We send solidarity greetings to our sisters and brothers on the protest march from Munich to Nürnberg! It feels so good and inspiring to see the videos of this strong, angry and energetic protest!
This is a clear reaction to the racist asylum laws which are passed here in Berlin and effect so many refugees all over Germany and even all over Europe. Laws which practically abolish the right of asylum for a huge number of people. Laws which abolish the right of privacy and dignity, by reintroducing food packages, Residenzpflicht, mass-accommodation etc. pp. Laws which try to divide minorities, an old colonial strategy, by categorizing refugees into „good victims“ and „bad criminals“. Laws which criminalize „arabic men“ as rapists, abusing feminist demands and struggles for a racist agenda. Deals and treaties with dictatorships all over the world to be able to „control migration“. Fences and walls which are build everywhere with the support european taxes. Laws and treaties which lead to the highest numbers of death in the mediterranean sea this year.
This is a clear reaction and resistance to the right wing propaganda of AFD, Pegida, Identitäre Bewegung and many more. A propaganda which leads to increasing numbers of racist attacks on individuals, organizations and refugee accommodations. We ask ourselves, how it comes that attacks by foreigners are easily categorized as terrorist actions, where else systematically organized racist attacks on refugee accommodations are not?
We hear the stories from our sisters in the refugee-accomdations in Berlin and Brandenburg and we have seen all sorts of violence against refugee women committed in Germany. Women suffering from acute forms of depression and heavily medicated; women who tried suicide; women who became alcoholics; women who suffered and continue suffering from sexist and racist attacks in the streets, by having their houses burnt by right extremists groups, by racist and sexual abusive security personnel in the Heim where they live; women being humiliated in the Ausländerbehörder, women being threatened with deportation and it’s violent agents.
But as an answer to the violence and oppression we hear stories of resistance, we are resisting and won’t keep silent..!!! Women, who are breaking the isolation and silence by giving testimonies about their situations and bringing them into the public. A woman, which resisted her own deportation twice, facing strong police brutality. A strong demonstration, in the beginning of this year, organized by women in Hennigsdorf after two women have been attacked by an armed Nazi in the public. A protest bus tour organized by Women in Exile going through Germany. The Roma-protest in Berlin and Regensburg, which a lot of women joined with their forces and voices. Various forms of resistance by women in accommodations just by coming together, chairing their stories and creating solidarity..
We need a new feminist approach to the struggles! One that includes the refugee women and their stories of resistance and survival against patriarchy in whichever form it appears, wherever it’s been implemented against women. We need to be thoughtful and practical. We need to have more feminist groups ready to engage politically in the fight against racism, we need to fight a system that forces women to get pregnant or married in order to stay in Germany, we need to fight sexism not only when news come reporting about a group of refugee men attacking german women!
As Angela Davis told us on her visit to Berlin in 2015: “The refugee movement is the movement of the 21st Century. It is the movement that is calling for the rights of all”. Let us all join together in this movement and continue to create structures of resistance against all forms of oppression!