I am forwarding this message, which was sent - amongst many others - to our collective Account, hoping that it was not sent to this list already and escaped my notice. I think this one requires a longer comment and I apologize ahead for its length, but I do believe it is necessary. You may be wondering, what a mail concerning a group which clearly defined itself as marxist-leninist, operating according to authoritarian principles and on the basis of a hierarchical vanguard-concept of organisation such as the german Red Army Faction (RAF) is doing on an anarchist list. Especially since anarchists have always supplied elementary criticism to the methods and tactics of such groups, who have in many ways actually proven to be complementary to the capitalist state and whose aim of errecting a centralistic state according to marxist- leninist ideas has nothing in common with anarchism. Furthermore, the RAF and its politics served as a pretext of the state to criminalise all oppositional movements and anarchists - also due to the incorrect equation of Anarchism and the terror-attacks of the RAF - were among the first to feel this repression. Nontheless, most anarchists have also voiced opposition to the states law- system which in its war against groups like the RAF applied special methods, laws and sentences of an obviously political nature. Among these were solitary and incommunicado confinement for imprisoned RAF-members, unusual long sentences, and legal proceedings stripped of the elements of a democratic law. For anarchists, who approve of a society based on equal freedom of all, decentralisation and self-determination, it is no contradiction to be equally opposed to the methods and strategies of the RAF and to those of the capitalist state and attack breaches of individual freedom wherever they may occur. Therefore I believe this post has its legitimacy in A-Infos. For those readers outside germany, it may be necessary to provide a little more historical background to the mai lI am forwarding. This year marks the 20th. Anniversary of the RAF's kidnapping and eventual killing of Hans Martin Schleyer, the former president of the so-called "employers association", who was responsible for the first lockouts in the history of the so-called Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in response to workers strikes in 1971 and who to the RAF represented the continuity of the former NS-elites within the establishment of the FRG due to his work for the SS during the time of the Third Reich. The RAF executed Schleyer, after an attempt to exchange him for imrisoned RAF-members failed since three of the four RAF-members imprisoned in Stammheim at the time died under unclear circumstances - while state institutions and politicians claimed they had committed suicide, large parts of the left and many anarchists claimed it had been murder and even the bourgeouise press widely expressed mistrust at the states version of what had happened. While twenty years no substantial new piece of evidence has been supplied, this year has seen an unparalleled media hype and reconstruction of the history of that time, which not only suddenly claimed that "suicide" of the RAF-members in the Stammheim prison was now "proven" by "new evidence", but also tried to generally discredit all resistance and emancipational projects which took place at the time. The mainstream media carefully selected its contemporary witnesses of events from renegade activists of the time or from state sources who could now display their version of events in full colour. Dissenting voices could not be heard. The following piece of news reports about an attempt to abolish free speech in germany and to criminalize opinions on the FRG-history that dissent to the mass-media constructions. Robert (member of the A-Infos Collective in germany) P.S. Raze all prisons!
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## forwarded message from 24.10.97 ## origin : ats-l@burn.ucsd.edu
Comrades in Germany and elsewhere,
The following is being forwarded anonymously, to protect the sender against retaliation by the German state. I have used the address of the original sender, <ats-l@burn.ucsd.edu>, as the address in the 'From:' line here. It is useful to be aware that such addresses are easy to forge.
An anglophone comrade
P.S. Free the RAF comrades still in prison!
---------- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 17:20:52 -0700 From: Arm The Spirit <ats@locust.etext.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <ats-l@burn.ucsd.edu> Subject: Stammheim Was Murder
German Prosecutors Go After "Stammheim Lies"
Two women are now facing charges from state authorities in Hamburg because they made use of their right to free speech. Bernd Mauruschats, Hamburg's representative of the Federal Prosecutor's Office (BAW) in Karlsruhe, is going after former RAF prisoner Irmgard Moeller as well as one of the editor's of Angehoerigen Info [publication of the Friends And Family Of Political Prisoners In Germany], Christiane Schneider. Both women, according to Mauruschats, have "voiced support for criminal acts", with Moeller facing an addition charge of insulting the dignity of the German state ('Verunglimpfung'). In a letter dated October 11th, Mauruschats - almost exactly 20 years after the night Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe died in Stammheim - claims that Moeller, in two interviews, stated that the RAF prisoners were murdered. In addition to this insult against the German state, Moeller, by stating that the RAF's execution of Hans Martin Schleyer was "not a mistake", voiced support for a criminal act. In a book published by Konkret-Verlag (RAF - That Was Liberation To Us), Moeller, now 50-years-old, stated in an interview with journalist Oliver Tomlein: "If you aren't prepared to kill someone like Schleyer then you shouldn't kidnap him in the first place." The solidarity organization Rote Hilfe has called the investigation by the authorities "an attempt to silence Irmgard Moeller". Moeller, the only member of the RAF core to survive the night of death in Stammheim, seriously wounded, is to be "prevented from drawing doubts upon the now internalized suicide explanation". Rote Hilfe points out that the International Commission which looked into the Stammheim incident in 1978 noted "several irregularities" in the official suicide scenario explanation. While Irmgard Moeller's lawyer Johannes Santen tries to learn more about the state's investigation of her, she herself is filing charges against 'Der Spiegel' magazine. At the end of September, the magazine published a photo of Moeller taken immediately after the deaths in Stammheim, a picture which shows the RAF member topless and obviously injured on a hospital bed with a knife wound in her chest. Irmgard Moeller, who has always declared that she did not inflict the wound upon herself, has called the publishing of the photo a crass violation of her personal privacy rights. A few days before Irmgard Moeller learned of the state's investigation of her, Christiane Schneider, one of the editors of Angehoerigen Info, also received mail from prosecutor Bernd Mauruschats. Because she published a communique from the Peruvian Tupac Amaru (MRTA) rebel group in the monthly publication, founded in 1989 by relatives of the RAF prisoners, as well as the text of a radio interview with Norma Velazco, wife of MRTA European Spokesperson Isaac Velazco, she is now facing charges of "voicing support for a criminal act". According to Mauruschats, both texts "support the hostage takings at the Japanese embassy in Lima by members of the Tupac Amaru". And yet in one of the incriminating texts, no mention is even made of the embassy occupation. Christiane Schneider, who has already faced two dozen charges in the past for supporting criminal acts, insulting the state, or supporting a terrorist organization, sees the new investigation of her as an attempt by the state to "push through the foreign policy aims of the federal government at the domestic political level as well". The investigation is the "latest attempt to silence Angehoerigen Info". Until now, the journalist has usually been acquitted of the charges against her. But there have been exceptions to this: In 1991, she was fined 1,800 German marks for publishing an article which referred to the deaths of the RAF prisoners in Stammheim as murder. At the end of April, she was fined 2,700 marks for two articles which spoke of "execution" and "murder" in reference to the death of RAF member Wolfgang Grams in Bad Kleinen [in 1993]. Schneider has appealed this decision. The background to the latest charges against Schneider stem from the "partial ban on political activity" which the Hamburg authorities placed on MRTA spokesman Isaac Velazco in September, at the behest of Germany's Interior Minister Manfred Kanther. Velazco is now banned from saying anything "in reference to the goals or actions of the MRTA in Peru which justifies, supports, or explains the use of violence". Velazco's lawyer, who has appealed this ruling, commented on the silencing of his client: "Now it's only one small step away from banning any media which reproduce what he says." The authorities in Hamburg are now taking that step.
(Translated by Arm The Spirit; Article by Marco Carini, 'Jungle World' Nr. 43 - October 23, 1997)
Internet addresses:
Jungle World http://www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/jungle_world/
Angehoerigen Info http://www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/angehoerigen_info/
Rote Hilfe Berlin http://www.berlinet.de/rote-hilfe-berlin/
----------------------------------------------------------------- Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide variety of material, including political prisoners, national liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism, the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our writings, research, and translation materials on our listserv called ATS-L. For more information, contact:
Arm The Spirit P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A Toronto, Ontario M5W 1P7 Canada
E-mail: ats@etext.org WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/ ATS-L Archives: http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l MRTA Solidarity Page: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/mrta.htm ATS Archive: http://www.etext.org/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit -----------------------------------------------------------------
++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ ++++ see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++
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