Our friend and comrade Arash Dosthossein. He was imprisoned on 11 January 2015. He refused to pay the penalty from the Rindermarkt-trial. Here is his statement.
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How can the struggle for equal rights be a crime?
Fleeing is a wound which has been brought about by the international economic system. The reasons for seeking refuge or migration are: Dictatorship, poverty, oppression and war. All the reasons which force people to flee their homelands, are caused by the interaction between their homeland and the country in which they seek refuge. This interaction is, however, concealed. Oppression, dictatorship, poverty and war is not ‘natural’ nor has it always been that way. It came out of the power politics, globalized economic system, and the resulting distribution struggles over resources and power. The resulting imbalance is the main reason for displacement and migration.
The current system was made possible by a network of neo-colonial exploitation, domination, and oppression. The cycle has been maintained equally by both the democratic and/or liberal governments as well as by the dictatorial governments. In Countries like Iran and Pakistan for example, the system is protected by blatant state terror. In countries like Germany and France, the same system is protected with 100 billion Euros for exporting weapons.
Refugees and Immigrants are whistleblowers which expose, that the global reality which protects prosperity in the countries of the global North, is based on exploiting and colonizing a great part of the rest of the world.
What that means for the refugees, is, this inhuman system is only two sides of the same coin, in the homeland as well as in the countries to which they have fled. Everywhere they are stuck with the bi-products of the system of exploitation for the purpose of systematic maximizing profit.
Refugees live under conditions of social exclusion and inequality, which are also racist, asocial and sexist. In accordance with their economic and nationalist interests, governments are making laws against the refugees that violating the human rights. the same human rights, which they have written and signed themselves: Forbidding freedom of movement, forbidding free choice of housing, and forbidding participation in society i.e. through voting etc. which in the form of residency restriction, refugee camps, and deportation “have become laws” are in obvious contradiction to the human rights the pretend to stand for. It means, that the refugees and/or Immigrants, who are not born here, do not have the same human rights as the citizens of this country.
Political and social consciousness about these unjust and exclusionist conditions have become the reasons for the beginning a struggle, and for resistance against these conditions, to change these laws, until we can have opportunity to live like any other human being.
In one period of this struggle, 100 refugees went on hunger strike at the Rindermarkt in Munich. This protest was, “on humanitarian grounds” attacked and violently ended on 30 June 2013, 10 days after it began. The government of Bavaria signed a court order for this chicanery. This led to our being awoken at 5 o’clock in the morning and attacked by a squadron of more than 600, fully armed police. They did not spare the children nor the pregnant women. All this was justified with talk of human rights, implemented by colonialists, defined by colonialists and without any doubt, in the interests of the colonialists. Our human rights do not exist. Neither in our homeland nor in the land to which we have fled.
Some of the refugees have resisted this attack on our human right to protest. I have been criminalized many times by the courts and police due to my resistance, so now, they say, I have to pay 300 Euros or go to jail for 30 days.
The court has seen our resistance as breaking the law, and has criminalized us. My question is: Is resistance a crime?
Didn’t the inhabitants of Stalingrad have to resist the Nazis? Also then, the Germans were unified in their right to destroy Stalingrad.
It is exactly this reason, because resistance is not a crime! Because where there is no injustice, there can be no resistance.
Therefore I do not see myself as a criminal and have not the least bit of respect for the court decision. I cannot dredge up one iota of respect for these caricatures, which want to declare me a criminal.
Therefore, I reject paying the fine, which would be an acceptance of the judgment of the court. The payment of the penalties is a negotiation to sell out our seriousness and our demands. They gave me court ordered deadline to pay the fine by the 8th of January 2015, I am prepared at any time to be arrested and imprisoned.
This jail sentence is nothing more than the continuation of my resistance.
Rebel! Refuse! Resist!