We were part of the Aktionsbündnis Antira at the #unteilbar – Band der Solidarität – #SoGehtSolidarisch Demo on the 14th June in Berlin. Jennifer Kamau gave a speech for IWS
If we have to learn anything from history is that in times of crisis what comes next is the violence of men! At the height of the pandemic in Germany everybody was called upon to help in the fight against COVID-19. But who are this everybody? Refugees living in a Lager can’t do frequent disinfection because there are not even enough soap for everyone. Stay in the room, isolate yourself! How if refugees live in crammed rooms? Where the beds hardly fit? How when bathrooms,toilets and kitchens are shared by many? They told everybody to buy food enough for 2 to 4 weeks, but how can quarantined refugees can buy food And where to store the supplies? In a room where 4 women share 20 square meters?
In a Lager in Brandenburg a few days ago, a woman was attacked by the police she was knocked over and kept on the ground pressed against the floor of a corridor in front of her children and all other inhabitants who filmed the attack and shared on social media. We spread it even more, and where’s the commotion? Where is the concern with this women?
And what about the women stuck in the Greek-Turkish border? Left with even less privacy? Unable to take care of their own basic hygiene or breastfeed their babies away from the look and harassment of men. The women in the camps in Greece are system relevant workers. There too, women are the ones taking care of the sick in these extreme situations where when masculine violence erupts it is women who will mediate the conflict. And in response what we get More violence, more rape, more feminicide.
The pandemic is not revealing anything new it is just accentuating the old problems the racism, the misogyny most prefer to forget. For women, all form of lockdown means exposure to violence because it’s at home, any kind of home, that women are sexually assaulted, beaten and killed by men. This pandemic is reminding us of the inequalities created by colonialism and its racism. And these sentiments, or the lack of any sentiment that will push for deportations. As soon as the planes start to take off again. Germany will send people back to countries where the pandemic is still our of control.
So we demand from you all to reflect before shouting that “Black LivesMatter” or “Leave no one behind”. Because these sentences are meant to be much more than a slogan!
