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
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992 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, retugees 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 organizations 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 hypo-
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.
At the same time there is a need for the
4 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 dispothe second anniversary of the unification of Germany. However, the anniversary was in truth a sombre one, above allowing 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 Commu-
Unification also meant the collapse of these two identities without any new economic 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
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
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
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
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GERMANY Fascism and capitalist unification A BIG celebration in Schwerin greeted Chancellor Kohl on
November 23, 1992 • # 239 International Viewpoint 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 coun
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 agair "normal country" have the wind in thei sails. The unification is being heralded both as the final triumph of capitalism
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. *
The boat people of terparts in the West.
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
"IF I was a 20 year old North African, I would get into one of job. Competition is growing on the job these boats, and if they sent me back I would set off again market with immigrants from even poorer countries, such as Gypsies from Romania
This was the comment of Spain's Socialist Prime Minister and Yugoslavia, Jews from the Soviet
Felipe Gonzalez on the clandestine immigrants arriving on
Union or Poles.
The racist tide has been less powerful in the coast of the southern autonomous community of the West where traditional state, political and union institutions have survived, res-
The prime minister's insight, however, has not prevented ting on a long-established political consen-
Spain from scrupulously observing an agreement with
Morocco by which immigrants who "accept" that they