GERMANY The German Social Democrats and asylum IN the wake of the neo-Nazi attacks on the immigrants' hostel in the German city of Rostock in late August and the subsequent wave of racist violence, Germany has been the scene of a fierce debate on the country's laws on asylum.
The rightwing government led by Christian Democrat Chancellor Helmut Kohl is proposing a change to article 16 of the German constitution which enshrines the right to asylum. Currently, this article gives every asylum seeker the right to make an asylum request and obliges the authorities to examine this request and feed and house the applicant while the examination is taking place. The applicant cannot be expelled. Finally, if the request is turned down, the asylum seeker can appeal to the constitutional court, without having to leave Germany.
The proposed changes would bring German law on this matter into line with the European Schengen Agreement; it would become possible to restrict asylum seekers to zones of international transit (such as airports), immediately expel refugees whose applications are considered unfounded and, finally, refugees would have to return to their country of origin or to a third country while their appeal was being heard.
At the centre of this debate is the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) whose votes are needed if the proposed changes to the constitutionally enshrined right to asylum are to be passed. While its leadership intends to support Chancellor Kohl's attack on the right to asylum, the SPD rank-and-file are unhappy.
On November 16 and 17 the SPD is holding an extraordinary congress aimed at adopting a final position on the asylum issue. In France, the Right to Asylum collective is launching a campaign to put pressure on the SPD, calling on the delegates to the special congress to oppose the proposed change to article 16 of the German constitution.
A demonstration is planned in Bonn for November 14 called by many anti-racist associations in defence of the right to asylum, against any change to article 16 and against racism. This action is drawing the support of anti-racist, anti-fascist and immigrant orga-
Fascism and capitalist -unification A BIG celebration in Schwerin greeted Chancellor Kohl on the second anniversary of the unification of Germany. However, the anniversary was in truth a sombre one, above all owing to the rise of racist violence in recent months. The worst of this violence has been seen in the teritories of the former East Germany. ANGELA KLEIN
N both sides of the Elbe, people feel threatened. The development of the two German states as a part of the postwar division of Europe provided a certain sense of security and even well-being. In the East the population had the feeling of having been delivered from the weight of the fascist past and of belonging to a new and better Germany. In the West the race was on to achieve the American way of life under the official title of "Western democracy and a rejection of Communism",
Unification also meant the collapse of these two identities without any new eco nomic impulse to provide a new perspective around which to mobilize the joint efforts of those in West and East. The majority of the labour movement blinded by anti-communism has paid a heavy price for its belief that, all things considered, life was better in the West.
The vast bulk of the left was not ready for the new situation. Neither left nor right understood the extraordinary build up of contradictions and hidden violence in the East.
The inhabitants of East Germany were not accustomed to live with foreigners -there were only 100,000 in East Germany who mainly lived in relatively comfortable ghettos.
The social crisis in East Germany should not be looked at solely through the optic of poverty, which is not as yet widespread. Also important is the crisis of the social structure in which people either do or do not find a place and a meaning to life.
The former East German state took responsibility for organizing social wellbeing - which amounted to more than nizations from across Europe. * mut Kohl put it) and make the general atmosphere even more tense. The mayor of Berlin, Diegen, was demanding that one young man be arrested simply because he had called the mayor a hypocrite.
But let's think positive. The demonstration showed that there is an understanding among youth of immigrant background and beyond of the need for a united mobilization against the fascists.
This was also clear from other demonstrations — of 40,000 in Stuttgart, of 20,000 (mainly against social cuts) and 3,000 (against racism) in Hannover, 5,000 in Hamburg, and 8-10,000 in Mannheim, among others.
### Self-defence
The task of socialists is to fight for united concrete action - above all for self-defence, which even Weiszäcker mentioned in passing — between all those ready to act. 4 At the same time there is a need for the formation of anti-racist groups to defend full legal and social equality for immigrants and refugees. Special attention in this should be given to the emerging vanguard among the immigrant youth.
Such mobilization and organization can not only stop the Nazis. It can also counteract trends towards a strengthening of the state. An increasing number of voices are heard from the bourgeois camp calling for a hard line "again both left and right". '. Chancellor Kohl has already raised the threat of a state of emergency if the SPD does not agree to a change in the asylum law. While the strong state may strike at the right, its heaviest blows will certainly be against the left and the workers' movement.
As it develops its anti-racist strategy it is up to the radical left to also prevent such a development. Such a strategy must challenge the existing social system and avoid the blunders that led up to Hitler's assumption of power in 1933.
German socialists must launch a united and effective offensive against the right's terror with all the energy at their disposal. *
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992
just rigid control and organized irresponsibility. With unification all these structures were brutally destroyed. People in East Germany have been dispossessed a thousand times over.
East Germany's inhabitants now face a grim future, with the foundations of their economic and social life destroyed. A whole array of social institutions - youth clubs, tenants' associations, holiday homes, sports' clubs and so on - which made life in the big housing estates tolerable have simply vanished, leaving these neighbourhoods to the fate of their conterparts in the West.
East Germans hoped to be able to get East Germans hoped to be able to get West German living standards on top of their accustomed social security. In reality, however, they have found themselves racing against the clock to get a secure job. Competition is growing on the job market with immigrants from even poorer countries, such as Gypsies from Romania and Yugoslavia, Jews from the Soviet Union or Poles.
The racist tide has been less powerful in the West where traditional state, political and union institutions have survived, resting on a long-established political consenSUS.
However, in the West too the postwar prosperity is being undermined, with massive transfers of funds to the East and the start of an attack on the social welfare network. In the West the far right's support comes mainly from those who feel an imminent threat to their relative prosperity, while in the East it is from those who have already lost nearly everything.
Open displays of Nazi symbolism
In recent weeks some 2,500 racist attacks and a dozen murders have been reported. In Dresden, several hundred Nazis have marched beneath the banner of the Third Reich and carrying Nazi symbols without meeting any resistance. Such displays are illegal but the police have escorted these demonstrations without intervening.
It is at this very moment that the government has decided to push ahead with its plans to limit asylum rights. Ultimately, and despite gestures to international public opinion such as the November 8 demonstration, the German authorities are guilty of complicity with the the fascists. These latter can channel social frustration away from any challenge to the social order.
The left is in a lamentable state. According to opinion polls, a third of young people agree with the slogan "Germany for the Germans; foreigners out!" and a growing number of school students approve of racist violence.
The polls also suggest that the far right Republicans could expect to get over the 5% barrier for representation in parliament. Added on to the likely results of another far-right formation, the Deutsche Volks Union (DVU), this would give the fascists the same score as the Greens.
Those who want to wipe out the memory of the past and make Germany once again a "normal country" have the wind in their sails. The unification is being heralded both as the final triumph of capitalism The boat peo Gibraltar Straits of Gibraltar is estimated CECILIA GARMENDIA
NCE sent back to Morocco the expelled Africans find themselves in a detention centre in the amphitheatre of Tangiers — which was also used as an internment camp at the time of the
1990 riots — before being sent to prison for three months. Some are then forcibly enrolled in the army and sent to the war zone in Western Sahara, hoping no doubt to be able to make their escape and resume their journey northwards.
A lucrative trade
Clandestine immigration is a lucrative business for a mafia at work on both sides of the Strait. The same networks that in Franco's day used to deal in contraband American cigarettes and transistors then moved onto drugs and now to Africans.
Many Moroccan fishermen have also found a new source of income in this traffic; they can hope to make the equivalent of 100,000FF (US$20,000) for a
GERMANY / SPANISH STATE over socialism and the final full stop to the Second World War and Germany's guilt.
Today's Germany is not that of the 1930s. Its own interests impel it to take a leading role in European construction. An important part of the ruling class is talking about Germany "assuming its international responsibilities". Thus the pogroms are an embarassment as well as a reflection of the new post-unification times. * ple of at between 12 and 15,000. night's work, which should be compared to a likely income from a month's fishing by two people of less than 25,000FF. Even minus the inevitable contribution to Moroccan police benevolent funds it is highly worthwhile.
The journey across has features which recall the slave trade. Up to 40 people are crammed into boats about five metres long and 1.5 metres wide for which they pay between 50,000 (about
US$500) and 125,000 pesetas.
The journey is dangerous first of all owing to the strong currents in the
Strait. Furthermore, the boat owners require their passengers to disembark
100 to 200 metres out from shore to avoid police patrols. To avoid the civil guard, the boats never come ashore and the Africans have to swim several dozen metres at least. At least 200 have died in the Strait, including 43 this year.
However, the immigrants' troubles are not over once on Spanish soil. Here they 5 are in the hands of another network
"IF I was a 20 year old North African, I would get into one of these boats, and if they sent me back I would set off again after a month"
This was the comment of Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez on the clandestine immigrants arriving on the coast of the southern autonomous community of Andalusia.
The prime minister's insight, however, has not prevented Spain from scrupulously observing an agreement with Morocco by which immigrants who "accept" that they crossed Morocco to reach Spain are deported back to the former country. In the single month of August this year, the Spanish police arrested 400 immigrants of African origin. The number of Africans who have already crossed the
"IF I was a 20 year old North African, I would get into one of these boats, and if they sent me back I would set off again
This was the comment of Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez on the clandestine immigrants arriving on the coast of the southern autonomous community of