
Germany – Essen: demonstration on October 7
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of an article published by Dem Volke Dienen.
We received a report from the Red League of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which we would like to share here: On October 7, the anniversary of the tactical counteroffensive of the National Resistance Front of Palestine, the Open Palestine Meeting Bochum-Ruhr organized a demonstration through the working-class district of Essen-Altendorf in which we took part.
15 minutes before the official start of the assembly, the police leadership tried to provoke situations with numerous anti-democratic measures in order to justify an attack on the demonstration. Additional requirements were issued in place that prohibited any denunciation of the Israeli genocide, and even the slogan “Free Palestine” was banned. The demonstrators defied this restriction on freedom of assembly and expression and started going on before the cops tried to stop them again. This time the police wanted to search the loudspeaker van without a search warrant and therefore illegally because they suspected anti-genocide banners were there. However, much to the cops’ outrage, the vehicle could no longer be found. In a current newspaper article, the cops are now going back and have to openly admit: “From a criminal point of view, the banner (“Against genocide and occupation! Freedom for Palestine!” ) was not at all objectionable. Rather, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster had decided in December last year that it was “not clear to what extent the slogan ‘Stop the genocide/genocide’ could be understood as an ‘endorsement’ of Hamas’ crimes, in particular the terrorist attack in October”.
Once on Altendorferstrasse, the rebellious and anti-imperialist character of the district became apparent once again and the demonstration grew rapidly to 250 people, while slogans such as “Beirut, Baghdad, Gaza City – trample down the fucking occupiers!”, “Yallah Yallah resistance – Palestine our country!” and “Long live international solidarity!” echoed loudly through the streets. Residents hung Palestine and Lebanon flags from their windows and cheered the crowd. Altendorf also showed itself to be on the side of the national resistance in Palestine in the various and powerful speeches from the anti-imperialist movement and the Open Palestine Meeting. Based on international law and the Geneva Convention, the right of the people of Palestine and all oppressed peoples of West Asia to armed resistance against occupation and genocide has been emphasized several times. At the same time, the current issue of the Rote Post and leaflets on the current week of action of the Anti-Imperialist League were distributed and later also with a speech on the upcoming event of the Anti-Imperialist League on October 26th at 3:30 p.m. at Kalker Hauptstraße 170 in Cologne.
After arriving back in Altendorf via Frohnhausen, the demonstration decided to hold their final rally at the intersection of Altendorferstr./Helenenstr. in order to make up for the time lost due to the harassment by the cops. Because the cops accused a speaker of endorsing crimes against Israel with her speech, the demonstration was surrounded. The head of operations gave the demonstration the choice of handing the comrade over to the cops or taking her out by force. The participants of the demonstration made it clear a few moments later that they would defend all comrades when the cops the attacked surrounded demonstration to make arrests and had to quickly retreat again. After the assembly dissolved, another participant was briefly arrested with brutal force, but as we were informed is now free again.