Login
Pfizer has only one, yes ONE, factory to produce all vaccines for all countries outside of the United States. And on Friday, it announced that it would have to delay promised deliveries for ‘a few weeks’ while it is upgrading this factory in Belgium. Instead of standing up to Big Pharma, EU countries have shown no more than resignation hidden by some grumbling. Except for some isolated voices, no one has dared suggest that countries use an existing legal mechanism: compulsory licensing. That would mean that anyone could start producing the vaccine. And it’s legal.
Indeed, the 1995 TRIPS Agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) negotiated by the World Trade Organisation includes Article 31, which states that countries „may use of the subject matter of a patent without the authorization of the right holder“ if their legislation allows for exceptions. And according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 156 countries currently allow such exceptions, including all EU countries. So what are we waiting for?
While this law is different in each country, it usually gives the right to the state to use compulsory licensing in cases of health emergency and/or when the producer is unable to deliver. Hard not to think about the current situation, right? It is obvious that Big Pharma makes more money by producing itself, distributing itself, setting its own prices, but it is now failing to meet demands and its greed needs to be stopped. All we need is to apply the law, make the vaccine license open to all, let all producers use their capacities to produce it.
Public authorities not only have the duty, but also the right to do so, especially since there has been about 12 billion USD of public funds involved in developing those vaccines, with very little transparency about any related conditions. The Moderna vaccine has become the most striking example of the neoliberal tradition of privatizing profit and socializing expenses. Whereas this small company developed the vaccine exclusively thanks to public funds, and the US government jointly owns the rights, there has been no challenge to the firm’s right to make excessive profits. And it is not shying away from it, selling its doses almost twice the price of the Pfizer vaccine, and almost ten times more than the AstraZeneca one. Even worse, Moderna’s top three executives executives have made more than a 100 million USD by selling their stocks just after announcing the vaccine’s successful development.
Don’t worry, Pfizer & co. won’t die of hunger if we take their vaccines: the law already foresees compensations for compulsory licensing. But there is no legal right to unlimited profits in a time of epidemic emergency. We have suffered enough from the fact that governments have abandoned their role in pharmarceutical research and development and let this field to the whims of Big Pharma. The very same giants that decided not to pursue research on earlier forms of coronaviruses because it didn’t seem financially profitable are now telling us to stay quiet and wait so that they can make a profit? No, societies need to take back their health safety under control and manage it according to the general interest, and not the profits of shareholders.
Already in the first months of the pandemic, there were calls to makes vaccines a ‘public common good’ once they would be developed. On April 24th, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, backed the idea when she said that the future vaccine would be „our universal, common good“. Then, at the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) May 2020 summit, China pledged that it would not license its vaccine, if it succeeded in developing one, making it available for all countries to produce and use. But as vaccines developed by major Western corporations received the green light in late 2020, it became clear that their distribution would follow the laws of the jungle: vaccines for the richest countries, profits for the corporations.
In December 2020, around a hundred countries led by India and South Africa tried to move the WTO Assembly into adopting a resolution waiving intellectual copyrights on anti-Covid vaccination and drugs. They were met by the flat refusal of Western countries, who harbour the headquarters, laboratories, factories and shareholders of Big Pharma. In doing so, Western countries are going directly against the interests (and health and life) of their own citizens, not to talk of humanity in general, but they are successfully upholding the global neoliberal status quo concentrating power and money in the West.
During the pandemic, the global Left has been mostly struck by apathy, sitting back with some Schadenfreude as right-wing governments that had been claiming for years that ‘there is no magic money tree’ started pouring trillions into the economy. Apart from some solidarity actions and calls to protect workers and the vulnerable, the left has not been able to raise its voice to push for more decisive action in the anti-pandemic response, from putting workers’ health before profit to standing up to Big Pharma. Some iniatives are now appearing and we need to rally behind them, taking the streets from the far-right bolstered by conspiracy theorists. From the ‘Zero Covid’ plan to the EU-wide ‘No Profit on Pandemic’ initiative, now is the time to rise and challenge the incompetent and corrupt neoliberal forces.
Looking at pro-Trump far-right supporters breaking in the Capitol, many mainstream opinion-makers shake their heads over the dangers of polarisation and extremism, providing the (far-) right with a convenient discourse about “both sides” and advocating a return to a status quo that brought us where we are. But in times of rising fascism and increasing inequalities, polarization is a necessity.
A commentary by Jan Fürth
Taken out of context, polarisation and division discourses sound really neat to the ears of the average citizen. Who wouldn’t want harmony and unity? But when a dangerous far-right ideology is rising, the very same discourses are used to either condemn resistance as “polarising” or to discard it as analogous to the very same threat it is standing up to. Uncompromisingly standing up to these hateful ideas makes you a polarising figure. Taking the streets to face off violent far-right thugs makes you a thug. In the end, all that is left is to either settle for this far-right extreme as a lesser evil or sit tightly under a new ‘moderate’ normalcy. A right-wing neo-liberal one, of course.
This naive faith in the absolute need for moderation becomes dangerous blindness when there is a shift in ideology towards the far right. If one always ought to stand in the middle, then how far rightwards should one go in a country where the president and one of the two parties has shifted towards fascism? How much understanding should we show for far-right ideas when they become a growing part of the mainstream? Are the murders of some unarmed African-Americans OK because of the majority’s racism? Should one accept at least some children in cages because a majority of citizens approve of it? Should the coup attempt be met with some understanding for the far-right mob? Shouldn’t one abstain from criticising and mobilizing to avoid polarisation?
A logical consequence of discourses on polarisation is the understanding that there are two poles, two extremes. Indeed, there cannot be polarisation without two completely opposed camps, and thus we find ourselves left with the well-known ‘both sides’ discourse from Donald Trump’s reaction to the 2017 Charlotteville far-right terror attack. All critiques of the far right are being met by a barrage of ‘whataboutist’ fire, pitting the coordinated attack on the central institution of decision-making against the vandalism happening in the margins of some BLM demonstrations. By pushing this line, far-right violence is minimized and its structural and institutional character is obscured.
According to this view, Trump’s far-right movement is only an answer to – and even a defense against – the specter of some kind of ‘BLM Antifa neo-marxist anarcho-bolshevist’ threat, or rather conspiracy, against the United States. In the U.S. American context, this ‘red scare’ becomes a powerful weapon to present Trump as a lesser evil, relativizing his far-right views as necessary to avoid another kind of – this time un-American – extremism. Thus the polarization thesis becomes an appeal to choose your side, with a powerful far-right media machine making sure that you’ll make the right choice.
In addition to giving ammunition to the far-right movement, the polarisation-and-two-extremes argument is also being pushed by (centre-)right forces that are looking to re-establish the status quo ante – going back to the pre-2016 situation. The equivalence thesis then becomes an appeal to go back to the ‘golden mean’, i.e. the kind of consensus-based politics that are celebrated by (neo-)liberal and some conservative commentators as ‘reasonable’ and ‘civilized’. As we know from U.S.American politics dominated by two right-wing parties, this middle-ground is very much tilting towards the right. In this sense, calls for moderation are powerful appeals to upholding the current status quo, which is the continuation of the kind of right-wing neoliberal policies we have been seeing since Ronald Reagan won the elections in 1981, and even earlier: neo-liberal economics, institutionalized racism and U.S. military imperialism.
When Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are attacked as ‘extremist’ or ‘polarizing’, including by people from their own party, this right-wing normalcy is being reestablished again and again. The centre-right Democratic majority can distance itself from these ‘extremists’ in its ranks and claim to be the voice of reason in contrast to a Republican party that has been seized by its far-right wing. The hope being, of course, that their position as the status quo will be embraced by a majority of electors equally convinced about the need for a ‘return to the normalcy’. And there you go: you have Joe Biden.
While the Democrats’ bet worked out in a context of global pandemic with important human losses and catastrophic socio-economic consequences, especially in the United States, it has proved a risky one, and the gains are rather meager. Their lame strategy could only be saved by extraordinary efforts by women of color and other community organisers, but it doesn’t bode well for the future, as we can expect the business-as-usual technocratic approach of the Biden administration to fail to tackle the class and racial inequalities plaguing the country, not to speak of the climate crisis. In the meantime, the promoters and accomplices of the ‘polarisation’ discourses will make sure that the United States will stay stuck in the same right-wing neo-liberal dead-end, with a Trump-like escape into a far-right alternative reality remaining the only mean of expression for the country’s frustrations.
Far from being a strictly U.S.American issue, the ‘polarization’ discourse has also been visible in European discussions and has been prominent in recent discussions of events in Washington. As The Jacobin was reporting lately, no other than… British left-wing politician Jeremy Corbyn was attacked by commentators talking about the Capitol assault! In Germany, it was a deputy from Merkel’s right-wing CDU Party, Thomas Heilmann, who put on the same level Trump and Antifa or the German street movement against the far-right AfD party, saying that “Polarisation and denigration always lead to hate and violence”.
We must reject empty discourses about polarisation that carefully avoid to talk about fascism and instrumentalize far-right terrorism to attack the Left. Let’s call things by their names and categorically refuse false equivalences between fascism and anti-fascism, between racism and anti-racism, between far-right authoritarianism and broad popular leftist movements challenging the status quo. In times of rising fascism, polarisation is a duty. Polarisation is society breaking up. It’s up to us to organize, unite and rebuild!
On Saturday evening, a young Black man named Ibrahima B. was arrested by the Brussels police and died in custody under unclear circumstances, allegedly from a heart attack. Available information point out that he was arrested for… filming a police intervention! This was an illegal arrest and the police has blood on its hands, regardless of the actual cause of death.
Ibrahima was on his way to the North train station to go back home to another city and he stopped to film a police intervention against a group of youths. Although it is perfectly legal and legitimate to film police harassment, the police officers went after him, which made Ibrahima B. afraid and made him flee. He was eventually arrested and he died an hour later while in police custody, his lawyer saying that it took long minutes for the police to react when he fell down in handcuffs, presumably hit by a heart attack.
The police clearly doesn’t have a clean conscience, as it took them more than six hours to call Ibrahima B.’s family, and they lied saying that Ibrahima B. had defied the curfew, even though the time of death (8:22pm) was before the start of the curfew (10pm). Police has also been disseminating rumours about drug abuse, even though there are no such elements available at the moment.
If Ibrahima B. was white, he would probably still be alive today. This is proven by countless examples of police brutality targeting people of colour and foreigners in the recent months in Belgium. At the very same spot were Ibrahima B. was arrested, Black German deputy of the EU Parliament Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana was violently arrested and searched by the police for… filming the arrest of two young Black men. The police wouldn’t believe that the 71-year-old is a EU deputy… In April, riots erupted in Brussels after a young man of North African descent died in police chase. In July, a young man of Algerian descent died in police custody in Antwerp after a brutal arrest. In August, videos revealed that Slovak national was strangulated to death by the police in a cell as the police officers laughed and one of them made Nazi salutes.
Small demonstrations took place in Brussels to request justice for Ibrahima B. and we stand in solidarity with those experiencing police brutality and structural racism, and with all those who are fighting back! No justice, no peace, fuck the police!
Notis Mitarakis, the Greek Minister of Migration and Beate Gminder, Head of the European Taskforce for Lesbos and acting head of the EU task force on Lesbos visited Moria 21 on the island of Lesbos end of November.
by dunya collective from Lesbos (Greece)
It had the looks of a well-rehearsed show. Business as usual: In his speech Mitarakis emphasized that the camp was clean, save and orderly. He spoke of a “structure that has no traces of the chaos of Moria” and declared that flood protection measures had been completed and the camp was adequately prepared for winter. The camp could now function independently from the health care system of the city of Mytilini.
The minister continued by explaining that together with IGME1 the soil had been analyzed – a detail that could be of importance, since the camp is located on a former shooting range which makes contamination with lead and other heavy metals likely. With this step he reacted to the concerns of NGOs and media reports.2 EU commissioner of home affairs, Ylva Johansson, had stated after the fires in Moria in early September that conditions were indeed inacceptable. “Conditions in Moria, both before and after the fire, were unacceptable. Men, women and children living in overcrowded camps with poor sanitation and little access to health care.”3 Trusting Mitarakis’ comments, it looks like we are not about to recreate the same conditions. But the perspective of the people who must live in the camp is very different. It was not without reason that they quickly named the new camp Moria 2. A short overview:
I There are very few showers that only run with cold water, so-called bucket showers. Camp inhabitants have to improvise and build their own showers to wash themselves. There is neither running nor hot water. People have no other option than doing their laundry and washing themselves in the ocean.
II The quality of food is as bad as it was in the old camp Moria, the same catering company “Elaitis” brings the food. Food equaling three meals is distributed once a day. The food is of very low quality and in the evening it is often times spoiled already.
III Health care is insufficient. Many of the inhabitants do not trust the doctors anymore. There are long waiting hours and inhabitants often only receive paracetamol as a treatment. There is hardly any psychological care. There is an epidemic of scabies that was already a big problem in Moria 1.
IV The location of the camp is exposed to the north. The tents are thin. Wind and weather pull at them and cause enormous noise. Many inhabitants complain about sleep deprivation because of this. It is also cold at night and the tents are not heated. The use of radiators is officially forbidden, as is open fire.
V Electrical installations are insufficient and in many cases seem improvised. There has already been a fire in Moria 2, apparently caused by an electrical short. Inhabitants extinguished the fire, not the fire brigade.
VI There is very restricted access for the press. Journalists can only enter the camp with special permission and accompanied by police or camp personnel. These permissions are hard to come by. Of course, protection against COVID-19 is important, but these measures were already in place before lockdown. They aim at avoiding images of the ugly truth of the camp reaching the public.
VII Inhabitants often describe the camp as a prison. At the entrance there are metal detectors. Drones surveil the camp and there are 300 police officers on duty, working in shifts. On top of that, the possibilities of leaving the camps are heavily restricted. Lockdown has impacted the camp tremendously and now inhabitants can only leave the camp once per week for four hours maximum. This results in enormous psychological pressure.
Many do not now what is next to come. The repeating questions we encounter are: Will they decline my asylum application? Will there be a transfer to the mainland? Will I receive asylum? Will I be homeless? Will Germany take me in? What have we done to deserve this treatment? What will happen to me if I stay here? Will there be a new camp? Will I be allowed into the new camp? Will the camp be closed? How long do I have to stay here?
What do we know about the construction of a new camp that the EU task force is involved in? After his tour of the camp, Mitarakis underlined that Moria 2 was only temporary and together with the EU commission, a new, closed camp was in the works. “In the following month we will quickly work towards the creation of a more permanent, closed, controlled structure, in cooperation with the European Commission”, Mitarakis stated.4
Mitarakis has made similar statements before to online portal “Infomigrants”: “These camps will have double fencing, they will have a secure gate. Asylum seekers will be allowed to exit and enter using a card and a fingerprint at a dedicated time through the day. Camps will be closed at night – it’s a policy we are already implementing in the temporary camp in Lesbos. And also the camp will have a fully closed ‘pre-removal section’ for the people that have had final decisions and need to be returned to their countries of origin.”5
Doesn’t this contradict the statements of EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson? She always stressed that a new building would be an open multi-purpose camp.6 But she also spoke of controlled entries and exits. Maybe Mitarakis is just not shy about speaking openly about his ministry’s plans. He simply does not see the necessity of being reserved when it comes to this issue. After all, the construction of such a prison camp is fully in line with the political agenda of the ruling Nea Dimokratia party. The ultra-conservative Greek government wants to show strength and score points with the extreme-right voters. It already did so with the eviction of the PIKPA on Lesbos.7
It looks as if the question of the construction date and exact location of the new camp is about to be resolved. All of the sites proposed until now are far away from the city or villages. Apart from the fact that housing people in camps for any length of time is inhumane, a camp in the middle of nowhere and without proper connections to public life has close resemblance to a prison. Social exclusion via spatial segregation is a popular tactic in European-Greek asylum policy. The question now is whether there are two different versions of one and the same camp in play, or whether Johansson deliberately used nicer words when speaking to the media to distort reality and calm public opinion.
Mitarakis talked big in September, announcing that the new camp will be completed before Easter of 2021. These plans can already be considered failed. There have been differences to be settled in regard to the location, which stalled the process and required new negotiations. “It is not easy to speak with the local population”, Gminder said to the press.8
This is why the visit to Moria 2 was only a small item on the agenda of the two politicians. The actual reason for the visit to the island of Lesbos must have been the agreement on the building site for a new camp. The two politicians met with officials of the European Commission as well as the Greek Ministry of Migration and technical advisors in Mytilini to discuss the project. The proposed location, directly next to a waste dump in Vastria, has already been rejected by the EU.9It would only damage the tarnished reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize winner further. The site proposed by the mayor of Mytilinis, Stratis Kytelis, and Charalambo Athanasiou, the representative of Nea Dimokratia of the respective prefecture, was the last one still on the table. After the meeting it was announced that this is the location they had now agreed upon. It is a private property called “Eleftherakou estate”, located about two kilometers to the east, near the landfill. The owner will cash € 70,000 of rent per month. The property belongs to the administrative district of the island capital of Mytilini.10Gminder and Mitarakis were confident that construction will start before Easter 2021 and the camp will be completed in autumn of the same year.11
We now know that a new camp will be built close to a landfill in the middle of nowhere. We do not know how open or closed the camp will be. But its location alone makes it a prison. It has also become clear that the current camp is a rather long-term “temporary structure”. Refugees will have to live there for another full year. This is an enormous psychological and physical burden for them. Europe has the responsibility of fairly allocating the people needing asylum. Particularly rich countries such as Germany are in a position to do so, but they obstruct this process politically. The new camp and the new EU migration package show what the phrase “No more Morias” actually means: The show must go on.
1 Hellenic Survey of Geology and Mineral Exploration. (https://www.igme.gr/)
5 https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/28372/mitarakis-we-are-protecting-our-borders-in-line-with-international-law
6 Ylva Johansson in a conversation with German ARD, at 13:12min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHVi99NdLME
7 PIKPA was a unique project offering shelter to particularly vulnerable refugees, without violence, police or fences. It was operation under the principle of “community organizing”. In the early hours of October 30th the project was evicted against the will of its inhabitants who were transported to Karatepe 1 camp. This camp is to be closed at the end of December. The refugees do not know what will happen afterwards.
The is a translation with some modifications of a text by Cerveaux Non Disponibles.
The ban on broadcasting police actions centralizes all fears, but legalizing drones and surveillance technology is just as damaging to freedoms and democracy.
It is a subject that is little discussed and yet concerns us all. The text provides in these gaps to legalize facial recognition in the public space and the real-time exploitation of information about people. The video stream would be processed live by the police command, as mentioned in Article 22. The text does not mention the term “facial recognition”, but it should be noted that all amendments aimed at clarifying the practice were rejected. An example is amendment n°CL340 which explicitly provided for the prohibition of facial recognition. Rejected! The spirit of this law is to put the entire public space (especially cities) under permanent control. Without blind spots, with all the technology of algorithms and their freedom killing uses in data collection on a daily basis.
The State has lost the battle on police violence since the yellow vests, especially through the profusion of images made available to all on social networks, which have become a true self-media for any individual or collective that finally finds a voice.
The purpose of this law, which provides for 1 year of imprisonment and a 45,000€ fine for broadcasting that “undermines the police” is to limit freedom of expression in order to regain control of a republican narrative that has been completely eroded. In order to regain a hegemonic discourse, the hundreds of arbitrary acts of violence, daily racism, almost permanent impunity, as well as the dirty work that the police carry out on behalf of the State have become realities that must be hidden at all costs.
@TaoualitAmar Twitter photograph Hannah Nelson, arrested by police on 17th nov
Today, the forces of law and order already regularly intimidate professional journalists or simple witnesses who film. The police are already exercising a judgmental practice in the field through the physical and psychological violence they exercise. Imagine their zeal if this law were to be passed… If the National Assembly gave even more power to those who already abuse it with impunity…
Without an image, how many crimes and violence would have been hushed up or would not even have reached the gates of a court? Judges themselves say it: images are useful and without them, the police version always wins.
Let’s remember the importance that images have had for several cases:
This law also poses a major technical problem. Implicitly, it would sign the end of live videos showing police officers. If in their great leniency of falsely naïve playmobils the LREM (Macron’s party) deputies have suggested blurring the faces of police officers, let us recall that it is currently impossible to blur faces in real time. And that, in general, blurring a face on video is a complicated technique that is not within everyone’s reach and that would in fact restrict many images. If, however, this abject law were to be respected…
Last but not least, it should be noted that the police are not worried by the diffusion of their faces, which they have already been in the habit of masking for a long time (as well as not wearing their numbers), and although we have seen barbaric acts committed by them, this has not been the subject of popular reprisals to date. The argument of police protection is not based on anything and is mainly a bluster that makes the oppressors look like the oppressed.
Other aspects of the law should be addressed, such as the extension of the carrying of weapons in public places, even when not in use, or the increased role of private companies in policing.
The journalist Nnoman (his video) is being beaten by police.
What is striking in this text, which was passed on November 17 in the National Assembly, 2 years to the day after the yellow vests began, is its martial aspect. Do we realize that in the same law there is a state response to social protest and one against terrorism? This law intends to globally manage these problems in the same way. The repressive outcome of the November 17 demonstration is particularly strong, especially for the press.
The terrible image of a system that only responds with violence and intimidation… including on totally harmless demonstrators.
But the thousands of people present around the National Assembly could feel the anger rising and that no water cannon will be able to extinguish.
“The last warning for journalists: leave the premises with your press card or you will be arrested.” Quietly, the police muzzle the press covering a press freedom rally… All this knowing that they are being filmed. The law has not even passed and France is already in a totalitarian country. And it’s hard to see how the trend could be reversed. Neither petitions, nor demonstrations, nor the UN will be able to stop the fascinating drift.
At least 7 journalists have been arrested, threatened and/or beaten. Journalists who were covering a rally for freedom of the press and demonstration. It is extremely serious what this government allows itself! In particular, photographer Hannah Nelson was arrested last night and spent the night in police custody.
With the second anniversary of the gilets jaunes (GJ) uprising approaching, I virtually sat down with some participants to look back at a revolution that could have happened, the violent response of the police and the increasing restriction of civil liberties in France.
I virtually sat down to talk to a group of young activists from Montreuil (Paris suburb) who joined in the early hours of the movement, witnessing the moment when the regime almost fell in late 2018. They talked about the people in the gilets jaunes (GJ) movement, the uprising, the left’s hesitations, the struggle against the far right, and the political and police response. Here is an edited version of our conversation, divided by topics.
This conversation was part of research for an article by André Kapsas on police and judiciary repression during the GJ movement, which was published by Jacobin.
Youri* remembers that he was in the Drôme region in South-East France and that tags everywhere were calling for mobilisation on the 17th. “I didn’t know at all what it would look like, but there was a lot of agitation, so I decided to go to the local roundabout that was being occupied.” He remembers the GJ as a moment when „people started coming together, talking their daily problems and unwinding the thread, finding the source of their anger, of their living conditions. More and more, they were approaching the roots: the state, the system, capitalism. I’ll always remember my first twenty minutes on a roundabout with the GJ: they start talking about gas prices and twenty minutes later they’re already talking about the revolution, asking themselves whether that’s the solution. That really left a mark on me.”
Antoine was in Commercy, in the Meuse region, in the East, when it all started: “We organised some popular assemblies, and also organised the assembly of all GJ assemblies in January 2019. When it comes to forms of protest, they were much more radical, much more spontaneous. They were so strong as to launch a real insurrection, stronger than all the activist networks could ever dream of. When it comes to demands, there was no substitution, no either / or, no dropping of demands on the tax cancellation and purchasing power in favour of greater demands like the system’s abolition. There was rather an accumulation of demands. The core of the GJ movement were people concerned by purchasing power, having troubles making ends meet. Then people went further, with demands on democracy, on referendums. In Commercy, there were also municipal demands, demands to end tax evasion.
Where people revolutionary, anti-capitalist? There were definitely such discourses among the GJ, from people within the core. Ideas to end the capitalist system were welcome by many, but that wasn’t the main idea from Day One. You can’t really divide demands. Myself, I consider myself like a GJ, and I can say that in the movement, the idea that “end of the month, end of the world – same fight” was well understood.
“end of the month, end of the world – same fight”
GJ were often depicted like far-right rednecks listening to techno on parking lots while barbecuing, some kind of image of a stupid France, but this struggle against a tax went way further, it was about the organisation of power, the structure of society, about who should pay for the ecological transition. This tax was really about a punitive ecology, against poor people, a ‘class ecology’, and people saw through it. It’s not reactionary to fight against an injust tax.
So there was this consciousness, at least in Commercy, that purchasing power was the starting point, about the hard living conditions and the problem of making ends meet at the end of the month. That was never replaced by anything. There was also the RIP (Référendum d’initiative populaire – referendums that could be triggered by petition), that was more global, but otherwise it was mostly about those ‘bread and butter issues’.
At first, economic elites (the ‘patronat’, the bosses) were not really targeted. The GJ had another relationship to small bosses, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and craftswomen, who were often involved in the GJ, so they didn’t see the big bosses as a target at first; it was more the political elites, denounced as corrupted. Demands against the big bosses and corporations gradually came; not from outside, but rather from leftists who were inside the movement. It was a result of those meetings on roundabouts, not a manipulation, but rather a spontaneous development.
Louise: yes, it came after several months, when there was more targeting of the big bosses, and also a greater involvement with the strike movements, also with the ecological movement.
Antoine: there was a development going on, through intense exchanges, as people not only shared their experiences as activists, as trade unionists, when there was concrete solidarity, those were organic developments, not higher-level meetings. In Commercy, there was a huge defiance towards trade unions, towards any organisation, other flags, a great fear of manipulation and recuperation. Trade unionists were well received as participants, though.
This whole situation illustrated the growing distance between the left and popular classes during the last 30-40 years. There was a huge gap between people who didn’t speak the same language anymore. I remember the deep sadness of seeing a friend, a 50 year-old worker and trade unionist, who had taken part in all strikes in the last decades, feeling violated on the roundabout, because he was so starkly criticised. He felt that he had fought for this his whole life, yet he was being rejected because of his hat from the trade union. That changed after November-December, as there were many more meetings, during the whole year, and up to this date.
Louise: “I went to the second protest, on November 24th, because we had seen quite incredible images from the previous Saturday, and I wanted to see for myself and talk to people in order to form my own opinion. And not just listen to what the media were saying back then, talking about the Yellow Vests as middle-class, white, rather far-right. There were very few of us from the left-wing circles here in Montreuil to be mobilised.”
Next to Invalides we bumped into a group of about a hundred GJ who had just come in and didn’t know Paris. My friend and I had taken plans for this purpose and we passed them around. Some of them had megaphones and tried to lead, but they didn’t know where the Élysée (presidential palace) was, nor how to get there with all the cop blockages. We had yellow vests in our bags but we didn’t put them on at first, as we were still rather suspicious, but then we did put them on because it was easier to talk to protesters that way, otherwise they were suspicious.
What was the most surprising was the relationship to the police, in the first weeks, when people were calling on the police to join them. And also they were negotiating with the police. And the reaction of the police was also interesting. They were completely confused, they weren’t reacting the same way as during the Loi Travail protests (in 2016) or radical left protests. It was a whole other reaction, with police officers asking us ‘Please, mademoiselle, please, monsieur, stay on the curbwalk’, delicately picking us up, it was really surprising. The cops didn’t know what to do, they didn’t dare to repress. And the demonstrators were also astonishing, with some of them just standing in front of police trucks and stopping them with their hands.”
Loi Travail protests (in 2016)
There were already barricades. People were just building barricades. I talked to many of them, they were at their first demonstration ever. They weren’t even hiding their faces. They just started to throw cobblestones, completely unmasked! Mostly those were 16 to 18 year-old teenagers and people over 60, together. I talked to many of them, some had voted for the Rassemblement National (far-right) and we met many people who supported the Union populaire républicaine (anti-EU, populist, conspirationist).
Youri: “I went back up to Paris soon before December 1st, as we knew that it would be very intense there. Some other activists and I, we were stunned by the lack of support in the capital and its suburbs, so we met up in Montreuil beforehand in order to start something in our neighbourhood. That’s where I met Julien and Louise, and we’ve been in the Montreuil gilets jaunes up to this date.”
“On December 1st, I don’t know if the police is so repressive yet, because they were completely overwhelmed. According to me, that was our window of opportunity, something even bigger could have happened. Because that’s the moment they also understood that it was an insurrection, and then they put everything in action to crush it. On December 8th, they were overwhelmed as well, but everything was in place, not just the police repression, but also their media machine. This is the week from the 1st to the 8th that needs to be studied to understand what happened.”
Julien: “The Triumphal Arch issue was the perfect pretext for politicians (on December 1st, protesters stormed this monument and took it, causing some material damages). The barricades looked problematic, but it wasn’t that bad, whereas there was a huge media campaign during the next week on the vandalism of the Triumphal Arch. They did a crazy agitation they whole week on the Arch, on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, on the tags, the damages. There was a great media operation by the government to delegitimate the GJ, present them as breakers. And it all served to legitimate the repression for the next week, with the deployment of the BAC (brigade anti-criminalité) and, later, the BRAV (brigade de répression de la violence).”
Louise: “What was really interesting among demonstrators was that they felt completely legitimate to demonstrate. The barricades, and the violence, it was all a fully natural violence, people didn’t ‘learn’ how to do that, they were just outraged that the police wouldn’t let them go to the presidential palace. They said, ‘We have the right to go so we’ll do everything to pass’. I was stunned to see people just throwing cobblestones, without being …, like, trained,” she says laughing. “For them, it was just so logical!”
Julien: “It was crazy, we could just go through the whole Paris as a wild demonstration, I had never seen that before, and never saw it again. It looked like the State had vanished, the street was ours, we thought we were hallucinating, that the cops would just come in at some point. But they didn’t. We went from the Champs-Élysées to Place de la République (5 km), like an hour and a half, without seeing a cop, or just a car coming and then escaping. It was a feverish atmosphere, but things didn’t really materialise…”
Louise: “It was an insurrection, but the issue was that people didn’t know the city, the buildings, where to go. We were next to the Stock Market, or the public TV, that could’ve been interesting to seize, but people were really focused on the presidential palace. So it was an insurrection, but there was no strategy, even if we had the streets to ourselves.”
Youri: “I thought it was the revolution. It was the best opportunity in my life. I thought the fire would grow even more. But it turned out more to be a revolt, a failed insurrection, something in between. I think it didn’t turn out to be a revolution because some key social groups didn’t come out at that moment, like the middle classes and the youth, especially in the cities. And also the poorer classes with a migration background. Not especially during the demonstrations, they were there, but they didn’t get involved in between the Saturday demonstrations, that were more like demonstrations of force. But the in-between, that’s when something revolutionary was happening, according to me, but in the cities, there was almost nothing happening, that really damaged the movement, there was a desertion of the urban classes.”
Julien: Some things really changed, the spread of certain tactics, like the issue of violence. There has been an evolution in the relationship towards police forces. At first, people were rather in favour of the police, calling on the police to join them, but within two months they had all understood the violence used against them. There was an instinctive reaction to regroup and to rethink violence as a legitimate mean to respond. I think this is something that the GJ movement has changed.
Youri: This is a turning point. Maybe I’m looking at things from an international perspective. It’s the peak of an intense political moment. Even if the GJ were not always part of previous movements, it’s the result of developments starting in 2016 and before. Suddenly, the movement became wider, more popular, and also more dangerous. We also saw a bunch of weak points of what would be a contemporary revolutionary movement, our weaknesses were laid bare open.
Julien: There was an opening, an opportunity, that the radical left failed to seize.
Youri: It showed weaknesses in the organisation of radical organisations, and also traditional ones. The GJ movement is an important moment of political recomposition, as well as a period of incredibly intense politicisation. Just like in all insurrectionary moments, there was a crazy wave of politicisation that will be felt in the next years. There is an enormous amount of political work to do, that needs to include an abandonment of some dogmatic positions by some groups.
Antoine: As Julien said, perspectives on violence changed, and even on direct action in general. It’s something that’s more associated with the autonomous left, libertarian left, with civil disobedience movements in the last years. Not just about forms, but also about the content, as a practice, a real pratice without intermediaries.
This leads to a further delegitimisation of intermediate bodies, like trade unions, who have the role of buffers between institutions and society. This was not just about the inability of these bodies to seize the real identity of the movement, even if I must say that some trade unions helped a lot on the local level. It was also about the State going from neo-liberalism towards the police State, a shift that has continued with the pandemic.
The last point was the question of the local. There was a re-politicisation of the local, of neighbourhood issues, and this has continued during the pandemic through solidarity networks. We’re in a process of a constant reshaping of forms. For a while, assemblies were used, now we’ve moved on. There’s a constant effervescence, and that has been created by the GJ in many places where there was nothing happening. It’s hard to have a full assessment, because there are so many places about which we don’t have much information, we don’t know about the results of all those roundabout GJ groups. For the moment, there is no strong interlinking between groups. It’s all under the radar. We need to know more about this reality to go further.
Julien: “We shouldn’t negate that there were fascists among the GJ. There were organised fascist groups that came to the demonstrations in Paris, those were enemies that had to be kicked out, but then there were reactionary elements, stereotypes, that had to be dealt it through discussion, not through violence.”
“We could see that national symbols, the Marseillaise, could have a revolutionary effect, a really galvanising one, but it also has an exclusionary effect for many people. It scares some. I think that was a mistake of the movement.”
Louise: “I remember, on December 1st, the first big barricade that was set up, there were organised far-right groups that were there. There were images of that, they did a lot of propaganda with that, they put their flags everywhere. And that also played a role on the involvement of the radical left, which then came in later, rather together with the Antifa to kick out those fascist elements.”
Julien: “And those fascists, they were wearing the yellow vest, whereas a lot of leftists, like the antifa, had a lot of trouble to adopt the yellow vest, even when they were kicking out the fascists. That created a weird image.” Louise: “Yeah, especially the Black Bloc, some people were a bit worried, not knowing about who were those people in black.” Youri: “Yeah, that kinda looked like the Black Bloc attacked the GJ”, whereas it was more like the antifa attacking fascists, and they did it well.”
Louise: “Yes, I agree with Youri, the left, or at least the radical left, intervened really late. And mostly during the demonstrations, the clashes, but they participated really little during the weeks. Leftists were suspicious, and also there was something about those activists not wanting to do the ‘dirty work’, you know, during the winter, standing on the roundabout and talking with ordinary citizens. Who wants to do that? Not many…”
Julien: “We could really see that among people with a migration background, the people from the quartiers populaires (densely populated neighbourhoods, mostly suburbs where working-class people live, mostly coming from former French colonies), the youth being like ‘Hey, wait, aren’t they racist?’ That was a factor that really maintained a distance between the GJ on the one hand and the left, and radical left, and the working classes with a migration background on the other. That also has to do with the regime’s strategies, targeting some elements of a movement. Just like the discourse about ‘breakers’, there was a discourse about ‘fascists’.
Youri recalls the incident with French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who “received anti-Semitic insults from one person at a GJ protest, but then they talked about it on the media for four days, saying that all GJ are anti-Semitic. That really did some damage.”
“The GJ was well cleaned up of fascists. There was a period of 2-3 weeks of clashes in Lyon and Paris, after the Paris fascist group ‘Les zouaves’ had attacked a GJ anti-capitalist group (from the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste) . There was a strong reaction by the antifascists, together with people from the cites, who went on a mission to kick those people out at demonstrations.”
“But it was also a debate about the movement in general, we had a lot of discussions in Montreuil about Islam, conspirationism, but that’s not the same thing as straight-up organised fascists. Organised fascists were progressively kicked out from the movement.”
Youri: “There was still a non-negligible part of the movement that was rather inclining towards the Rassemblement National (RN, far-right), on some roundabout there were fights, some split in two groups on the same spot, with a more left-leaning and a more right-leaning one.”
Julien: “On December 1st, and then especially on December 8th, there’s a real toughening of repression, and that has an impact on both the attitude of the GJ who continue to protest and on the composition of the crowd. Crazy things happened, such as the Black Bloc getting an ovation on the Champs-Élysées, scenes impossible to imagine. More leftist people, more determinate, joined the protests.”
Louise: “We could see a change in the chants and in the relationship to the police. When it started to repress more harshly, people stopped chanting ‘La police, avec nous!’, it was more anti-cop chants.”
“What mostly changed in early December, especially on December 8th, when repression was more brutal. Those were things that we already knew, I wasn’t surprised, but there was a big contrast with the previous weeks. I was rather surprised they hadn’t used all their usual techniques in the previous demonstrations.
What changed things was when the Détachements d’action rapide (DAR) were put in action. They were much lighter and made rapid interventions. And then in March they created the BRAV (brigade de répression de la violence) who was on motorcycles.
What was specific about police repression at that point was that it was against everyone. It didn’t matter if you wore a mask or not, they were just breaking skulls, shooting flashballs everywhere. Then ‘Black Bloc’ tactics spread, people wore more masks, to protect themselves from shots, gas, and also camera monitoring. But nowhere in the demonstration would you feel safe.
At first, when it was more like riots, we were stronger, we could disperse, but when we came back towards more organised forms, like marches. And then they were just shooting on everyone.
I had a personal experience with the DAR and it’s really impressive. It was happening before, but those could real trap people on a street corner and beat them up badly, and even just release them afterwards. It was more about fear, about punishment.
But there were also many arrests, an incredible number of speed trials each Monday with those arrested on the previous Saturday. And unfortunately, there were many tricks on how to defend yourself against the police, against the judiciary, that were not known to many people in the GJ. I went to some trials and it was quite crazy.
On March 16th, there was a big meeting of GJ in Paris for a demonstration, there were barricades everywhere, with the police trapping us on the Champs-Élysées. With a group of about 30, we tried to break the blockage in a side street, thinking it was heavily equipped, and thus slow, CRS (the usual anti-riot forces), but then they started running towards us, catching the first line. And we were unlucky, because we were alone, with no camera to film. The presence of journalists can sometimes be helpful, but there were none.
They hit me for 5 minutes, insulting me as a ‘bitch’, a ‘little whore’, they cracked open my friend’s skull. Luckily, they messed up their arrest papers for me, so I was released after the arrest. They’re groups that are made for interventions, jumping in and beating up people, so they transferred us to another unit, but they didn’t do the arrest papers. By March 16, just having a mask, or protection goggles, would be enough to get sentenced, under this article about “gathering with the intention of committing violence”, which was used against pretty much anyone. But luckily they didn’t do the arrest papers with the list of the things I had on me, so I could get rid of them on my way to the cell. I only had to stay for 48h and then they had to release me.”
Julien: When you look at the profile of those people who were maimed (lost an eye, a hand), about ¾ of them were first-time demonstrators. Some of the people who lost an eye had never been to a demonstration before. This whole idea that radicals were targeted is not true at all. Many were from the countryside, just came to the demonstration and lost an eye or were beaten up.
Louise: I think the goal was to dissuade, that’s how I saw it. From what I could see, and also from all the people I was detained with. There were also different intimidation techniques. They also tried to gain access to mobile phones, to get information about the organised groups, they put a lot of pressure on this goal.
Julien: A big change also was when they started to do a lot of controls ahead of the demonstrations. Starting from December 8th, the police was controlling all the toll booths leading into Paris, and already at 8AM on Saturdays they would have arrested thousands of people. And also at train stations, or before the demonstration in the streets. That was completely new. And that’s why they were accusing everyone with this article about “gathering with the intention of committing violence.” It was enough to have a jack in your car to spend 48h in arrest. They were just arresting everyone. And then there were prosecutors who were insisting on keeping people for the full 48h to prevent them from going to the demonstration, even if they had no evidence against them, which is completely illegal.
Louise: There were also prohibitions to go into some areas of Paris, even for some people who were actually working in Paris, they would be banned from those areas.
Élise: I think that starting from December 8, it wasn’t only about dissuading, but also about containing. They were under pressure after all these images of Paris burning, all this mess. March 16th was the last demonstration in Paris when we thought that we could overwhelm the police, bypass their whole set-up around the Champs-Élysées. And that’s when they put in the BRAV, and it made it hard to escape the format of a march with a predetermined itinerary. It wasn’t possible to go out and target some institutions. It was about dictating the proceedings of the demonstration.
Louise: What also played a role in that is when they started to play out the good GJ versus the bad GJ, when some GJ accepted to register demonstrations. That was especially in Paris. Then they were the good demonstrators that would not be repressed so hard and keep to their pre-agreed march, while others could be smashed, they were the Black Bloc, the breakers.
Antoine: Another important point was the penal repression, there were 400-450 people sent straight to jail, and another 600 deferred jail sentences; 1000 in total. Without counting all the suspended sentences. It’s thousands. It’s astronomical! For months and years, we have hundreds of people in prisons all over France. The only possible comparison in the last 50 years in France are the 2005 riots, the uprising in the banlieues. Back then, there were also thousands of arrests and about 800 jail sentences.
It’s crazy, especially in a context where there is no strong structure to help those help, there are enormous psychological traumas. This huge incarceration is not medialised so much. Police violence has become a big topic, judiciary repression has also been covered, but there’s almost nothing about penal repression.
We’re seeing an authoritarian shift, or rather an extension of authoritarian methods that were previously used against working-class neighbourhoods. There is now a generalisation of methods developed in a post-colonial context.
Antoine: what is important to underline is that the first activist group to call for joining the GJ mobilisation was the Vérité et Justice pour Adama committee (a committee set up to seek justice for Adama Traoré, a young Black man killed by the French police in 2016), together with antifascists and a queer liberation group. This is highly symbolic: those were the first ones who dared to jump in and join the movement.
They were the first to produce powerful analyses of the link between the GJ movement and the quartiers populaires, far from radical leftist ideological purity. They saw the link between police repression in the colonies, against migrant populations in the quartiers populaires and the repression of the GJ, seeing that there was no coincidence, but rather an extension of authoritarian practices.
Justice pour Adama committee
Julien: This logic of hitting, going in for the contact, to shoot, and to aim for physical punishment of individuals: those are all colonial practices. This is more similar to what happened during the war in Algeria, during repression in Guadeloupe, when the prefect would simply give the order to shoot into the crowd with live ammunition. This is a different logic from classic crowd control which aims at containing a crowd and limiting damage. Now, this is the new norm. We can see it with current protests by high school students (lycéens), as soon as the police is blocked, they just charge in and beat everyone up. This is rather new.
Antoine: The German weekly Der Spiegel, which can hardly be called radical, not long ago talked about France as an „authoritarian Absurdistan“. Myself, I’m afraid to go to demonstrations nowadays, in Paris, Marseille, Lyon or elsewhere. On Tuesday, there’s a demonstration in Paris against the new legislative proposal ‘Loi sécurité globale’ to increase police control. They even want to forbid the filming of police interventions, even though that played a huge role in raising consciousness about repression during the GJ movement. The GJ movement empowered a lot of citizens, with many people becoming ‘their own media’, and closely documenting police violence, with media closer to the action. That has discredited even more intermediary bodies like mainstream media, replacing them with citizen media closer to what is happening on the ground. That has been one of the big victories of the movement.
It’s important to go to the demonstration on Tuesday, but I’m freaking out. I’m afraid it will be a massacre.
Julien: „What is freaky is the noise. Now, we know the noise made by different weapons, and when we hear those specific smacks made by flashballs, we don’t know who they’re targeting and the crowd freaks out. I remember lying down on the ground at some demonstrations as bullets were flying. You don’t know where it’s coming from, you can’t do anything.“
„I wouldn’t say that the police repression now is fully generalised. I think there’s a distinction between good and bad demonstrations. During the recent demonstrations against a reform of the pension system, you could see police showing a lot more restrain than usually. So there’s a duality where there are demonstrations organised by the intermediary bodies like trade unions during which the police shows more restrain, even when being provoked, and then there are other demonstrations when the police can freely maim and beat up demonstrators. It’s as if they wanted to show a nicer face during the trade union demonstrations, pretending that the police is not violent and that the GJ only got what they deserved.“
Louise: It’s true, but then, I also noticed that there was a huge concentration of police at the trade union demonstrations, marching in front of the crowd, preventing it from starting anything. We couldn’t move at all, there were thousands of cops. It seemed like there was more cops than demonstrators.
Julien: It was beautiful!
Louise: Yes, so many encounters, and it continues! Sure, the groups have become smaller, but it’s still happening, in Montreuil and elsewhere. It is transforming, it is taking new forms on the local level. And you could see the changes: when the pension reform protests started, we could see the trade union coming to see the GJ straight up, the teachers came, they were coming to assemblies to ask to join. Now it’s more local, like municipalism.
Julien: Yeah, there is a giletsjaunisation of activism in France.
Παρέμβαση που έκανε ο σ. Ντίνος Αγιομαμίτης εκ μέρους της Εργατικής Δημοκρατίας στη συζήτηση «Ο ιμπεριαλισμός σήμερα και η Ελληνοτουρκική κρίση» στα πλαίσια της ημερίδας, «Παλεύουμε για το Σοσιαλισμο» που οργάνωσε το Σοσιαλιστικό Εργατικό Κόμμα στην Αθήνα την Κυριακή 8 Νοεμβρίου.
Το σημερινό πρωτοσέλιδο του Πολίτη, της δεύτερης σε κυκλοφορία εφημερίδας στη Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία και το μεγάλο μέρος των άλλων σελίδων του ασχολούνται με τις εξελίξεις στην ευρύτερη περιοχή και το Κυπριακό. Αποκαλύπτει μάλιστα ότι στο περιθώριο της διάσκεψης στο Κράν Μοντανά που έγινε τον Ιούλιο του 2017 ο Αναστασιάδης προσέγγισε τον Τσαβούσογλου και του είπε ότι χάνουμε τον χρόνο μας συζητώντας για διζωνική δικοινοτική ομοσπονδία και ότι έπρεπε να αναζητηθούν άλλες λύσεις. Ο Αναστασιάδης ζήτησε πίστωση χρόνου να περάσουν οι προεδρικές εκλογές που ήταν τον Φλεβάρη του 2018. Η Τουρκία σύμφωνα με το δημοσίευμα του την έδωσε, απέχοντας από τις συνήθεις προκλήσεις, ενώ ο Αναστασιάδης προσπαθούσε στο παρασκήνιο να εξασφαλίσει λύση δύο κρατών.
Εκείνη την περίοδο ήταν που είπε απευθυνόμενος στους τουρκοκύπριους το περίφημο πάρτε τη δική σας ΑΟΖ στο βορρά και αφήστε τη δική μας ήσυχη, αναγνωρίζοντας για πρώτη φορά κρατική υπόσταση στο τουρκοκυπριακό κράτος που να δικαιούται και δική του ΑΟΖ. Βέβαια μετά τα μάσησε και το επίσημο αφήγημα ήταν ότι οι συνομιλίες κατέρρευσαν εξαιτίας της τουρκικής αδιαλλαξίας. Βέβαια πολλοί ξέρουν ότι δεν ήταν έτσι τα πράγματα. Για αυτό εξάλλου και επιστράτευσε τον πρώην υπουργό εξωτερικών τον Κοτζιά ο οποίος σε συνέντευξη του σε κυπριακό κανάλι προσπάθησε να ξεπλύνει τον Αναστασιάδη και να στηρίξει το αφήγημα του. Το μόνο που κατάφερε ήταν να γελοιοποιηθεί και στην ουσία να επιβεβαιώσει ότι ήταν ο Αναστασιάδης που έφυγε από τις συνομιλίες.
Παρά τις προσπάθειες του εκείνη την περίοδο δεν κατάφερε να πείσει για την ανάγκη λύσης δύο κρατών γιατί ακόμη και αυτοί που το θέλουν δεν τολμούν να το στηρίξουν ανοικτά. Αυτό έφερε ξανά τα πράγματα σε πορεία αντιπαράθεσης με την Τουρκία την οποία προσπαθεί να αποκλείσει από τις εξελίξεις στην περιοχή. Μαζί με τον Μητσοτάκη συμμετέχει και οξύνει τους ανταγωνισμούς για τον έλεγχο του πετρελαίου, του φυσικού αέριου και των αγωγών κτίζοντας συμμαχίες με τα πιο αυταρχικά και δολοφονικά καθεστώτα της περιοχής όπως τον Σίσυ, τον Νετανιάχου, τον Εμίρη του Κουβέτι, το Βασιλιά της Ιορδανίας και βάλε.
Έχει διαγράψει την επαναπροσέγγιση και τη συνεργασία με τους τουρκοκύπριους και έγινε ο νεκροθάφτης της επανένωσης για να εξυπηρετήσει τα δικά του συμφέροντα και μια κλίκας γύρω από τον ίδιο και το περιβάλλον του.
Μας έκανε «συμπατριώτες» με την αφρόκρεμα των διεθνών απατεώνων, και φοροφυγάδων παραχωρώντας τους την κυπριακή - ευρωπαϊκή υπηκοότητα και μας υπόσχεται ότι θα πατάξει τη διαφθορά. Την ώρα που τον κράζουν όλοι αυτός εμφανίζεται με το φωτοστέφανο του άμωμου. Θα σας δώσω μόνο ένα παράδειγμα από την εμπλοκή του στη διαφθορά: Tο δικηγορικό του γραφείο είναι οικογενειακή επιχείρηση. Το γραφείο Αναστασιάδη διεκπεραίωσε μεγάλο αριθμό διαβατηρίων. Δηλαδή η οικογενειακή επιχείρηση υποβάλλει αίτημα για έκδοση διαβατηρίου, με το αζημίωτο φυσικά αφού θα συνοδεύεται με την αγορά διαμερίσματος στους πύργους που κτίζει ο γαμπρός του Αναστασιάδη και την απόφαση για έκδοση του διαβατηρίου θα την πάρει το υπουργικό συμβούλιο στο οποίο προεδρεύει ο Αναστασιάδης. Ο ορισμός του σκανδάλου και της διαφθοράς.
Δέν υπάρχουν μέσες λύσεις. Τα σκάνδαλα και η διαφθορά, είναι συνυφασμένα με ένα σύστημα που στην καρδιά του έχει το κέρδος και την εκμετάλλευση. Δεν έχει να κάνει με πρόσωπα και λάθος επιλογές. Έχει να κάνει με το σύστημα της απληστίας και του ανταγωνισμού που βάζει τα κέρδη πάνω από τις ανθρώπινες ζωές. Με το σύστημα που θεοποιεί την εκμετάλλευση και τον πλουτισμό. Που χρησιμοποιεί τη διαφορετικότητα για να χωρίζει το κόσμο και να τον κρατά υπόδουλο. Όλα αυτά δεν διορθώνονται, δεν μπορούμε να έχουμε δικαιοσύνη, δημοκρατία και σεβασμό στη διαφορετικότητα μέσα στο καπιταλισμό. Χρειάζεται να τον ανατρέψουμε.
Ο καπιταλισμός δεν είναι απρόσωπος. Έχει και τους εκπροσώπους του και τους εκφραστές του. Ο Αναστασιάδης είναι αυτή ακριβώς η προσωποποίηση του. Οι πολιτικές του τα τελευταία 7 χρόνια που κυβερνά το επιβεβαιώνουν με το πιο δραματικό τρόπο. Είναι η χειρότερη διακυβέρνηση από καταβολής Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας για τους απλούς ανθρώπους. Είναι η πιο διεφθαρμένη και επικίνδυνη διακυβέρνηση από την εποχή του πραξικοπήματος. Παίζει παιχνίδια με τη φωτιά και συμμετέχει στους ιμπεριαλιστικούς ανταγωνισμούς σε μια περιοχή που κυριολεχτικά είναι η πιο καυτή περιοχή του πλανήτη αυτή τη στιγμή.
Χρειάζεται να φύγει τώρα.
Είναι αυτό μια ρεαλιστική προοπτική σήμερα. Είναι.
Έχουμε πολλά χρόνια να ζήσουμε ένα τέτοιο έντονο αντικυβερνητικό κλίμα και ένα τέτοιο κύμα αντικυβερνητικών διαδηλώσεων:
Ηταν δυστυχώς Ασυντόνιστες με πολιτικά συγχυσμένα αιτήματα και χωρίς ξεκάθαρους στόχους. Το ΑΚΕΛ δεν θέλει να μπεί μπροστά παρά το ότι χτές οργάνωσε μια μεγάλη διαδήλωση έξω από το προεδρικό, για δύο λόγους:
Το κίνημα παρ όλα αυτά είναι εκεί. Το ίδιο θα είμαστε και εμείς εκεί, να προβάλουμε τις ιδέες μας και να συνδέσουμε τη πάλη μας με την προοπτική της ανατροπής, ξεκινώντας από την ανατροπή της κυβέρνησης Αναστασιάδη.
Τα ίδια φαινόμενα και μάλιστα πολύ πιο έντονα βλέπουμε και στην άλλη πλευρά με τους Τουρκοκύπριους. Μπορεί να κέρδισε ο Τατάρ τις έκλογές αλλά όλοι ξέρουμε πως τις κέρδισε, τι νοθεία έγινε και τι παρεμβάσεις από το κόμμα του Ερτογάν. Παρ όλα αυτά τα πράγματα δεν είναι μαύρα.
Η μάχη θα δοθεί και στις δυο πλευρές. Έχουμε τις εμπειρίες και τα κανάλια επικοινωνίας όσο και αν έκλεισαν το οδοφράγματα και θα τις δώσουμε μαζί ενάντια στη διαφθορά, ενάντια στον εθνικισμό και την απειλή του πολέμου για μια καλύτερη κοινωνία, το σοσιαλισμό.
Τον περασμένο Ιούλη, κατατέθηκε πρόταση νόμου για ποινικοποίηση της αγοράς σεξουαλικών υπηρεσιών που την κοινοβουλευτική ομάδα του ΑΚΕΛ. Τούτη η πρόταση βασίζεται στο σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο (nordic model) τζιαι εν μέρος τούτου που ονομάζεται carceral feminism, της προσέγγισης, δηλαδή, που βλέπει την αυξημένη αστυνόμευση, επιτήρηση, διώξεις, φυλακίσεις τζιαι άλλες διαδικασίες του ποινικού συστήματος ως πρώτη γραμμή αντιμετώπισης της βίας εναντίον των γυναικών. Σε τούτο το πλαίσιο, επικρατεί η αντίληψη ότι η πορνεία ισοδυναμεί με βία κατά των γυναικών τζιαι, συνήθως, η οποιαδήποτε συμμετοχή στην βιομηχανία του σεξ ορίζεται με όρους σωματεμπορίας (trafficking) αντί εργασίας, αποτρέποντας οποιαδήποτε συζήτηση για εργασιακά δικαιώματα τζιαι προστασίες των σεξεργατριών. Ειρωνικά, ενώ υπερτονίζεται η κακοποίηση τζιαι εκμετάλλευση εκ μέρους μαστροπών τζιαι πελατών, στις δηλώσεις των υποστηρικτών της πρότασης εν ακούμε λέξη για άλλες μορφές έμφυλης βίας, που εννά νομιμοποιηθούν ακόμα περισσόττερο, αν περάσει το νομοσχέδιο,–που μπάτσους, ιδιοκτήτες, λειτουργούς της υπηρεσίας αλλοδαπών τζιαι μετανάστευσης τζιαι άλλους.
Αφού περιγράψουμε εν συντομία το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο, πάνω στο οποίο βασίζεται η πρόταση, τζιαι δούμε πώς πτυχές του βρίσκονται ήδη σε εφαρμογή, βάσει των υφιστάμενων νόμων, με αρνητικές συνέπειες για τες σεξεργάτριες, εν να προσπαθήσουμε να αναδείξουμε τζιαι να δούμε με μια κριτική ματιά τες υποβόσκουσες υποθέσεις γυρώ που το σεξ, την εργασία τζιαι την μετανάστευση. Μέσα που τούτη την ανάλυση, φτάννουμε σε κάποια συμπεράσματα τζιαι προβλέψεις για περισσότερη βία, επισφάλεια τζιαι καταστολή των ατόμων που πουλούν υπηρεσίες σεξ, σε περίπτωση εφαρμογής του προτεινόμενου νομοσχεδίου. Τούντα συμπεράσματα, όμως, έννεν ούτε τζιαινούρκα ούτε μόνο δικά μας. Εν βασισμένα στες φωνές σεξεργατριών/ων που άλλες χώρες, όπου εφαρμόστηκαν ίδια τζιαι παρόμοια νομοσχέδια ποινικοποίησης των πελατών, τζιαι άλλοι νόμοι, που κάθε άλλο παρά προστασία, δικαιώματα τζιαι ενδυνάμωση έχουν να προσφέρουν.
ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΗ
Το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο, στο οποίο βασίζεται η πρόταση για ποινικοποίηση αγοράς σεξουαλικών υπηρεσιών συγκεντρώνεται σε τέσσερις τομείς: τους αγοραστές, τα άτομα που πουλούν υπηρεσίες σεξ, υπηρεσίες «εξόδου» τζιαι τρίτα άτομα (π.χ. μαστροπούς ή διακινητές). Εστιάζει στην ποινικοποίηση των πελατών, πιστεύκοντας πως με τούτο τον τρόπο στέλνεται ένα ηχηρό μήνυμα στην κοινωνία –τζιαι κυρίως στους άνδρες–, ότι η αγορά υπηρεσιών σεξ εν κάτι κακό. Κατά συνέπεια, πιστεύκει ότι με τούντο τρόπο εννά μειωθεί η ζήτηση για τέθκοιες υπηρεσίες. Το άλλο, θεωρητικά δυνατό χαρτί του μοντέλου, που συνεισφέρει στην προβολή του ως πανάκεια για τα προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζουν οι σεξεργάτριες, εν τα διάφορα σχέδια τζιαι υπηρεσίες «εξόδου», που σκοπεύκουν να βοηθήσουν όσες θέλουν να βρουν στήριξη τζιαι να αλλάξουν επάγγελμα.
Αντιλαμβανόμαστε γιατί πολλά που τούτα ακούουνται καλά, τουλάχιστον στα χαρτιά. Όπως εν να δούμε πάρακατω,όμως, στην εφαρμογή του, τίποτε έννεν τόσο καλόν όσον ακούεται. Εν υπάρχει τρόπος να μειωθεί η ζήτηση, χωρίς να αφήκει τα άτομα που πουλούν σεξ εκτεθειμένα σε συνθήκες επισφάλειας, επιτήρησης, καταστολής, με αρνητικό οικονομικό αντίκτυπο τζιαι μειωμένη διαπραγματευτική δύναμη με τους πελάτες τους. Επίσης, αν τζιαι οι υποστηρικτές του μοντέλου τείνουν να τονίζουν την ποινικοποίηση της ζήτησης (πελάτες) σε αντιδιαστολή με την αποποινικοποιημένη προσφορά (σεξεργάτριες), επί του πρακτέου, σε κάθε χώρα που εφαρμόζονται τέθκοια μοντέλα διατηρείται άμεσα ή έμμεσα ποινικοποίηση της σεξεργασίας, μέσα που την ποινικοποίηση της προώθησης των υπηρεσιών αλλά τζιαι πρακτικών που χρησιμοποιούν οι σεξεργάτριες για δική τους ασφάλεια, όπως το να νοικιάζουν μαζί κάποιο χώρο για να εργάζονται. Σε μια σύντομη αναζήτηση για την Κύπρο, εμφανίζονται διάφορα περιστατικά συλλήψεων δύο ή τριών γυναικών, με κατηγορίες για μαστροπεία τζιαι «αποζείν από κέρδη πορνείας». Σε άλλες περιπτώσεις στο εξωτερικό, συνοδοί που διαφημίζονται ως «duo», διαφημίζοντας δηλαδή την δυνατότητα για τρίο μαζί με τον πελάτη τζιαι μια άλλη σεξεργάτρια, κατηγορούνται για διατήρηση οίκου ανοχής. Ο φόβος των ιδιοκτητών σπιτιών τζιαι διαμερισμάτων να μεν διωχθούν νομικά ως τρίτα πρόσωπα που κερδοφορούν που κέρδη πορνείας, μαστροποί ή διατηρητές οίκου ανοχής, δυσκολέφκει την πρόσβαση σε ασφαλές εργασιακό περιβάλλον για πολλές σεξεργάτριες τζιαι διατηρεί ψηλά τον αριθμό των εξώσεων. Στην Αμερική, τα νομοσχέδια Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) τζιαι Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), που περάσαν πριν θκυο χρόνια με στόχο να εμποδιστεί η σωματεμπορία μέσω διαδικτύου, κατέστησαν διάφορες διαδικτυακές πλατφόρμες υπεύθυνες για το τι κάμνουν οι χρήστες στις πλατφόρμες τους. Μέσα που τούντες πλατφόρμες, όμως, πέραν που κάποια περιστατικά, που έχουν όντως να κάμουν με καταναγκαστική πορνεία ή σωματεμπορία, οι σεξεργάτριες επροωθούσαν τις υπηρεσίες τους, αλλά τζιαι εμπορούσαν να φιλτράρουν τους πελάτες τους πριν προχωρήσουν σε φυσική συνάντηση. Αν τζιαι η Αμερική εν υιοθετά το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο, αφού εν πιο κοντά σε ένα μοντέλο πλήρους ποινικοποίησης της σεξεργασίας, αναφέρουμε τούτο το παράδειγμα, για να τοποθετήσουμε την πρόταση για αλλαγή νόμου στην Κύπρο εντός μιας παγκόσμιας κλίμακας επίθεσης στα δικαιώματα των εργαζομένων στο σεξ, στο όνομα της προστασίας τους τζιαι της καταπολέμησης της σωματεμπορίας.
Στην Κύπρο, είδαμε τούντο μοντέλο να παρουσιάζεται ως σωτήρια λύση στην αδυναμία της αστυνομίας να συλλάβει, να διώξει τζιαι να καταδικάσει μαστροπούς τζιαι διακινητές. Ήδη που δαμέ εν φανερή η σύνδεση μεταξύ πορνείας τζιαι σωματεμπορίας, που πηγάζει που συγκεκριμένες ιδεολογικές αντιλήψεις για το σεξ. Βλέπουμε σε διάφορες συζητήσεις μια προσπάθεια να αντλήσουν κοινωνική τζιαι ηθική νομιμοποίηση, μέσα που αναφορά στα θύματα σωματεμπορίας που η ΚΔ απέτυχε να προστατεύσει, τζιαι την ανυπαρξία καταδίκης οποιουδήποτε σωματέμπορα1. Για να εντάξουμε την πρόταση ποινικοποίησης αγοράς σεξουαλικών υπηρεσιών σε ένα σύντομο χρονικό των τελευταίων δέκα χρόνων, σημειώνουμε τα ακόλουθα:
2009 – κατάργηση βίζας καλλιτέχνιδος
2010 – καταδίκη ΚΔ που ΕΔΑΔ για υπόθεση Οξάνας
2014 – ποινικοποίηση χρήσης υπηρεσιών θυμάτων σωματεμπορίας
2020 – πρόταση για ποινικοποίηση αγοράς σεξουαλικών υπηρεσιών
Όσον αφορά το προτεινόμενο «σχέδιο εξόδου», έννεν κακό που μόνο του να υπάρχει κάποιο πρόγραμμα για σεξ-εργάτριες που αυτόβουλα θέλουν να αλλάξουν τομέα εργασίας ή να υπάρχει πρόσβαση σε υπηρεσίες στήριξης με μια λογική μείωσης της βλάβης (harm reduction), που θα μπορούσε να συμπεριλαμβάνει μεταξύ άλλων διανομή προφυλακτικών, δωρεάν εξετάσεις για ΣΜΝ, σεμινάρια για ασφαλέστερη εργασία κ.ά. Το όνομα, όμως, εν που μόνο του προβληματικό τζιαι ιδεολογικά φορτισμένο, ενδεικτικό του πώς κάποιοι φαντάζονται την εργασία στην βιομηχανία του σεξ, ως ένα εφιάλτη,δηλαδή, που τον οποίο κάποια πρέπει να διαφύγει. Αν τζιαι δεν εδημοσιευτήκαν οι λεπτομέρειες της πρότασης, κάποια πράματα εν προβλέψιμα. Για να λειτουργήσει αποτελεσματικά ένα τέτοιο σχέδιο κοστίζει. Πολλά. Τούτο, γιατί ένα σημαντικό κομμάτι του εν μπορεί, παρά να εν η οικονομική υποστήριξη όσων σταματούν να δουλέφκουν ως σεξεργάτριες, ώσπου να βρουν μια δουλειά, μέσα που την οποία να μπορούν να διασφαλίζουν αρκετούς πόρους για να ζουν. Στην Σουηδία, όμως, που συχνά παρουσιάζεται ως το success story του μοντέλου, τα λεφτά που εχορηγηθήκαν στην αστυνομία, σε πολλαπλές περιπτώσεις, με στόχο την επιβολή του μοντέλου εν δυσανάλογα περισσότερα σε σχέση με όσα εχορηγήθηκαν σε διάφορα κέντρα που προσφέρουν κοινωνικές υπηρεσίες τζιαι στήριξη σε σεξεργάτριες2. Στην Κύπρο, ενώ θεσμοί, όπως η Πολυθεματική Συντονιστική Ομάδα κατά της εμπορίας προσώπων υπολειτουργούν, κοινωνικές υπηρεσίες τζιαι αστυνομία καθυστερούν ή αδυνατούν να προστατεύσουν τζιαι να περιθάλψουν αποτελεσματικά, αναγνωρισμένα θύματα σωματεμπορίας, τζιαι ενώ διανύουμε ακόμα μια περίοδο οικονομικής κρίσης, ακόμα τζιαι που την οπτική κάποιου που πιστέφκει στην δύναμη τζιαι τη θέληση του κράτους να προστατεύσει ευάλωτες ομάδες, εν παντελώς αφελές να περιμένουμε ότι ένα τέτοιο «σχέδιο εξόδου» εννα στηριχτεί αποτελεσματικά με τους οικονομικούς πόρους που χρειάζεται για να λειτουργήσει. Εκτός τζι αν στον νου τους έχουν πως τούτος θα εν, απλώς, ένας μηχανισμός, μέσα που τον οποίον εργάτριες στην βιομηχανία του σεξ ή στην καταναγκαστική πορνεία θα μπορούν να ενταχθούν σε κάποιον άλλο τομέα της οικονομίας, όπου υπάρχει ανάγκη για φτηνή εργασία.
ΣΕΞ
Ο ηθικός πανικός που δημιουργείται γύρω που το σεξ βοηθά να τεθεί ως επείγουσα προτεραιότητα η πάταξη του φαινομένου της σεξ-εργασίας, αφήνοντας στην άκρη οποιαδήποτε συζήτηση για εργασιακά δικαιώματα ή βελτίωση των συνθηκών τζιαι του βιοτικού επιπέδου όσων εργάζονται στην βιομηχανία του σεξ. Στον λόγο τους, οι SWERFS (Sex Exclusionary Radical Feminists)3 επικεντρώνονται γύρω που την βία που δέχονται οι εργαζόμενες στην βιομηχανία του σεξ, τζιαι επιλεκτικά αναπαράγουν τον λόγο επιζούσων γυναικών, που ήταν δέκτριες βίας εντός της βιομηχανίας, «επιβεβαιώνοντας» την γενικευμένη θέση τους ενάντια στην πορνεία, τζιαι υποστηρίζοντας ότι η τιμωρία των πελατών εν αναγκαία. Έτσι, οι “εξερχόμενες” που την βιομηχανία του σεξ γυναίκες γίνονται σύμβολο της πληγωμένης, τραυματισμένης θηλυκότητας, τζιαι η ποινικοποίηση των πελατών φαντάζει φεμινιστική δικαιοσύνη. Το σεξ τοποθετείται σε τούντες συζητήσεις ως κάτι εξιδανικευμένο που εν πουλιέται τζιαι πρέπει να περιορίζεται εντός ρομαντικών σχέσεων, με την συναισθηματική σύνδεση με το άλλο άτομο να δρα ρυθμιστικά. Εν η ίδια μισογυνική αντίληψη που υποτιμά τες γυναίκες που εν βρίσκουν κάποια ουσιοκρατική ιερότητα στο σεξ, τζιαι εναλλάσσουν συχνά ή έχουν διάφορους σεξουαλικούς συντρόφους. Για τους άντρες, εν φαίνεται να υπάρχει η ίδια ανησυχία, αφού το συχνό περιστασιακό σεξ εν γίνεται αντιληπτό ως κάτι που απειλεί την ακεραιότητά τους ως άτομα. Ίσως τούτος να εν τζιαι ένας που τους λόγους, που ενώ οι άντρες σεξεργάτες γίνονται τζιαι τζείνοι δέκτες –ομοφοβικής κυρίως– βίας που πελάτες τζιαι μπάτσους, τα μάθκια του παγκόσμιου κινήματος ενάντια στην πορνεία εν σχετικά κλειστά προς τες εμπειρίες τους.
Που την άλλη, απέναντι στον λόγο των SWERFS, υπάρχουν τζιαι κάποιες υπεραπλουστευμένες αναλύσεις, που διαπλεκόμενες με ταξικά τζιαι φυλετικά προνόμια, σε μια προσπάθεια απενοχοποίησης της σεξεργασίας εν αφήνουν χώρο για να συζητηθεί η βία τζιαι οι εργασιακές συνθήκες, αφού επισκιάζονται που συζητήσεις για ευχαρίστηση μέσα που την ίδια την εργασία. Εντός τούτης της ρητορικής που εστιάζει στην ηδονή/ευχαρίστηση, δημιουργείται, επίσης, κάποιες φορές μια ψευδαίσθηση ότι τα συμφέροντα των σεξεργατριών τζιαι του πελάτη είναι ένα, αφήνοντας στο περιθώριο συζητήσεις για ασφάλεια, λεφτά ή διαπραγματευτική δύναμη. Για μια θεώρηση της σεξεργασίας, ικανή να αντιληφθεί τις υλικές ανάγκες των εργατριών στη βιομηχανία του σεξ, είναι σημαντικό να κρατούμε ότι οι εργάτ@ είναι εκεί ως εργαζόμεν@ που θέλουν να πληρωθούν για τις υπηρεσίες τους, τζιαι ότι τούτη η επιτακτική οικονομική ανάγκη διαφέρει που το ψυχαγωγικό ενδιαφέρον των πελατών σε αυτές τις υπηρεσίες. Τούτη η αναγνώριση επιτρέπει να συζητηθεί τζιαι η βία, μεταξύ άλλων προκλήσεων και συνθηκών, που αντιμετωπίζουν οι σεξ-εργάτριες, χωρίς να καταλήγουμε στες στερεοτυπικές φιγούρες της «καημένης πόρνης» τζιαι του «κακού/ανήθικου πελάτη», που συχνά προωθούν οι υποστηρικτές της ποινικοποίησης των πελατών.
ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ
Ακούεται συχνά το επιχείρημα, ότι τα άτομα που εργάζονται στην βιομηχανία του σεξ είτε εξαναγκάζονται είτε οι κοινωνικοοικονομικές συνθήκες εξωθούν τα στην πορνεία. Που μιαν ελευθεριακή σκοπιάν, όμως, ούλλη η εργασία εν εξαναγκαστική, που την στιγμή που εν ο μόνος τρόπος να διασφαλίσει κάποια την διαβίωσή της. Τούτον εν σημαίνει ότι εν αναγνωρίζουμε ότι υπάρχει εκμετάλλευση γυναικών σε κυκλώματα μαφιόζων. Σωματεμπορία τζιαι μαύρη εργασία υπάρχει τζιαι πέραν που την βιομηχανία του σεξ, αλλά κανένας εν αμφισβητεί με την ίδια ευκολία τζιαι ζήλο ότι η απλέρωτη τζιαι υποτιμημένη εργασία μεταναστών στες αγροτικές περιοχές εν εργασία, τζιαι ότι τούτα τα άτομα πρέπει να έχουν πρόσβαση σε εργασιακά δικαιώματα τζιαι προστασία. Όσο για το ότι «καμιά εν θα εθκιάλεε τούτη τη δουλειά, αν είσσιεν επιλογή», το επιχείρημα ακυρώννεται μόνο του, αν απλώς κάποια ανοίξει τα αφτιά της στες φωνές των σεξεργατριών ανά το παγκόσμιο, που οργανώνονται τζιαι δημιουργούν φορείς ενδυνάμωσης τζιαι προάσπισης των δικαιωμάτων τους, τοπικά τζιαι διεθνή δίκτυα, σχέσεις αλληλεγγύης μεταξύ τους τζιαι διεκδικούν εργασιακά δικαιώματα. Αν δεν υπάρχει ακόμα στην Κύπρο μια οργάνωση όπως το Red Umbrella, εν σημαίνει πως εν υπάρχουν ούτε ντόπιες σεξεργάτριες που επιλέξαν τούντο επάγγελμα οικειοθελώς. Όποια τζιαι αν ένι η έκταση της καταναγκαστικής πορνείας στην Κύπρο, τέθκοια επιχειρήματα αποκλείουν εκ των προτέρων που εργασιακή προστασία τζιαι κοινωνικές υπηρεσίες, άτομα ούλλων των φύλων, ντόπιες τζιαι μετανάστες, που υπάρχουν αδιαμφισβήτητα, τζιαι δουλεύκουν ή θέλουν να εργαστούν στην βιομηχανία του σεξ. Ένα χώρο που μάλλον αντιλαμβανόμαστε ως κάτι πολλά πιο ευρύ τζιαι συμπεριληπτικό: συνοδοί, strippers, σεξουαλικοί βοηθοί ατόμων με αναπηρίες, διαδικτυακά cam models, fetish τζιαι BDSM υπηρεσίες, με ή χωρίς διεισδυτικό σεξ. Αντίστοιχα, οι πελάτες τούντων υπηρεσιών έννεν μόνο (ετεροφυλόφιλοι) άντρες, ούτε ούλλοι κακοποιητές. Το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο τζιαι το υπό συζήτηση νομοσχέδιο εν βοηθά για την δημιουργία συνθηκών τζιαι συνειδήσεων που να διευκολύνουν τα άτομα στην βιομηχανία του σεξ να φκουν προς τα έξω, να αναγνωριστεί η φωνή τους τζιαι ναν μέρος της διαδικασίας για νομοθετικές αλλαγές που θα μπορούσαν, ίσως, να τους εγγυηθούν περισσόττερην ασφάλεια τζιαι δικαιώματα.
ΣΥΝΟΡΑ & ΣΩΜΑΤΕΜΠΟΡΙΑ
Όπως ήδη αναφέραμε, οι υποστηρικτές της ποινικοποίησης των πελατών θεωρούν την σεξεργασία άμεσα συνυφασμένη με την βία τζιαι πιστέφκουν ότι, χτυπώντας την ζήτηση, χτυπούν τζιαι τα κυκλώματα σωματεμπορίας. Η ρητορική τους αδυνατεί να διαχωρίσει αποτελεσματικά την καταναγκαστική πορνεία τζαι την σεξεργασία, δημιουργώντας έναν ηθικό πανικό γύρω που το σεξ τζιαι τζείνους/ες που το γοράζουν. Λαλούν ότι εν κατακρίνουν τα «θύματα» για τες υπηρεσίες που παρέχουν, παρ’ όλα αυτά, η ταύτιση της σεξεργασίας με την σωματεμπορία ενισχύει τες προϋπάρχουσες κοινωνικές αντιλήψεις για την σεξεργασία ως κάτι ανήθικό τζιαι εξευτελιστικό.
Πολιτικές που κάμνουν πιο δύσκολη την ζωή τζιαι εργασία των σεξεργατριών, εν μπορούν, παρά να δυσκολέφκουν τζιαι τες ζωές των ατόμων που θεωρούνται θύματα σωματεμπορίας. Στην πραγματικότητα, άτομα που εμπίπτουν τζιαι στες θκυο ομάδες χρησιμοποιούν παρόμοιες τακτικές για πιο ασφαλή εργασία. Επιπρόσθετα, αν φανταστούμε ένα φάσμα μεταξύ συναινετικής, αυτόβουλης σεξεργασίας στα αριστερά, τζιαι εκμεταλλευτικής ή/τζιαι καταναγκαστικής πορνείας ατόμων που την άλλη, η αυξημένη ανάγκη για μεσάζοντες τζιαι τρίτα άτομα, όπως προκύπτει μέσα που το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο, μπορεί να σπρώξει προς τα δεξιά, άτομα που δούλεφκαν ανεξάρτητα τζιαι με σχετική αυτονομία, δυνατότητα επιλογής των πελατών τζιαι όρων εργασίας. Ένα παράδειγμα εν ότι όσο πιο δύσκολη γίνεται η εξεύρεση τζιαι ενοικίαση χώρου εργασίας, τόσο περισσότερο χρειάζεται κάποιος διαμεσολαβητής, τον οποίο η σεξεργάτρια θα πρέπει να πληρώννει επιπρόσθετα που το ενοίκιο για να της εξασφαλίζει χώρους. Τούτος ο μεσάζοντας μπορεί ανά πάσα στιγμή να ζητήσει υπέρογκα ποσά ή να απειλήσει για καταγγελία στην αστυνομία, που θα είσσιεν ως αποτέλεσμα τον εντοπισμό, τη σύλληψη των πελατών της τζιαι έξωση που το διαμέρισμα. Μέσα που τούτο το παράδειγμα, φαίνεται ότι το σκανδιναβικό μοντέλο, στην ουσία, αναγκάζει τις σεξεργάτριες να δουλέφκουν ακόμα περισσότερο ή πιο εντατικά αντί να μειώννεται η σεξεργασία, αφού προκύπτει επιπρόσθετο κόστος. Τζιαι τούτο το επιπρόσθετο κόστος, σε συνδυασμό με την ανάγκη να γίνεται η δουλειά μακριά που τα μμάθκια της αστυνομίας, αυξάνουν την ευαλωτότητα των εργαζομένων που έχουν περιορισμένη πλέον δυνατότητα επιλογής πελατών τζιαι λλιόττερη αυτονομία στην εργασία τους.
Για τες μετανάστριες που παρέχουν σεξουαλικές υπηρεσίες, ένας συνδυασμός των περιορισμών τζιαι παρανομοποίησής τους, όπως προκύπτει μέσα που την μεταναστευτική πολιτική του κράτους, αφήνει τες συχνά καταχρεωμένες τζιαι ευάλωτες σε εκμετάλλευση μαφιόζικων δικτύων. Η καταναγκαστική πορνεία τζιαι οι ακραίες σχέσεις εκμετάλλευσης όσων εργάζονται στην βιομηχανία του σεξ, έννεν μια εξαίρεση στην κατά τ’ άλλα μέλι-γάλα εργασιακή πραγματικότητα των μεταναστριών. Είτε έρτουν «νόμιμα» είτε «παράνομα», το καθεστώς συνόρων τζιαι μετανάστευσης προς την Ευρώπη-Φρούριο δημιουργεί ευνοϊκές συνθήκες για την εργασιακή τζιαι σεξουαλική εκμετάλλευσή τους.4 Η απειλή της απέλασης αποθαρρύνει τες καταγγελίες για βία τζιαι εκμετάλλευση, που τζείνες που έχουν εξαρχής την πιο λλίη πρόσβαση σε υπηρεσίες στήριξης, τζιαι μπορεί να ενισχύσει την σχέση εξάρτησης με μαφιόζικα δίκτυα τζιαι αφεντικά.
ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ
Μέσα που την πρόταση για ποινικοποίηση τζιαι τες ανακοινώσεις που την εσυνοδεύσαν5 δημιουργείται η εντύπωση ότι μια νομοθετική αλλαγή μπορεί να στείλει ένα μήνυμα στην κοινωνία. Όπως φαίνεται, όμως, που όσα επροαναφέραμε, οι νόμοι έννεν απλώς συμβολικά τζιαμέ, για να περνούν μηνύματα, αλλά καθορίζουν τις δυνάμεις τζιαι τις εξουσίες του αστυνομικού σώματος τζιαι άλλων θεσμών.Αν τζιαι εν εππέσαμε που τα σύννεφα, εν ειρωνικό ότι η πρόταση ήρτε που την κοινοβουλευτική ομάδα του κόμματος της θεσμικής αριστεράς, φανερώνοντας τον συντηρητισμό της τζιαι την ολοκληρωτική εγκατάλειψη οποιασδήποτε μορφής αναγνώρισης της ταξικότητας του ζητήματος. Ενώ οι καλοπροαίρετες ευαισθησίες των «αγγελιαφόρων» επιτρέπουν τους να διεκδικούν χώρο στη δημόσια σφαίρα ως πολιτικά υποκείμενα, προωθούνται καταναγκαστικές μορφές «φροντίδας», με κόστος την αύξηση της αστυνόμευσης τζιαι επιτήρησης των ζωών των σεξεργατριών/ών, πολλές που τες οποίες εν μετανάστριες που βρίσκονται στον πάτο της ταξικής πυραμίδας. Η καταναγκαστική πορνεία τζιαι σωματεμπορία αποσυνδέονται εντελώς που τες κρατικές πολιτικές ως ανεξάρτητα φαινόμενα, αντί να γίνουνται αντιληπτά ως συμπτώματα των μεταναστευτικών πολιτικών της ΚΔ τζιαι του καθεστώτος συνόρων της ΕΕ. Εν ανησυχητική, επίσης, η επιλεκτική αναφορά ερευνών, που αναδεικνύουν την σύνδεση μεταξύ κυκλωμάτων πορνείας τζιαι σωματεμπορίας. Μέσα που τούτη την πραγματική σύνδεση, εν εντελώς αυθαίρετο το συμπέρασμα ότι κτυπώντας την πορνεία εννα κτυπηθεί τζιαι η σωματεμπορία. Ακόμα τζιαι σε έρευνα της Βουλής για την ποινικοποίηση τζιαι τα αποτελέσματά της σε χώρες μέλη της ΕΕ, που έγινε κατόπιν αιτήματος της βουλεύτριας του ΑΚΕΛ, Σκεύης Κουκουμά, τον Μάρτη του 2019, αναφέρονται αρνητικά αποτελέσματα της ποινικοποίησης στες χώρες που εφαρμόζεται. Στην Γαλλία «είχε καταστροφικό αποτέλεσμα για τις εκπορνευόμενες, αφού κατέστησε τη θέση τους πιο επισφαλή»6. Για άλλες χώρες, αναφέρεται ότι βοήθησε μόνο στο να μειωθεί η αγοραπωλησία σεξουαλικών υπηρεσιών στους δρόμους –ωθήθηκαν, δηλαδή, οι σεξεργάτριες σε πιο αόρατες συνθήκες εργασίας–ή ότι εν υπάρχουν αξιόπιστα στοιχεία για σύνδεση της ποινικοποίησης αγοράς υπηρεσιών με τη μείωση της σωματεμπορίας. Όσο για την αναφορά των σουηδικών αρχών ότι τουλάχιστον εν αυξήθηκε η σεξεργασία μετά την εφαρμογή της ποινικοποίησης, κάτι που συχνά χρησιμοποιείται για την υπεράσπιση του μοντέλου, προκύπτει που μεθοδολογικές αδυναμίες λόγω της έλλειψης στοιχείων για την σεξεργασία που γίνεται σε κλειστούς χώρους.7 Η ανυπομονησία των υποστηρικτών της πρότασης για ποινικοποίηση τζιαι εξάλειψη του φαινομένου της πορνείας βάλλει σε δεύτερη μοίρα την φυσική τζιαι οικονομική ασφάλεια των σεξεργατριών, στο όνομα της πάλης ενάντια στην πατριαρχική βία. Εν έχουμε, όμως, ούτε ψευδαισθήσεις ότι η αποποινικοποίηση ή οποιοδήποτε σύνολο νομοθετικών αλλαγών, μπορούν να εξαλείψουν την βία της πατριαρχίας. Όπως για παράδειγμα, η αποποινικοποίηση των εκτρώσεων εν φέρνει που μόνη της αναπαραγωγική δικαιοσύνη. Αγώνες για σύνορα ανοικτά, εργασιακά δικαιώματα, πρόσβαση σε υπηρεσίες τζιαι εργασία χωρίς απειλή απέλασης, πιο φτηνά ενοίκια, εν μόνο μερικά που τα νήματα που συνδέουν τες διεκδικήσεις μας με τους αγώνες των σεξεργατριών. Όμως, μόνο μέσα που την συμπερίληψη των ατόμων, των οποίων οι ζωές επηρεάζονται άμεσα που τέθκοιες αποφάσεις, τζιαι την ανάλυση των μηχανισμών της καταπίεσης που βιώνουν, μπορούν να γίνουν ουσιαστικές αλλαγές. Εν επιτακτική η αναγνώριση της εργασίας στη βιομηχανία του σεξ ως εργασίας (γενικότερα, όι μόνο της «συνουσίας επι πληρωμή»8) τζιαι η αλλαγή προς μια δικαιωματική τζιαι εργασιακή προσέγγιση της σεξεργασίας.
ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ & ΑΝΑΦΟΡΕΣ
Για περαιτέρω διάβασμα στα αγγλικά προτείνουμε το βιβλίο Revolting Prostitutes, The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights.
Καταγγέλλουμε την πορεία που έχουν εξαγγείλει οι φασίστες στο οδόφραγμα της Δερύνειας το Σάββατο το βράδυ. Είναι μια προβοκατόρικη και επικίνδυνη ενέργεια που στόχο έχει να δημιουργήσει επεισόδια όπως προσπάθησαν να κάνουν και την περασμένη Κυριακή.
Με τέτοιες ενέργειες δυναμιτίζουν το κλίμα συνεργασίας και συμφιλίωσης και στηρίζουν τους οπαδούς των δύο χωριστών κρατών και της στρατιωτικής περιχαράκωσης. Είναι μια ενέργεια που βρίσκεται σε πλήρη συντονισμό με τους εθνικιστές και τους φασίστες της άλλης πλευράς και ταυτόχρονα δίνει ένα σημαντικό δώρο στον Τατάρ σε βάρος του Ακιντζί εν όψη των αυριανών εκλογών στο βορρά.
Είναι μια ενέργεια πλήρως συντονισμένη και με το καθεστώς διαφθοράς που κυριαρχεί στα ψηλά δώματα της εξουσίας με πρωταγωνιστές τους «άριστους των αρίστων» που επέλεξε ο Αναστασιάδης. Διαφθορά και φασισμός πάνε μαζί. Ο Αναστασιάδης και το κόμμα του είναι που ξέπλυναν τους εοκαβητατζήδες και τους έβαλαν στη Βουλή. Αυτοί είναι που άνοιξαν το δρόμο και στο ΕΛΑΜ με την εθνικιστική και ρατσιστική πολιτική τους για να μπορέσει να μπει στη Βουλη. Και αυτοί είναι που αναρριχήθηκαν στην εξουσία με τις ψήφους του ΕΛΑΜ. Αυτοί οι ίδιοι είναι και οι βασικοί υπεύθυνοι για αυτές τις αθλιότητες που έχουν δει το φως της δημοσιότητας. Αδίστακτοι πολιτικοί, δικηγορικά γραφεία, κατασκευαστικές εταιρίες και άλλοι μεγαλοκαρχαρίες που πατούν πάνω στην ανοχή και τη στήριξη της κυβέρνησης για να θησαυρίζουν ασύστολα σε βάρος του λαού.
Γι αυτό και η πάλη ενάντια στη διαφθορά είναι άρρηκτα δεμένη με τη πάλη ενάντια στο φασισμό και τον εθνικισμό. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που ο Αναστασιάδης έγινε ο νεκροθάφτης της επανένωσης. Για να μπορεί η ελίτ και οι άνθρωποι γύρο του να λυμαίνονται ελεύθερα και χωρίς κανένα έλεγχο το κράτος και τους πόρους του νησιού μας.
Γι αυτό και κανείς δεν πρέπει να συμμετέχει στη φασιστική πορεία στη Δερύνεια. Αντίθετα πρέπει όλοι να συμμετέχουμε στην πορεία ενάντια στη διαφθορά και το φασισμό που θα γίνει στο προεδρικό.
Η Εργατική Δημοκρατία στηρίζει και συμμετέχει σε αυτή τη πορεία και καλεί τον κάθε ένα που έχει σιχαθεί, τους Συλλούρηδες και τους όμοιους του, που δεν θέλει να αφήσει τους φασίστες να τινάξουν στον αέρα τις γέφυρες συνεργασίας και την προοπτική επανένωσης του νησιού μας, που δεν θέλει να συγκαλύψουν τα σκάνδαλα και τη διαφθορά της κυβέρνησης, να έλθει την Κυριακή να πορευτούμε μαζί στο προεδρικό και να απαιτήσουμε να φύγει τώρα η κυβέρνηση της διαφθοράς, του ρατσισμού και ο νεκροθάφτης της επανένωσης.
Συγκέντρωση Κυριακή η ώρα 17:00 στο Υπουργείο Εσωτερικών
Εργατική Δημοκρατία
17 Οκτώβρη 2020
Καταγγέλλουμε την προσπάθεια των φασιστών να δημιουργήσουν επεισόδια στο οδόφραγμα της Δερύνειας την Κυριακή το βράδυ. Η προσπάθεια τους να μπουν στη νεκρή ζώνη και να βάλουν φωτιά ρίχνοντας πυρσούς και πυροτεχνήματα είναι μια προκλητική και επικίνδυνη πράξη. Στην περιοχή υπάρχουν ναρκοπέδια και αν αυτά έπαιρναν φωτιά, κανείς δεν ξέρει ποιες θα ήταν οι συνέπειες. Αυτός πρέπει να ήταν και ο στόχος των φασιστών. ώστε να αλλάξουν την πολιτική ατζέντα στο κυπριακό και να δημιουργήσουν συνθήκες πολεμικής σύγκρουσης.
Είναι φανερό πως τέτοιες ενέργειες δυναμιτίζουν το κλίμα συνεργασίας και συμφιλίωσης και στηρίζουν τους οπαδούς των δύο χωριστών κρατών και της στρατιωτικής περιχαράκωσης. Είναι μια ενέργεια που βρίσκεται σε πλήρη συντονισμό με τους εθνικιστές και τους φασίστες της άλλης πλευράς και ταυτόχρονα δίνει ένα σημαντικό δώρο στον Ερσίν Τατάρ εν όψη του δεύτερου γύρου των εκλογών στο βορρά.
Οι υπεύθυνοι αυτής της ενέργειας πρέπει να συλληφθούν και να οδηγηθούν ενώπιον της δικαιοσύνης. Αυτό όμως δεν είναι αρκετό. Χρειάζεται να κινητοποιηθούμε και να χτίσουμε ένα αντιφασιστικό κίνημα σαν αυτό στην Ελλάδα που πλημμύριζε τους δρόμους και πολιορκούσε το δικαστήριο μέσα και έξω με αίτημα να κηρυχτεί εγκληματική οργάνωση η Χρυσή Αυγή και να οδηγηθούν στη φυλακή οι Ναζί ηγέτες της. Ετσι μπορούμε να εξασφαλίσουμε ότι το ΕΛΑΜ, η Χρυσή Αυγή της Κύπρου θα έχει την ίδια τύχη με την μητρική της οργάνωση στην Ελλάδα.
Η αντιφασιστική πορεία της περασμένης Κυριακής ήταν ένα σημαντικό βήμα προς αυτή τη κατεύθυνση, που θα πρέπει όμως να έχει και ανάλογή συνέχεια και κλιμάκωση. Έτσι στέλνουμε και ένα σημαντικό μήνυμα αλληλεγγύης και συναδέλφωσης στην άλλη πλευρά και δημιουργούμε τις προϋποθέσεις για ένα κοινό κίνημα που θα κινείται παράλληλα και στις δυο πλευρές για να τσακίσουμε τους φασίστες σε ολόκληρο το νησί.
Εργατική Δημοκρατία
12 Οκτωβρίου 2020
A political commentary.
2020 has hit us hard. At the beginning of the year the world was not in order, but hardly anybody expected a worldwide pandemic and in the consequence an economic-political crisis. There can be no “back to normality”. How could there be? Fast-moving capitalism is constantly reinventing itself, even or especially during the pandemic. At a very high price: the profound splits at the national and global level have come to an extreme. Where before there was a gap, now there seems to be an unbridgeable hole.
These phenomena become particularly clear in two examples, which are briefly summarized below. On September 9, the overcrowded camp for refugees in Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos was set on fire. For years, the refugees on the small island lived crowded together in the smallest of spaces under the most humiliating conditions. Again and again they succeeded in attracting attention and sympathy in the EU and in appealing to the remains of bourgeois morality, but the EU did not allow real humanism to prevail. What is this sick world in which people are driven to set fire to their own camp to draw attention to their fate? Barely 3 weeks later, on September 26, Amy Coney Barrett is nominated for the Supreme Cort in the White House. She is a legal hardliner against Obama’s health program and an anti-abortion campaigner. While crowds are banned all around the White House in Washington because of the pandemic, Trump and his allies celebrated a humid and cheerful Corona party in the White House. There were hugs, handshakes and nobody really wore masks here, which is why a large part of his administration including the president himself was infected with the corona virus.
While some partied in spite of pandemic circumstances and now enjoy the best medical care, thousands are stuck on the Greek islands and the mainland, cut off from medical care. Liberals and leftists around the world have understood that this has nothing to do with fairness. In Germany, thousands took to the streets in many cities and demanded the immediate evacuation of people and the welcoming of refugees into the communities. With #WirHabenPlatz (#WeHaveSpace), #LeaveNoOneBehind and #Seebrücke, an anti-racist movement has established itself in Germany and internationally over the past months and years. Well-connected at the local level, this movement has always ensured at the right time that the EU’s cruelties at its external borders are not forgotten, and has created structures that are organized in a non-parliamentary and grassroots democratic way and thus are able to catch up with large parts of the liberal political camps.
“The moral compass is off.” (Some German on some TV Show)
Practical action was then taken: Horst Seehofer, German Home Secretary, himself a Corona crisis manager and recently a sudden critic of racism, demanded the admission of a few hundred particularly vulnerable people and was able to present himself as a humanitarian on a European scale. While in 2018 the #Seebrücke had used his “anchor centers” (camps in which refugees would be held in isolation while their case was evaluated) as an opportunity to rebel against the federal government’s asylum policy, two years later he can stage himself as a liberal and humanist. The Corona Party in the White House can not only be described in terms of moral errors either: The President of the United States, who since the outbreak of the pandemic has had the death of thousands of Americans on his conscience because his policy denied them access to medical care and recommended the loyal state inmates to drink aquarium cleaners against the treacherous virus, manages to inspire compassion and to receive global wishes for recovery. That instead people wish him a severe course and a painful death is understandable, but the wrong answer. It’s the other way round: Neither Trump nor Seehofer will put an end to the dying of the nationally excluded and pauperized class. Rather, their openly fascist or supposedly philanthropic policies are an expression of growing nationalisms. As sovereigns of their nations, both defend the national borders and need the national identity on the inside to keep them separate from the outside.
All a question of morality?
These times are terrible. The fear of an infection with the deadly virus is growing, while questions of health care, freedom of movement and migration continue to intensify. What is hidden behind the morally loaded memes, talk shows and net politics are the questions that really matter: What can a society look like in which national borders do not decide on life and death and the socio-economic status of everyone decides on their health care? The prosperity of the global North cannot be redistributed so easily and different neo-fascist governments have unfortunately been able to establish themselves in recent years and enjoy great support from their loyalties. The moral compass of any society depends on the conditions under which it exists. If the Left wants more than share pics and 280 (Twitter-)signs to articulate anger, we must be the motor that changes the conditions for morality. For this, we need to determine at what time and in which fields the living conditions of the next years will be decided under the consequences of the Corona crisis. Or, to try it with Brecht: Food is the first thing, morals follow on.
By Jonas Wagner and Mia Wyborg
The authors are based in Germany and active in social struggles and the antifascist NIKA campaign. The campaign was founded in Germany in 2016 to fight the European right-wing movement in an organized way.
A Beyond Europe call to keep up the pressure and fight for solidarity.
After the fire that destroyed the misery camp of Moria, those who have nothing are not only left in the ashes of the monster of European foreign policy, but are now also being trampled on.
The refugees who did not manage to flee from the camp and escape to the city were not provided with blankets, tents and water, but with tear gas and the sticks of the Greek police. The cops tried with all their might not to let the refugees leave the camp, while what little they left behind remains was burned the next night. Trapped on the island’s streets around the camp, they were surrounded by riot police, left alone, without sufficient food, water and medical care. Helpers, NGOs and journalists were largely kept away, leaving the people defenceless against the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the arbitrariness and violence of the police and the attacks of local fascists.
For the verdict of the ultra-conservative Greek government under Nea Demokratia had already been passed. The guilty ones were those who had been locked up for years in the hell of Moria in disregard of human rights, and those who tried to alleviate the greatest suffering or to make the conditions public. Their guilt was investigated where there was nothing left to investigate, in the remains of Moria, already pushed together by bulldozers. But the Greek propaganda must be confirmed, on the one hand to distract from their own guilt and on the other hand to curb the biggest fear of the European Union. The fear that the fire that destroyed Moria will spread to the countless other places in the EU, based on the same inhuman policy. Whether in Lampedusa, Cyprus, Spain or along the entire Balkan route, the border regime has created places that are not far behind Moria. Where people are imprisoned without dignity, without opportunities and without any perspective. Moria is not the only powder keg that the EU has created in recent years.
While the people of Lesvos are suffering, the European politicians responsible for this catastrophe are extremely concerned. However, lip service is still paid without insight and concrete measures to help. Under the leadership of Germany there is a diligent haggling about responsibility and ridiculous contingents, legitimized with excuses and the search for common European solutions.
Despite their situation and the repression, many people are still demonstrating. They demand freedom and do not want to be resettled in a new closed camp under any circumstances. They are disappointed and tired of the promises of European politicians. Many understand all too well by now that they have become a plaything and are being used as a warning to break the idea of the Summer of Migration 2015, the idea of a Europe of human rights, whose ashes are carried away by the wind, sinking into the Mediterranean.
The Greek state is trying to blackmail the refugees into the new closed camps through lack of supplies, the continuing great danger of Covid-19, the threat that their asylum procedure will be suspended and permanent police arbitrariness and violence. How long their resistance can hold under this pressure is uncertain and therefore it is up to us to support their struggle and make it ours.
The refugees clearly show that they do not want to be numbers anymore and that dehumanization has come to an end. They want to fight for their rights, their future, their security and their lives. A fight for the foundation of our society that shows whether human rights are universal or remain a privilege. Because in this world of exploitation and competition, on the last islands of wealth, there is not enough space for those who seem superfluous.
Moria is a magnifying glass for the mistakes of the capitalist society we live in, and an example of how the smoking remnants will only be preserved by increasingly authoritarian measures of the state. A foul and dirty deal with despot Erdogan was made and inhumane camps were created with no concept at all. No wonder, since a bunch of European states are led by far right or right-populist governments, who hijack international decision making to impose their idea of society: authoritarian on the inside, locked up for the outside.
From 2015 till now, the EU did not even come close to find a common strategy to deal with refugees arriving at European borders. Those refugees, the people, who have to flee their own countries from war, ecological, social and economic catastrophes. The effects of global capitalist businesses, which make many parts of Europe rich.
Throughout Europe, there have been various solidarity actions in favour of evacuating the camps, not only in Moria, but on the whole external borders of the EU. But neither the pressure in the streets nor the public discourse was enough to make the rulers act effectively, which they simply do not want.
This Sunday on 20.09. people will again take to the streets in countless cities. We must not try to keep up the appearance of the European values, which were burnt in Moria, but to stand up for something completely different. A society that is based on solidarity and equality and that creates livable spaces everywhere without destroying the basis of life of the people.
After all, Solidarity is the key. Today, it is vital to stand up for solidarity and freedom of movement for everyone. These buzzwords used to be our own labels for assuring ourselves of our own radical views. In these times, solidarity and freedom of movement are still radical. They are ideas from which we can advance a radical critique of capitalism. The difference is that many more people are open to these demands, because after years and years of tens of thousands killed at borders such as in the Meditarranean, the critique of the status quo goes far beyond the usual suspects. When we take solidarity and freedom of movement to the streets today, after the disaster of Moria, it is not to be a small and hopefully radical voice in the discourse, but it is to change something politically: Evacuate now. End the camps. Fight the Fortress.
See you on the streets!
“Marx said that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps things are very different. It may be that revolutions are the act by which the human race traveling in the train applies the emergency brake.” (Walter Benjamin)
The world is in flames and they continue to play with fire. Every day they dig up coal and burn it in their power plants, even though they know that this is the biggest source of CO2. Even though they know that in the next few years we are heading for tipping points that will make the climate catastrophe irreversible.
They, that is RWE AG, the energy-dependent industry, that is investors who are relying on everything going on as before. They are the federal and state government and the German-dominated European Commission. All those involved know what’s happening, and coal is still being produced.
Angela Merkel and other politicians looked at the appeals and mass demonstrations with a slight nod, but they weren’t really impressed. The coal phase-out should continue to come only when the last piece of coal has actually been burned. Because as someone once said: The modern state power is only a committee that manages the common business of the whole capitalist class. But we cannot expect anything else, because fossil capital provides the energy for the entire class. And the unity of property and the existing order is vehemently defended. As much as some may wish for a green capitalism: it will never be, because there is no decoupling of growth and resource consumption – these are just fantasies. The ruling class is the idealist, dreamer, unworldly.
It has broken its own announcements, self-commitments, etc., all by itself. All it has managed, since it has known about climate change, is to export environmental destruction itself. Even if coal is no longer burned in the Federal Republic and the industry is otherwise conserving resources here, environmental destruction will continue to be outsourced under capitalism if necessary. As always those people worldwide, who cannot afford to protect themselves, are most affected by capitalism and its environmental destruction.
Those responsible are the saboteurs of any effective climate policy and any humane coexistence, because the latter stand in the way of their business model and growth compulsion. They threaten to sue the states if their operating license is revoked. They threaten to leave workers in poverty and to worsen working conditions. They take away people’s time, our health and the resources we need to live. They will not stop their sabotage by themselves, they must be stopped. And if no one else can stop them, we must. If we stop their machines, we drive up the costs. Until it no longer pays off. We will stop the madness where it takes place. That is why we are joining the actions of Ende Gelände in the Rhineland from September 23 – 27, 2020.
Let us sabotage the saboteurs.
See you in the pit!
…ums Ganze! – September 2020
Last night the desperation at Camp Moria on lesbos was discharged into a huge fire!
The unbearable situation in the refugee camp on the Greek island Lesbos completely escalated last night. In protest against the continuing poor care, the danger of Covid 19 and the prospect of Moria being turned into a closed camp by the erection of a fence, some camp residents decided to burn down large parts of the camp.
The police used batons and tear gas against the refugees, but could not control the situation. The fire department was attacked with stones to hinder their work.
Many of the camp inhabitants fled to the surrounding area or to the city of Mytilini. It is not clear how many people were injured and whether people fell victim to the flames. The further provisioning situation is not yet clear.
After a Kurdish feminist rally in Vienna-Favoriten was attacked by Turkish fascists on Wednesday, hundreds of anti-fascists took to the streets against this attack on the following day. After yesterday’s demonstration the fascists escalated the situation again and attacked the EKH, an occupied house in Vienna, with a mob of about 200 to 300 people. Stones, bottles and incendiary devices flew on the squatted house, which is shared by left-wing migrant organisations and anarchist aligned squatters.
We have translated an article by Zeynep Arslan (@zeynemarslan) from the Austrian Mosaik Blog to give you a first overview and analysis of the situation. The antifascist demonstrations are organized under the motto Faşizme karşı omuz omuza! – Side by side against fascism! Try to find an answer on the streets!
The noise of the police helicopters could be heard late into the night yesterday. For a long time no peace and quiet returned to the streets of Vienna-Favoriten. It all began with a rally by a Kurdish women’s organisation based in the Ernst Kirchweger Haus (EKH). The participants wanted to point out the increasing number of feminicides in Turkey and Austria. They wanted to show what the effects of anti-women policies are, which can be seen, in the privatisation and destruction of women’s shelters in Salzburg for example.
Then the women were attacked by a group of fascist men. Within a very short period of time, around a hundred right-wing extremists appeared, and a large-scale police operation was launched. The women fled to the EKH and had to stay there for hours for security reasons.
It wasn’t the first attack in the district. Similar incidents occurred on Mayday on the fringes of a rally on Keplerplatz. And a pattern is emerging: the extreme right-wing group of young men seems to have no fear of the security forces, who were even supported by two police helicopters last night.
Two to three young people can turn into fifty to a hundred within minutes. They act as owners and guards of Favoriten and want to supervise their district. They forbid residents and visitors to events to consume alcohol during the Muslim month of fasting Ramadan. They try to keep Kurdish music and language out of the public. They also like to sic the police on Turkish-Kurdish participants of events – with the insinuation that they are followers of the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party). Self-confidently they accuse the police and the Austrian state of allowing a terrorist organisation to take over public space. They mobilise each other via their mobile phones and are organized in hierarchical roles.
The group’s world view is shaped by the political ideas of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They position themselves as his defenders and do not shy away from making the wolf salute (comparable to the Hitler salute as a distinctive sign of Turkish fascists), which is forbidden in Austria, in the presence of the police.
How is it possible that young people who were born in Vienna and Austria internalized such an unreflected racist Turkish way of thinking and generalized hatred? Unfortunately the omnipresent discrimination in Austria favours the propaganda of the Turkish right-wing extremists. Young people who regularly experience exclusions according to the motto “You are and can be with us, but you will never be one of us” can never feel equal rights and equal treatment. This structural and institutional racism prevents a common, pluralistic understanding of democracy across cultural and national affiliations.
The male “us” narrative à la Erdoğan offers these young people an identity, even if it is constructed and artificial. The corresponding messages and war propaganda from Turkey reach them daily – and are received by them uncritically and without reflection. When they are confronted by others because of their attacks, they declare that despite their citizenship and perfect German they will remain foreigners forever and ever. Their disorientation provides fertile ground for right-wing extremist propaganda.
The young people born in Austria take on the megalomania of “Turkishness” across borders. Basic democratic rights obviously have no place in this. That’s why they attack marginalized groups from their supposed “own” cultural circle: Kurds, Alevis and women. For them, their rights are part of the “corrupt Christian strangeness” in which, in their opinion, they live. They seem to have found a feeling of belonging only in the group. In the group they feel strong – but even a rally against violence against women becomes unbearable for them and threatens their male power.
So we are dealing with an aggressive inferiority complex. It is rooted in a constructed legitimation of identity, that refers to Turkish history. It begins in the steppes of Central Asia, continues through the invasion of Anatolia, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and migration into the European diaspora. Various massacres, genocides and defamations in the course of the formation of the Turkish nation state a good hundred years ago are also part of this legitimation.
The Turkish state doctrine grants them the international privileged status of “Turk-Turkish-Sunni-Muslim Man”. To defend the leader and the fatherland, even far from Turkey, any use of force is justified. This can also be seen in violent anger against women.
Last night the self-proclaimed “guardians of Favouriten” were able to carry out their second action this year in front of the Austrian public. Prior to this, their attack was directed against the May Day rally on Keplerplatz. These developments can no longer be ignored. Behind them lies a political power structure that operates transnationally. The young men are only a pretense. The structures and ideologies behind them reach as far as Turkey. A trivialisation of the current incidents would be irresponsible towards the future.
What is needed is courageous action against all forms of racism, which goes hand in hand with sexism – no matter what corner it may come from. Each and every one of us must democratically engage and take responsibility for our common future. The world views that further stabilize a male-dominated ideology must be broken up. The patterns and motivation for racist and sexist violence and incitement to hatred are always the same: the perpetrators want to compensate for their own feelings of inferiority and the existential fear associated with it. After all, the young right-wing extremists are not as strong and courageous as they themselves believe.
One Radical Planet 