On 21 April, Germany will deport me – an EU citizen convicted of no crime – for standing with Palestine | Kasia Wlaszczyk
www.theguardian.com
Four of us have received letters from the state telling us to leave or be removed. This is a terrifying illustration of Germany’s lurch to the right, says Kasia Wlaszczyk

In the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since I’m a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from another EU country is practically impossible. I contacted a lawyer and, given the lack of substantial legal reasoning behind the order, we filed a lawsuit against it, after which I didn’t think much of it.

I later found out that three other people active in the Palestine movement in Berlin, Roberta Murray, Shane O’Brien and Cooper Longbottom, received the same letters. Murray and O’Brien are Irish nationals, Longbottom is American. We understood this as yet another intimidation tactic from the state, which has also violently suppressed protests and arrested activists, and expected a long and dreary but not at all urgent process of fighting our deportation orders.

Then, at the beginning of March, each of our lawyers received on our behalf another letter, declaring that we are to be given until 21 April to voluntarily leave the country or we will be forcibly removed. The letters cite charges arising from our involvement in protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of the charges have yet led to a court hearing, yet the deportation letters conclude that we are a threat to public order and national security.

    • @[email protected]English
      0•16 days ago

      It is. Support for Israel and opposition to Palestinians and claiming Arabs in general to be antisemitic has been used, in particular in Berlin, by conservative/reactionary and fascist groups as a pretense to prove that they couldn’t be antisemitic and as an opportunity to attack internationalist, feminist and otherwise leftist groups.

      The pattern already existed before October 7 2023 and the escalation came in conjunction with other racist escalations. However a key aspect in my eyes is that in the past year and a half formerly progressive politics such as the Green party and the still progressive parts of SPD and small parts of die Linke have joined into the racist and authoritarian crackdown, e.g. with resolutions demanding to limit academic and cultural independence, supporting police violence against demonstrations, mass surveillance and other authoritarian measures. All the while white German Neonazi antisemities are conveniently kept out of the picture of Antisemitism in Germany by the majority of politics, despite being responsible for most antisemitic crimes.