Black Lives Still Matter Berlin Protest 2021 - IWS Speech, 2nd July 2021

United we stand, divided we fall! … OUR LIVES MATTER!

Hello everyone, l am Jennifer from the International Women* Space and the Break Isolation group.

I acknowledge the efforts of many here, who have contributed to fighting the stigmatisation and racism against African people and people with African descent.

Racism acts to depoliticize us, to prevent us from organising, seeks control of our lives be it socially, economically or politically. Our decisions too, but today we are here to repeat that we will never stop to organise, to protest, to demand justice for those affected and killed by racists, because BLACK LIVES MATTER.

There is a black genocide taking place in the Mediterranean because we live in a world where goods from Africa can enter freely in Europe – but not the people from Africa.

This is the continuation of the colonisation and exploitation of Africa and her resources. This is why so many people flee to seek asylum. But when they do, they are put into an asylum system that tortures and murders in cold blood with no remorse.

A system that traps people in the Lagers to not only keep total control over them but also to isolate them as much as possible.

A system created to profit off of locking up and killing black people.

A system that violates and takes away people’s right to work, to privacy, to education.

The asylum system is one of the most brutal forms of institutional and structural racism here in Germany. And it does this all in the name of human rights.

Germany now even says that having a Duldung is a reason for imprisonment, deportation, expulsion and extradition. The Dublin regulation has caused the illegalization and deportations of thousands of people.

Now there is the hysteria on ‘war on drugs’. Allow me to say that it’s a war on black people. If this really is a war on drugs? Where are the faces of the consumers and the drug barons?

Let’s be clear: the criminalization of migration by the German state is the greatest criminal act of all!

The magnitude of structural and institutional racism in Germany against people of African descent can be seen in the racial profiling by the government and security agencies.

There is a repeated denial that racial profiling does not exist in Germany by the police authorities. It is unacceptable that a police officer cannot be called a racist! If we see a racist act and we cannot name it, how can we denounce racism?

So let’s be clear: Racism is everywhere. Black genocide is happening everywhere.

So when we come to the streets to demand the absolute minimum – that is, that it is acknowledged that BLACK LIVES MATTER, we also want to take a minute to remember our brothers and sisters whose lives were taken by German institutions like the police.

We want to remember:

Rita Owour Ojunge who was killed already 2 years ago in a Lager in Hohenleipisch.
A Lager in the middle of the woods in Brandenburg in total isolation.
Rita’s assassination is still an open criminal case until today.
Rita’s assassin was never found.
A case led by a white police force …
That couldn’t care less if a woman’s black body was missing.

We want to remember:

Robble Warsame, who was living in an Ankercenter – a big deportation center – in Schweinfurt that was repeatedly – like the other refugees living in this Lager – brutally beaten by the security in the Lager before he was taken to the police station where he was later beaten and killed by the police. Again a white police force that is so confidentially telling the lie that he hanged himself.

We ask: How is a man who is 1.78 meters tall supposed to strangle himself with a strip from a blanket, that is considered unbreakable – especially made to prevent suicides in prison- that was placed at a height of 1.50 meters?

We want to remember:

Oury Jalloh, who was killed 16 years ago by police officers in custody at the Dessau police station. After his killing the police launched a campaign to paint him as a criminal, a drug dealer.
A story that we all just know too well.
16 years during which his murder was covered up by the German authorities over and over again until today!

And they are just three cases that we know of. But they stand for thousands and thousands of people that are getting brutalized and killed EVERY DAY.

We demand Justice for Rita and all the people who have been killed by white supremacy:

– in the so called refugee camps in Libya that the German Government is financing
– in the Mediterranean, which has become a mass grave, killed by border security like Frontex – also financed by Germany
– in the Lagers
– in the deportation centers
– at the police station
– at the Ausländerbehörde
– at the Jobcenter
– on the street
– at the park

So we have to fight every day actively to not only chant today that BLACK LIVES MATTER,

but to demand that BLACK LIVES MATTER!

As a last point I want to acknowledge changes that have been happening in the last years in our community:
There is more unity, people are denouncing the colonial tool imposed on them for so many years.

And we are more WOKE – because we are FED UP!

Let’s continue in this spirit, because united we stand, divided we fall!

… OUR LIVES MATTER!