Members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have decided to promote actions to monitor the reparations for the genocide of the native people and slavery and call on the former colonizers (United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, etc. ) to apologize and compensate their former colonies for the colonial period. Colonialism Reparation supports this decision and provides background information.
Author Archives: glokal
Racism in textbooks
NeRaS – Netzwerk Rassismus an Schule wrote an open letter to several textbook publishers on November 6, 2013, demanding that racist content be removed from textbooks. The letter can be read and signed by individuals and organizations here.
Special issue in memory of Trayvon Martin
ProudFlesh: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness dedicates its new issue to the memory of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in February 2012. The 29 articles in the special issue include poetry, commentary, songs, video analysis, petitions, and dossiers.
Repeated police violence against trans*of color – a press release from LesMigraS and GLADT.
On October 23, 2013, one of our employees was arrested together with three other protesters at a rally against police violence and arrests of activists of the refugee protest camp at Oranienplatz (Berlin-Kreuzberg). During the police custody, which lasted about an hour, the police officers behaved in a discriminatory and violent manner towards our colleague. In the process, his basic rights, which any state and executive authority is obligated to uphold according to the Basic Law, were strongly disregarded and violated. Continue reading
News from NoHumboldt 21!
glokal is part of the alliance against the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. While criticism has so far been voiced more digitally, e.g. in a resolution that has already been signed by over 70 organizations and over 500 individuals, a series of exciting events around criticism of the Humboldt Forum will take place this fall. On 22.10. a central event will take place in the Werkstatt der Kulturen on the topic of “Prussian Cultural Heritage? Postcolonial and Development Perspectives on the Humboldt Forum – Dealing with Cultural Assets and Human Remains from the Colonial Era”. held. On 24.10. launches a series of dialogue forums with the event “No amnesty on Genocide!” at the House of Democracy.
On the political level, there was in the meantime a small inquiry of the Green Party Berlin to the Berlin Senate on the postcolonial discussion of the Humboldt Forum. Dr. Kwame Opuko questions the Berlin Senate’s response in a detailed article, “Did Germans Never Directly or Indirectly Hear Nigeria’s Demand for Return of Looted Artifacts?” and criticizes both the handling of colonial looted artifacts and the hypocritical political rhetoric.
Finally, we draw your attention to an open exchange of letters between Frank Holl and the No Humboldt 21! alliance. In his letter, the Humboldt biographer accused the campaign of portraying Alexander von Humboldt as a representative of European colonialism while suppressing his anti-colonial positions. In a letter of response, the alliance partners of No Humboldt 21! show in detail why its quotations, activities and basic attitude must very well be problematized from a postcolonial perspective.
1. International Day for Reparations Related to Colonialism / Journée internationale pour les réparations liées à la Colonisation
On October 12, 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived in the “New World”. The date marks the beginning of conquest and exploitation. A coalition of organizations and initiatives worldwide is calling for the first “International Day for Reparations Related to Colonialism” in 2013. glokal has signed the appeal. Here is a short excerpt from it:
Colonization is a global phenomenon: there is hardly a country in the world that has not been colonized, a colonizer, or both, such as the United States. Colonization is one of the phenomena that has most disrupted humanity. It has left a deep and lasting impression on all continents and the consequences of this are
- demographic: there are millions of people who have been exterminated, deported, or sold into forced labor.
- political: in Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania, cities, kingdoms and empires have disappeared. Traditional communities were gradually disrupted and subjected to European domination.
- economic: the entire economic fabric of societies was brutally dismantled. Crops were looted and famines became more frequent. Dispossessed of their own wealth, those who were colonized were permanently immersed in a state of chronic poverty.
- cultural: colonization destroyed many civilizations, languages, cultures and religions. Those who were colonized often lost their roots and their identity. The social image of the non-European was degraded and this has facilitated the development of racist theories, which has fuelled violence and discrimination of all kinds.
- ecological: the introduction of technologies in the service of profit and productivity focused visions caused the ransacking of millions of hectares of forests, the wasting of natural resources, the pollution of whole regions and it has made the environment fragile and deteriorated public health. It has also helped to disrupt ecosystems and, of course, the most devastating effect of colonization from an ecological aspect is the increase of global warming.
Agitation against Marika Schmiedt – resistant Roma positions are criminalized
The Pariah considers solidarity with Marika Schmiedt essential, because with her the entire Roma freedom movement is criminalized. Der Paria is particularly outraged about the complicity of the chairman of Austrian Roma Rudolf Sarközi with the Hungarian nationalists, which is why an open letter was written to Sarközi. Click here for the article by Der Paria.
The Big Five as dangerous as ever: German development cooperation, colonial-racist imagery, and civil society’s response
In response to the various statements against the BMZ poster campaign “The Big Five”, we have written an article that is intended to present a self-critical review and to make the debate accessible to an English-speaking audience. The article has been published in the journal Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices. We hope it is helpful for the further discussion about racism and power relations in DC. The article can be downloaded here.
Statement on the feature “Musical Missionization. Baroque music from the jungle”.
On August 30, 2013, Deutschlandfunk broadcast the feature “Musikalische Missionierung. Baroque music from the jungle”. Lena Böllinger has written a letter in response to this, which we would like to make public herewith. Several organizations have signed it, including glocal.
Addendum: Judith Grümmer wrote a response for Deutschlandfunk, which you can find here.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I heard your August 30, 2013 feature “Musical Missionization. Baroque Music from the Jungle” on Deutschlandfunk. I am deeply appalled and outraged by the way colonialism and the related missionary activities of the Jesuits have been addressed. At no point in your feature is there a critical reflection on the connection between missionization, colonial history of violence, and racism. Instead, the feature attempts to whitewash and legitimize missionization as “soft colonization.” In doing so, it updates and reproduces colonial-racist stereotypes and white[1] superiority fantasies. Continue reading
Institutional discrimination
Recently, the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency published its new report on discrimination in education and employment. The report not only details how discriminatory and exclusionary the German education and employment landscape is, it also makes extensive recommendations for change.
A look at development policy institutions and organizations in Germany confirms that here, too, and especially here, these recommendations should urgently be taken note of. The newly founded umbrella organization Migration-Development-Participation e.V. (MEPa) emphasizes in a statement that they “miss an adequate integration of migrant experts in many federal states” and that they “do not see equal opportunities for migrants in the NGO structures at present”. AG Sporen lobal from Hamburg is even more specific. In an article entitled “One year of accusations of racism against Eine Welt Netzwerk Hamburg e.V.”, she looks back at how the accusation of structural racism against the state network was dealt with:
“A wall of silence surrounds the moveGLOBAL affair, like most discrimination cases in this country. The personalities in the former moveGLOBAL project advisory board cover EWNW’s back and sweep the affair under the carpet. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Landesnetzwerke in der Eine-Welt-Arbeit – agl – does not question its Hamburg member EWNW. The partly newly elected board of the EWNW is silent – as is the old one. The donor BMZ seems to have forgotten the issue. Business as usual – One year of accusations of racism against Eine Welt Netzwerk Hamburg e. V.”