In this article, Susanne Schultz and Daniel Bendix trace the efforts by the German government, the pharmaceutical company Bayer, the population lobby, and the Gates Foundation to promote the hormonal contraceptive implant Jadelle. The authors conclude with a call for activists to fight for contraceptive safety, in the spirit of earlier challenges to implants, like Norplant.
Tag Archives: Germany
Beyond #refugeeswelcome: The Spectre of Racist Violence and Lessons from Refugee Resistance in Germany
This text by Joshua Kwesi Aikins and Daniel Bendix reframes the current debate about refugees in Germany by contrasting Germany’s recent history of racist violence and limitations of asylum laws with the resistance and agency of refugee movements across Germany. Both provide an important lens to re-examine the simultaneous heralding of “welcome culture”, a sharp rise in arson attacks on asylum centers and the current legislative roll-back of refugee rights in Germany. In bringing these perspectives together the text offers a corrective of both the current image of Germany as a welcoming champion of refugee rights and the problematic notion of refugees as objects of German policies and civil society “help” rather than subjects with a long history of resistance in Germany. Read more
Distant headaches over welcome world champions and other confusions
Chandra-Milena Danielzik argues that the current mainstream discourse in the FRG aka the self-profiling as ‘refugee supporter’ and as ‘welcome culture winner’ (co-)enables the legitimization of repressive asylum and migration policies. It also asks about failures of the German, White Left in recent years and to what extent today’s reactions are (in)adequate. Continue reading
On the International Day for Reparations
October 12 has many meanings: Columbus Day, Día de la Raza, Indigenous Resistance Day, or International Day for Reparations. For this purpose, we want to point out a few events in short message format:
In Berlin, the Bundestag committees discussing the genocide of Herereo and Nama kept their doors closed to a group of genocide researchers from the Herero community from the USA, as did the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory (BGAEU). The press release of the campaign alliance Völkermord verjährt nicht can be found here.
In Caracas/Venezuela, the statue of Christopher Columbus was replaced with an anti-colonial statue , and in the U.S., work continues on Transforming Columbus Day. There is a recent article at Latino Rebels.
In Berlin, the blog “Rassismus_Verlernen: Kämpfe um Reparationen für Kolonialismus und Versklavungshandel” went online with first contributions. Recent posts by ColonialismReparation can be found here.
Mail for the Klett publishing house for the new school year
Yesterday we sent our open letter to the Klett publishing house on the discontinuation of the I*** booklets. More than 200 signatories from schools, politics, academia and civil society from Germany and abroad have signed our demands and oppose the discriminatory and stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans in “Meine Indianerhefte” published by Klett Verlag. On our online portal mangoes&bullets we have compiled a series of further materials and background literature.
About apologies…
The development policy scene in Germany has increasingly been dealing with racism in the last ten years. In these processes, collaboration between white organizations and People of Color and immigrant-diasporic organizations often plays an important role. In this, often only selective cooperation, there have been major and minor reproductions of racism again and again in recent years. Most incidents and conflicts do not reach the public and unfortunately often fade away unresolved in the everyday life of the (mostly white-owned) organizations.
One case that made bigger waves was the termination of the project “move global/glocal” by the One World Network (EWNW) in Hamburg in 2010/2011 with the winding up of the team (2010) and the subsequent termination of the project manager (2011). The AG Sporen Lobal (Note June 2016: The blog of the AG Sporen Lobal is now offline. The documentation continues on the site of MEPa North) created the greatest possible transparency about the further handling of the conflict within the EWNW via her blog, showed that the case had not been forgotten and exerted pressure on the association not to let more grass grow over the matter. See also our article from 2013.
Representatives of Herero and Nama visit Berlin
Following the Armenia debate, civil society and the opposition are calling for recognition of the genocide committed by the German “Schutztruppe” in 1904-08 in what is now Namibia. Herero and Nama leaders are expected in Berlin for the presentation of an appeal, public commemorations and discussion sessions. Continue reading
Recognition of the Genocide against the OvaHerero and Nama in Sight
The German government is negotiating with Namibia on recognition of the 1904-08 genocide in response to public pressure that has increased significantly following German demands for recognition of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
Antiromaism. Racism, exoticism and German history in the present day
Since a few days there is a debate on the Berlin reflect mailing list about anti-Romaism and racism in general. A person negatively affected by antiromaism had criticized the mail of a white person whose user name included “gypsy” and which was about wanting to settle in Berlin “after all the rumzigeunern”. When asked, she wrote that she had the right to use it to positively describe her attitude to life. The person who problematized this as racist was met with massive attacks (in the sense of “relax,” “white people are also discriminated against,” “scientifically speaking, it’s a completely different story,” “if you react like that, you can’t be taken seriously,” etc., i.e., classic defensive reactions that can be found in almost every book on racism). We cannot recount the exchange in the form of more than 100 emails here, but we are blogging here in a slightly modified form the email of a member of glokal, which refers to some mails. With this, we hope, you can do something even without exact knowledge of the previous mails. Continue reading
Appeal “Genocide is Genocide!”
Following Germany’s insistence that Turkey recognize the genocide against the Armenian population, numerous public figures are also demanding that Germany officially recognize and apologize for the 1904-08 genocide against the OvaHerero and Nama people in what is now Namibia.
On the occasion of the 100th On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the colony “German Southwest Africa” on July 9, 2015, more than 150 renowned representatives from politics and science, churches and culture, from the Black community and NGOs went public with the joint appeal “Genocide is genocide!
The appeal can be signed here and there is more information on the campaign website.