Pressure from German politicians and the police to stop the event failed when a new venue was found at the last minute, organizers said, reports Joe Lauria.
Albanese begins speaking at 2hr 35 minute mark.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
After police and politicians in Germany tried to cancel a meeting Tuesday in Berlin featuring Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories, organizers were forced to move the event to a smaller venue in defiance of the pressure to shut it down.
Last year the police in Berlin broke up a Palestine meeting and barred speakers from entering the country.
This time, the organizers, DiEM25, said in a statement on its website:
“In a deeply concerning escalation, the organisers of ‘Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth’ – an event featuring UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese – are facing ruthless attacks on their fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and expression.
The venue, Kühlhaus Berlin, faced immense pressure from German politicians and the Berlin police to cancel the event. This is not only a disgrace but a direct assault on the rule of law and the core principles of democracy. It also represents an attack on businesses coerced into submission through mafia-like tactics, where intimidation has reached alarming extremes. …
German authorities, already responsible for canceling two events featuring Francesca Albanese, are now escalating their efforts to silence her voice even further. Now, Berlin authorities are ratcheting up their efforts to quash this crucial conversation, putting the organisers and panelists under extreme pressure and threatening disruption through overwhelming riot police presence, similar to the experience of the Palestine Congress 2024.
In light of this grave situation, we are urgently calling on media outlets, legal experts, and human rights organizations to step in as observers and monitor and report on the dismantling of the rule of law and fundamental rights.
We expect unlawful police interference against those who speak out against the genocide in Gaza and challenge German complicity. The right to free speech is under brutal siege, and as journalists, legal experts, and human rights organizations sworn to defend the constitution and fundamental rights, we demand that you fulfill your duty to report boldly and extensively on Germany’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza and its authoritarian slide.
The world must stand witness as we defend democracy and human rights in Germany.
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, a founder of the DiEM25 movement, said on X that police had barricaded the entrance to the first venue:
“Germany has already become a totalitarian police state – they did not have to wait for the ultra-right AfD to win power! On Tuesday 18th February our movement, DiEM25, had organised (together with the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East & Amnesty International) an event to discuss Palestine, featuring a keynote speech by the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the incredible Francesca Albanese.
The police informed the organisers that policemen will be in the audience monitoring every word. Then, before the event started, the police barricaded DiEM25’s venue. Our organisers found another venue and called upon attendees to make their way to it. The police tried to intimidate us in the new venue too.
But we persevered so that Jews, Palestinians, Germans and others could offer Berlin an example of what Germany could have been. Sadly, Germany is slipping inexorably into a totalitarian abyss. Without even the ‘help’ of the ultra-rightist AfD. Sadly, the next election [on Sunday] will do nothing to change that.”
In the end, the event went off without incident at the office of the newspaper Junge Welt and can be seen in its entirety in the video above.
Francesca Albanese speaking on Tuesday at Berlin event. (DiEM25 YouTube page)
Vance in Munich
Just days earlier on Friday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance shocked the Munich Security Conference by calling out Europe, and Germany in particular, for suppressing free speech.
The conservative Vance, a supporter of Israel, like Donald Trump and all of his cabinet, would be unlikely to use Berlin police shutting down conferences on Palestine as an example. Instead he chose the arrests of anti-abortion activists, anti-feminist commenters online and someone burning the Koran to make his point.
But he was clearly against efforts to shut down opposing points of view. He said:
” … The organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.
Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.”
The test for Vance and the Trump administration will be whether they will oppose cracking down on suppression of speech critical of Israel, such as by university students on U.S. campuses and possibly empowering the treasury secretary to remove non-profit status from activists and publications that hold Israel to account.
Shutting Down Last Year’s Palestine Event
Berlin police stormed the stage and shut down the Palestine Congress in April 2024 to discuss Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
German officials also prohibited scheduled speakers from taking part. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a Palestinian-British surgeon and rector of Glasgow University was barred from even entering the country. He was to speak about his experiences with Palestinian victims of Israel in Gaza hospitals where he has worked.
He said in an interview with Middle East Eye that his testimony could be seen as evidence against Germany in the case Nicaragua brought against Berlin at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in March 2024. Just seven days before police shut down the congress a hearing was held at the ICJ on Nicaragua’s charge that Germany is complicity with Israel’s genocide because of its arms shipments to Tel Aviv.
Dr. Abu Sitta says his treatment by the German authorities amounted to witness intimidation:
Germany did not just stop the Rector of the University of Glasgow Dr @GhassanAbuSitt1 from entering Germany, to participate in our Palestine Congress, but threatened him with legal action if he dared send his intended speech by video. Question to German friends: In your name? pic.twitter.com/d0Xk02ppVq
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) April 13, 2024
The Palestine Congress aimed to raise awareness about Nicaragua’s charges against Germany at the ICJ.
Andrew Feinstein, son of a Holocaust survivor who worked with Nelson Mandela in South Africa told a conference on Gaza in Blackburn, England the day after the Congress had been shut down that he was supposed to be speaking on a panel with Dr. Ghassan.
“Germany is the last country on the planet that should be displaying such fascist behavior,” Feinstein said.
Feinstein speaking about what happened at the Berlin conference:
Red Media reported in April 2024 that, “900 police are deployed to the congress, whose start they held up for hours. They demanded that organizers allow all German media into the congress, ironically to ‘safeguard free speech’ and then denied entry to most of the registered delegates.”
PALESTINE CONGRESS UPDATE: German police have stormed the stage of the congress and shut down the livestream.
red. media is at the scene where 30-40 police officers entered the congress hall and demanded organizers stop filming. Our team reports that police have now shut off the… pic.twitter.com/vjsbZBgDIk
— red. (@redstreamnet) April 12, 2024
Among those arrested by police at the Congress were Jewish activists.
Anti-Zionist Jewish activists are heavily targeted in Germany, despite Germany’s attempt to justify its support to Israel as “collective guilt” over the holocaust and repenting for its infamous antisemitism.
Yet, according to researcher Emily Dische-Becker, almost a third of those deplatformed, arrested, or otherwise sanctioned for alleged antisemitism are themselves Jewish. Videos from the repression show a Jewish activist being arrested outside of the conference, with police seizing a banner that read “Jew Against Genocide.”
URGENT: German police have announced they are shutting down the Palestine Congress and demanded delegates leave immediately. They have threatened to use force and already arrested one of the organizers, Jewish activist Udi Raz. He is the third person to be arrested today, two of… pic.twitter.com/rmTjowozzP
— red. (@redstreamnet) April 12, 2024
German authorities have staged several crackdowns on the Palestine solidarity movement since Oct. 7, 2023.
Varoufakis, who was inside the venue in April 2024, was prevented from speaking “because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style),” he wrote on X.
This is the speech he intended to give:
The speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style). Judge for yourselves the kind of society Germany is becoming when its police bans the following words:
Friends,
Congratulations, and heartfelt… pic.twitter.com/6Rnw2bwQPL
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) April 12, 2024
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on X @unjoe.
I have to wonder about what the turn of events in the near future hold for Germany, especially Berlin. I found the place to be very interesting. I see from recent reporting the right wing is growing restless there.
So the spirit of the Third Reich lives on, fascism is in their DNA.
Meanwhile their economy continues to collapse all around them – idiots.
One could say it’s been like that in the Western part when the US/UK Allies took over. The Eastern GDR, administered by the Soviets, was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Three decades after the Soviets withdrew their personnel from East Germany, US military bases remain on (reunited) German soil, and the US and UK have yet to sign a peace treaty with Germany.
It seems to me that the US is in NO position to go preaching about freedom of speech or any such thing. Europe, just as America, is on its last legs of ’empire’ – a bitter pill that has to be swallowed. Forming the EU made things just worse…member nations having surrendered too much sovereignty…with Brussels dictating what can be said and what not.
I don’t understand Lauria’s position: this is from this piece:
“The test for Vance and the Trump administration will be whether they will oppose cracking down on suppression of speech critical of Israel, such as by university students on U.S. campuses and possibly empowering the treasury secretary to remove non-profit status from activists and publications that hold Israel to account.”
This is from reporting on Trump’s speeches during the campaign: “Trump…told donors that he would crush pro-Palestinian protests and revoke visas for international students who attended them if he won back the White House.” And this from after the election: “An executive order signed Wednesday by President Trump outlines a broad federal crackdown on “the explosion of antisemitism” in the U.S., especially on college campuses, and says he will cancel visas of foreign students who are “Hamas sympathizers” and deport “pro-jihadist” protesters.” ….all that was changed from the the direct statement of ‘pro-Palestinian’ to the dishonest ‘pro-jihadist’.
How is there still a test to be made?
His treasury secretary has not yet removed anyone’s non-profit status and Trump has not moved against American students. Foreign students legally in the US have First Amendment protection and can surely challenge that order. In reporting you must give the subject the benefit of the doubt and not assume he will do something, however likely it may be. Trump talks a big game and does not alway follow through.
Freedom and democracy are so valuable that oligarchs and kleptocrats must keep it from you, the proletarian masses. You would probably do something dangerous with it, like learn the truth.