German police attack leftists' commemoration
By Wolfgang Pomrehn
BERLIN — The police of Germany's new capital city had a lucky day on January 10. An obviously insane person threatened to attack the annual commemoration of the deaths of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg with hand grenades and a machine-gun.
For Berlin's police minister, a member of the city's governing coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats, this was reason enough to outlaw by far the country's biggest annual gathering of the left. Berlin's police officers have a record of dealing violently with protesters and the city's numerous immigrants and they did not hesitate to enforce the ban aggressively.
The commemoration attracts a wide audience, ranging from the moderate PDS leadership (the Party of Democratic Socialism, which was founded by the remnants of the former East German state party) through the party's different leftist factions to Maoists, Trotskyists and anarchists, and lots of people who fit into no such category.
Liebknecht was a parliamentary deputy of the German Social Democratic Party (the SPD) in 1914. He was then the only person in the German Reichstag who voted against World War I. Together with Luxemburg, he became a prominent spokesperson of the international socialist movement and of the inner-party opposition to the SPD's opportunist leadership.
On December 31, 1918, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were founders of the Communist Party. Two weeks later they were murdered by counter-revolutionary paramilitary groups. Communists and socialists have suspected ever since that the SPD's leaders were involved in the murder. Recent research and newly found documents have proved this assumption.
Since the early 1920s, there have been annual memorials at the grave site in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Only during the reign of fascism were the commemorations repressed, until now.
From 1946, the commemoration was organised by the ruling East German state party and became a hollow event dominated by elderly bureaucrats. The picture changed totally in the early 1990s — now it has became the focus of the whole left-wing opposition.
In recent years, there have been two events. There is the gathering at the memorial, organised by the PDS, which attracted about 100,000 people last year. Then there is a march from the city's centre to the memorial, organised by a coalition of different left groups. Last year 20,000 people attended. This is usually the event where groups to the left of the mainstream PDS are gathered. Many dissident PDS members are among them as well as lots of different immigrant organisations.
Both events have attracted more and more people from the neighbouring countries, including Denmark, France, Spain, Austria and Sweden.
The rally has been the target of numerous violent police provocations in the recent years. Determined but peaceful protesters have again and again been attacked and clubbed by police while marching through the streets. Even elderly people were beaten last year.
Not many people believe that a lone person's threats were the real reason for the ban. Nevertheless, the PDS leadership cancelled its event and called for an alternative commemoration on January 15; many people accused the PDS of giving in to police pressure.
The organisers of the rally, however, refused to call off their action. About 5000 people gathered and were confronted by police with armoured cars, water cannons and horses. A massive deployment of police blocked access to the memorial.
Protesters managed to form a march column but were quickly dispersed. Officers chased people through the streets, arresting up to 200 people. They even arrested a parliamentarian, which is illegal in Germany.