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Opposition to police racism and abuse of powe
11.04.2003 00:14
Until the victims and those affected don’t have their own fronts, all other reports will always glorify the racist system of social exclusion
Opposition to police racism and abuse of power.
Refugee-meeting: 25-26.April 2003 in Berlin.
Police abuse of power is built into the system that is designed to enforce capitalist relations of power and exploitation, they serve the powerful and protect the wealthy at the expense of the poor, the voiceless, the refugees and migrants while pretending to serve the general public.
But the authorities and the system protects and uses the racist cops to perpetuate racism!
The wide gap of silence which protects the "bad cops" and isolates or even criminalizes those who try to rescuee or protest against the police abuses must be discussed by the victims and those affected.
Media coverage tends to treat police racist controls even with assaults and intimidation, violence and physical brutality like yesterday's fish-wraps. The papers report such brutalities usually from the point of view of the police while ignoring the voices and accounts of the victims.
„Until the victims and those affected don’t have their own fronts, all other reports will always glorify the racist system of social exclusion"
Police racist control and brutality has become so normalized in this country deriving from one horror to another for which the responsible cops are never held accountable for their extra-legal actions. This leads the cops to exhibit an attitude of "beyond control". This attitude stems from the justification which the politicians and some sections of the media give to such police excesses after every atrocities. Most privilege embarrassed senior state officials, non-governmental organisations -NGOs and politicians would appeal for calm and advocate pathetic reforms that would change nothing. In no time, it would be back to business as usual and victims would be left on their own.
As the political and economic elite intensify their exploitation of migrants, refugees and the colonized people in the global economy and within Europe itself, the need for state repression, imprisonment, social exclusion and deportation becomes the guideline of police functions. The struggle against police racist controls and brutality must take these realities of refugee daily life into account.
We are calling on the refugee and migrant communities to initiate anti-repression struggle in their localities and act in unity with the less privileged refugees in their struggle against humiliating police racist controls. Let us strengthen grassroots groups, and move ahead to establish a stronger refugee and migrant network. Let us act in unity to challenge the state police racist control of refugees and migrants and all acts of repression.
What is needed is a strategy to develop community struggles and protest as well as self- determination of victims and those affected by police racist controls and brutality. In doing this, we must attempt to build a united and non-racial movement which is capable of articulating the grievances of refugees and migrants on a single front.
BUT WHAT KIND OF ORGANISATIONAL NETWORK/STRUCTURE COULD WE FORESEE FOR A CONSISTENTLY ACTIVE RESISTANCE AGAINST REPRESSION THAT CAN SURVIVE FROM BELOW AND FOR THE CONTINUITY OF OUR ENGAGEMENT FOR THE SELF DETERMINATION OF REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS?
We will be proposing several points for action at the national level to deal with police abuses. We believe that such programs can unite diverse but progressive forces from different communities in a kind of concerted effort based on the principle of solidarity-that an attack on one is an attack on all. This approach will be a necessity to effectively deal with not only police brutality but all forms of repression as directed by the state. No single action, demonstration, or campaign is sufficient in itself to deal with this enormous problem. This means that a multitude of actions and approaches must be supported, coordinated, and combined so that our efforts reinforce each other to accomplish our goal. We must overcome sectarianism, organizational jealousy, and localism. All our best efforts are required.
We accept for the purpose of this campaign that the only "good" cop is the one who breaks the silence and blow the whistle on the perpetrators of racist control, police abuse and brutality. Otherwise, the official dichotomy between 'good cop' and 'bad cop' is simply a matter of fiction and hypothesis.
First, we must support and seek justice for the immediate victims of police abuse, brutality, and corruption. Also, we must build a network of resistance that embraces strong solidarity for the victims. Among these are: the Police brutality in Jena/Gera, Thuringen against the two Cameroonians: Constance Etchu and Cornelius Yufany, and the Nigerians in Bremen; the police killing of a Senegalese woman, Maream Ndeye Sarr in Abschaffenburg, a Sudanese during a forceful deportation of Aamir Mohamed Ageeb from Frankfurt Airport and a nigerian in Duesseldorf etc, whose brutal torture by the German Police revealed how savage the police could be, deserves our support and solidarity.
The Police and political leaders responsible for these deaths and tortures deserve our energetic outrage. This same outrage must also be manifested in the cases of other victims of police racist control and brutality; Police brutaliy against a Ugandan in Fürth,a Togolese couple in Munchen, the drawned Cameroonian in the Hamburg sea and the two Togolese women Ms. RAMANOU Muyibatou and Ms. ALIETOU Zato
who jumped from upstairs out of fear of Police control in Hamburg and became paralized afterwards, the Nigerian John Achidi murdered in Hamburg, all of the many hundreds, indeed thousands of victims who suffer from police abuses, excesses and brutatlity every year.
We will appeal to committed human right lawyers and other legal personnel to challenge police abuses in the courts. It also demands community fund-raising efforts and other activities so that victims of police racist controls and their supporters will not be neglected or forgotten.
Further, the challenge to organise a street-level capacity to monitor the police in order to obtain first hand information and witnesses of the daily police harassment and brutality of refugees and migrants must be developed. Closely linked here, it will be very vital to have personal and individual documentation on experiences of victims and witnesses.
These efforts must be coordinated on a national level when they expose evidence of brutality or abuse. In addition, we need community education about refugees and migrants rights vis-a-vis the police, so that refugees who are often the target of police hostility know their rights. Where such attempts are succeessfully made, efforts should be made to duplicate them in other areas/Cities.
In addition, we need to incorporate into our struggle against police abuse and brutality also people who are not directly victimized by the police, or who may consider the police as their protectors. In other words, German citizens who have supported police actions in the past. They must be educated about the true nature of policing in the German society. This is a fundamental aspect of breaking reactionary solidarity, of ending an identification crisis with and as the oppressor. We have to inform people about the relentless and systematic nature of police abuse and brutality particularly related to refugees and migrants.
In line with this coordination effort and in collaboration with other police-accountability activists and groups, an e-mail list, that circulates incidents of police misconduct around the country from local and mainstream media sources, should be developed. A systematic documentation combined with better grass root monitoring and reporting, would amass such incontrovertible evidence that even those who blind themselves to police abuse would be forced to see them and to act.
Finally, we must make every effort to evaluate the existing, structures, on-going projects and campaigns including discussions, meetings and other events related to racist control and police abuse. The differences in political culture and ideology that might obstruct these efforts must be overcome. Such a non-sectarian approach will be encouraged in order to give us a chance of success against the forces of reaction and state repression.
If you have accounts of police abuses and brutality to share, or evidence of police racist control of migrants please communicate with The VOICE Refugee Forum in Jena. Schillergäschen 5, 07745 Jena,Tel. 0049 3641 665214, 0049 3614 420270. and for participation in the network please send e-mail:  voice_mail@emdash.org.
Donation to: Osaren Igbinoba, Bank konto: 231633905, Bank Number: 86010090, Postbank Leipzig, code: Policeabuse
 http://www.umbruch- bildarchiv.de/video/repression/260103corneliusyufanyi.html
http://www.umbruch-bildarchiv.de/video/zwangsverlegung/constanceetchu.html
This is a text from The VOICE Forum on "police racism and abuse of power"for the Refugee meeting on the 25-26 April 2003 in Gneanausen str.2, Mehrinhof, Berlin
Translated text and programme of the meeting will follow soon. Interested participants are invited to send additional text orinformation to The VOICE Refugee Forum email. voice_mail@emdash.org
Thanks
Osaren
Meeting in Jena for the preperation of the campain against „racist police controls„ 21.3-23.3.2003
It follows a summary of the meeting in Jena. This summary is subjective and therefore please add, correct or ...
Racist police controls are part of a racist context. They can be put into practice because the public with ist racist prejudices and discrimination on the one hand and the state with ist racist laws and institutions on the other, legitimate these controls. It is clear that this form of direct discrimination cannot be understood nor fight against without putting it into the context of a racist system or society. So a campaign as here means also finding a balance between focussing of the problem and ist generalisation. It means that police control must be in the centre of the campaign and the conditions for such controls must be subject at the same time. For example there was a specific suggestion, which was put forward by differnt persons, that we should not look at police controls isolated from the problem of ‚residenzpflicht’. Racist police controls are possible because of such laws as the ‚Residenzpflicht’. On the other hand this is also the reason why the public thinks that such controls are legitimate. And also because refugees or other-than-german-or-west-north-european-looking-people are always suspect to crime, be it because of drugpanics or other paranoias like the terrorism controls. The proposal to see this campaign not only as a campaign of refugees but also of so called mirgrants and so called germans was generally agreed with. But there was also remarks on the fact that refugees play a special role in this campaign. Most of the control target refugees who are breaking the ‚Residenzpflicht’ or have no papers. So called Migrants and germans can be and are in fact object of such controls, but not facing fines. From this perspecitve this also means that refugees have the possibility to fight against these controls on a more serious level (diobedience) than others, which does not mean that so called migrants and germans are not able to protest.
There was a discussion on the meaning of the individual cases (see Cornelius and Constance) in this campaign. This discussion was started during the fundraising debate, where we were discussing if the legal part (individual cases) should be financed by the fund or not. On the one hand it was argued that these individual cases are important but not a necessary part of the campaign. On the other hand exactly these cases were seen as the basis of the whole campaign. Therefore there was no agreement if these cases should be financed by the fund or not. It was also argued that finances for the individual cases could be organised by individual networking.
There was also a discussion on the meaning of political campaign. After having discussed different ideas more or less against each others, it was agreed that they actually belong together and are different aspects of the same thing. It is for example important to have a part of the campaign which adresses the public with posters, cards and slogans, but the individual fights and disobedient actions are also an important part of the whole.
About networking it was said, that the local an regional existing structures are very important. A nationwide huge campaign which cannot be managed by the existing local structures did not make sense to most of the participants, because experience show that such campaigns tend to be shortliving.
There was a proposal to launch the big ‚Marketing’ of the campaign for the beginning to build up a network. Fritz and some other people are going to prepare suggestions and proposals of a concept for adressing the public at the next meeting.
An important part of the whole debate was related to the question of ‚empowering’-process, which is about gathering information (e.g. legal info) or the exchange of experience (for example the results and the process of the individual fights made visible) to make sure the ability to act is raised. The documentation of racist police controls is also a part of this.
See you at the next meeting from the 20 to 22 of June 2003 probably in Jena
everything more specific you will find in the protocoll
Aitak
 Website: http://www.umbruch-bildarchiv.de/video/zwangsverlegung/constanceetchu.html
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