Germany: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 30 December, at 09 : 26 AM Print
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Germany: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
© Femi Akomolafe
Sadly, the more things change, the more they remain the same. We humans flatter ourselves by calling ourselves ‘homo sapiens,’ or thinking beings. Very sadly though, most of our actions belie that grandiose presumption.
In 1994, yours truly wrote a trenchant article to condemn the actions of racists who burned a Turkish family in the German town of Solingen. German media told us the youth were protesting high level of unemployment.
Twenty years later, German youth were at it again. On December 11, 2014, youth believed to be Neo-Nazis set fire to several buildings in Vorra, near Nuremberg in southern Germany. The buildings have been allocated to house asylum seekers. They also sprayed Swastikas and anti-immigrant slogans on some of the buildings.
Luckily, no one died. But, again, very sadly, the media tried to rationalize the odious behavior.
This is what we wrote in 1994:
“A Ghanaian thrown out of a train
before that
A Nigerian was killed by German government ‘doctors.’
In order to deport him, the German government called on the services of its new Dr. Mengeles, who gave the poor soul lethal doses of sedatives.
before that
A Mozambican was thrown off a tram!
before that
before that
…
When Africans complained on Socio-Culture-Africa (SCA) about what Euro-Americans are doing to Africa\Africans, we have some apologists coming to take issue with what we WRITE about what they are DOING!
We have had a lot of ‘friends’ of Africa come on SCA to profess how much they love Africa\Africans, and how they object to ‘generalizations.’ Where, may I ask, are these friends, when many families are going into deep mourning because the sons and daughters they waved goodbye to has been murdered – SOLELY ON ACCOUNT OF THE COLOR OF HIS\HER SIN?
I do not see these friends writing letter of condemnation. I do not see them marching on German embassies across the world. I do not see them calling for a boycott of Germany. They are not calling for UN sanctions against Germany. THEY ARE DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Did anything happen in Germany? Of course not; just another African killed!
Why are those who raised objection to my ‘Strong language’ not coming up with how to protect the Africans who are being murdered? They don’t care. They don’t give a damn. All they want is that we keep our mouths shut, and keep accepting any\all indignities the racists in their countries are throwing in our way.
I said in a previous post that the world would be a more beautiful and better place when Europeans start to feel the same, equal pain, whenever a human life is wantonly destroyed. Contrast the silence that greeted the Africans death with all the noises raised by the death sentence passed on the Dutchman in Singapore!
Suddenly, Amnesty International discovered that hanging is a Human Rights crime. Scores of Africans and Asians have been killed in Singapore without a murmur from Westerners. The telecommunications systems of Singapore was over-loaded with posts from people protesting the hanging of a single European!
I forgot the name of the man who said: ‘The death of any man, diminishes me.’ That, to me, are immortal words.
Again, when are we Africans going to learn that we are not being wasted (literally and figuratively) because we are Nigerians, Ghanaians, Sudanese, Angolans or whatever? Our nationality are not written on our foreheads, the colour of our skin is. We are being wasted because we are Africans. I hope that we will remember the immortal words of Martin Niemöller:
“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Below is an editorial I wrote for a Pan-African Journal after the Turkish family were killed in Germany.
“The spate of attacks on immigrants in Germany is turning the nascent fascism and racism sweeping Europe into a new, ugly and fatal phase. As usual, Germany is leading Europe in foreigner-bashing and racially-inspired killings.
Shortly after the Berlin wall came down, a Mozambican was badly beaten and thrown off a tram; a few weeks later a Ghanaian was thrown from an eight-storey building. These attacks were witnessed by ordinary Germans – none came to the rescue of the hapless victims. Many of them cheered these ugly attacks on black people and refugees centers.
On the night of May 28 to May 29, 1993, five innocent Turkish women (three girls and two women) were burned to death at their home in Solingen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Fourteen other family members, including several children, were severely injured. The atrocity was perpetrated by four young Germans (ages 16-23). These women were guilty of having been born with a different color of skin from the white skin-heads who murdered them. This horrendous crime was committed in civilized Germany. The fascists who killed these women did not know them. They did not care to know them. To these hate-filled racists, these women were guilty because they were not born with a white skin; they didn’t have blue eyes. They did not belong to the ‘superior’ Aryan race.
These perfidious act was committed by youths who, until few years ago, were been brought up on a diet of Marxist Internationalism. The ideology of the state to which these youth belonged, until three years ago, was geared towards the creation of the ‘New-Man,’ untainted by parochialism, nationalism and other isms that divide peoples and societies.
Five innocent women dispatched to the world beyond at the prime of their lives – consumed by the fire ignited by hate-mongers in a civilized, rational Germany – in a Christian Europe. These educated, Christian youths cladded themselves in the attire of hatred; their blue eyes burned with malignity; their mouths bellowed the songs of malice, as they marched in their malevolent orgies of death and destruction.
Among the dead were a grandmother and a child with no guilt in this hate-filled world. All were consumed by the fire of race-hate. The women were not ‘illegal- immigrants.’ They were not even immigrants. They have known no other country except Germany. They were born and brought up in Germany, where their husbands, brothers and sisters are working hard to build a prosperous Germany.
Germany’s laws which recognized only the blue-eyed and white skin as Germans, made these women immigrants in the land of their birth; made them the object of racial-arsonists. The flames of racism torched their house and singed their bodies into cinder.
Laws do not burn; people do. But the arsonists were equipped with the knowledge that they were not burning their own kind; they are only cleaning their country of unwanted immigrants. The law of the country of these riffraff makes anyone and everyone with a dark hue an immigrant – no matter the length of stay, no matter the place of birth.
The rationalists are at work, rationalizing away these crimes against humanity. The youth, we were told, were protesting ‘unemployment,’ ‘low standards of living.’
Ah!
If the arsonists ate the flesh of their singed victims, perhaps we will understand that they are hungry – hungry in the most prosperous of European nations – where mountains of food rot away in silos in the name of ‘free-market’ principles.
But these scums did not eat the burnt bodies of their victims: They were out only to kill; to maim – to cause miseries by scorching loved ones. These apologists of racism did not tell us why, if their theories are right, Africans are not burning Europeans that live in their midst. At least, compared with Europe, Africa is a description of hell on earth – standards of living are so low that they could be described as non-existent.
More than hunger is evidently at stake when men go out to set fire to a house full of women.
Those that offered those pathetic excuses did not study history. Hatred of foreigners did not start in Germany today, or yesterday. The only constant in German history is an unremitting hatred of anything foreign.
Xenophobia is part of the German BEING. Hatred and persecution of strangers is part of the German SOUL. As far back as the twelfth century, history tells us, Germans have been organizing attacks against foreigners. One such group was the ARMLEDER, members of which wore red leather and short jackets to roam the streets with nothing but lynching intentions. In 1298 a German Knight, Rindfleisch, organized a series of pogroms against Jews whom he accused of murdering little children.
The story of Adolf Hitler, another product of Germany homophobic, is too well known to need recounting here.
If Germany, and indeed Europe, doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by immigrants, they can take practical steps to help their so-called Third world countries to become better place for their people to live. They can do this easily by stopping their super-exploitation of other people’s wealth. How? They can help by paying fair prices for what they steal from the poor Africans countries. If they refuse to collude with African mis-rulers to look African treasuries, Africans will gladly stay in their countries. These measures will make people stay in their own country.
They also can help by not sponsoring coups and proxy wars, in order to install pliant quislings who will aid their exploitation of other people’s resources.
There is no point in denying the relationship between the opulence of Europe and the poverty of the poor countries of Africa. Africans continue to slave to produce ‘cash-crops’ like coffee and cocoa for European consumers, while they have to import what they eat. And while the imports bills for European foods are rising, their earnings from the so-called cash-crops keep decreasing.
If the European governments do not want Africans to come and settle in their countries, they simply should encourage European multi-nationals like Shell, BP. Nestle, Hoesch, etc to develop a little sense of social responsibility. Ear-marking a little percentage of their huge, sickening profits, for economic and social development in the areas where they derive their fabulous wealth will do a lot more to help Africans stay in their country. Any analysis that fails to see the relationship between the absolute poverty of Zaire and the relative opulence of Belgium is flawed. The Belgians should not be surprise that Zaireans are “swarming” their country. Their high standard of living is maintained and guaranteed by Belgian multi-nationals (like Societe Generale) exploitation of Zairean mineral wealth.
It doesn’t require a revolutionary to see that black slave labor (under slave trade) and African’s mineral wealth (under colonialism and the present neo-colonial World- Economic Order) help in building the wealth Europeans are enjoying today. Europeans are deceiving themselves if they believe that, like ostrich, they can bury their head in sand, and pretend they can enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, while people elsewhere starve. Encouraging their multi-nationals to lessen their exploitation would do a lot more than the purported ‘aid’ Europeans believe they give to Africa. Europeans should know that every time the prices of coffee in their supermarkets fall by a cent (as it seems to be doing all the time), coffee farmers in Africa are sinking deeper into wretchedness – they shouldn’t blame the farmer’s son for trying to follow his father’s wealth into Europe.
Since we cannot advocate the killing of anyone, not even the racist storm- troopers, we can only advise the nationals of countries, whose citizens are subjected to attack in Germany, to take corresponding actions against German interests in their countries. The Julius Bergers; the Mercedes, the Hoeschs of Africa should be made to pay for the crimes of their compatriots. Their assets should either be nationalized or their licenses revoked. Those of us living in Europe should lend a hand by boycotting German products. There is no reason why we should be contributing to the treasury of a country whose citizens are hell-bent on eliminating us.
The most disturbing aspect, however, is the silence of the ordinary folks in Europe, especially those who pretend to be liberals. Not a voice has been raised against all these attacks until the Solingen incident.
We urged Europeans to recover from their amnesia and wake up from their moral slumber. They should remember that just fifty years, the same type of harassment of minorities, started in the same Germany which later engulfed them in a war, in which many Africans paid the supreme sacrifice to end. If they do not wake up to their responsibility and condemn it now, they should remember that there would be no colonial subjects to serve as cannon fodder to bail them out this time around.”
That article was written over twenty years. The racist attacks have not diminished. It has, in fact, intensified. Are we to believe that a government that was able to engage and destroyed a well-organized group like the Red Army Faction is unable to destroy these rag-tag band of neo-Nazis, if it so wished?
As long as Euro-America, through its agencies like the IMF continue to bleed Africa through their surrogates, in order to save jobs and prosperity, so long shall they be plagued with ‘illegal immigrants.’
Let me conclude with Paul Satre: “Europe, in the past made history, now it is being made on it.”
And, to paraphrase John Kennedy: “Those who make living in the Third World impossible, make migration to the First World inevitable.”
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
On Lulu Books:
18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn
Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99
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Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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Get free promotional materials here:
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A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/
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Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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