germany must firmly separate its policy from that of
the U.S. The Foreign Affairs Commission in the Bundestag refused to
hear Ms. Joya. (An award-winning film about Ms. Joya entitled "A
Woman Among Warlords,” formerly "Enemies of Happiness,” was shown in
the U.S. on most PBS stations earlier this month. On September 21st,
Ms. Joya was nominated for the Sacharow Award of the European
Parliament.)

The German peace movement and some members of the German Bundestag
are increasingly opposing all aspects of the War on Terror, including
the important role of the U.S. military bases in Germany for the U.S.
war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa. Citizen petitions to
the Bundestag are circulating that invoke Article 26 of German basic
law, which states that no aggressive war may be prepared from German
soil—according to the petitions also not by U.S. forces. In May,
German peace activists invited members of Iraq Veterans Against the
War (Chris Capps, Thomas Cassidy, Jeff Englehart, and Adam Kokesh) to
come to Germany to support their campaign against enlargement of the
U.S. combat helicopter base in Ansbach/Katterbach and for a German-
American protest against deployment of ca. 2500 U.S. soldiers from
the base in their town to Iraq, among more than 10,000 U.S. troops
deployed from Germany to Iraq and Afghanistan this past summer.=