Annalena Baerbock in Rwanda & more – 21st Dec 2023

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 21st of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

Annalena Baerbock, the Foreign minister, visited Rwanda from Sunday the 17th to Tuesday the 19th. She made clear that she had no intentions of following through with plans to implement the controversial Rwanda model that the United Kingdom adopted. This model would allow deporting people to Rwanda and other non-EU countries without giving them the chance to apply for asylum in the EU and Germany. During her visit, she criticized conservative politicians for supporting this model. She also started talks about opening vaccine-producing facilities in the country.

At the same time, Germany’s government has agreed in the European Commission to increase security at the EU borders and allow the incarceration of refugees with “little chance for asylum”, including children of any age. This incarceration would take place in the notoriously inhuman camps and prisons on the outer borders of Europe where Frontex, a private security firm in charge of border security, and the European police are continuously committing illegal and violent pushbacks.

Moving on, thousands of farmers demonstrated on Tuesday the 19th in Berlin against the new budget that the government coalition just agreed on last week. Specifically, farmers will stop receiving subsidies for diesel used in farming and will have to start paying motor vehicle taxes on their tractors and farming machines. The farmers say they will likely go out of business if these changes aren’t taken back.

In twenty eighteen, Markus Söder, the Bavarian prime minister Markus Söder, via an executive order, decreed that every Bavarian government building (including schools and universities) has to hang a crucifix in their entry areas. A lawsuit was filed against the decree. Last year the Bavarian administrative court had already ruled that the crucifix does violate the neutrality precept of the state, but since a “passive portrayal” of a religious symbol does not have a missionary function or result in aversive consequences for people of different beliefs, the crosses stayed. On Tuesday the 19th, the federal administrative court upheld this decision. The religious critical federation for freedom of thought had sued and announced that they will appeal the decision at the federal constitutional court.

The work on the final deposit for atomic waste in Salzgitter will continue. A coalition of nature environmental protection organizations under the leadership of the Federation for Environment and Nature Protection or BUND had petitioned the Environmental Ministry of the state of Lower-Saxony to stop the construction. The ministry declined the petition on the grounds that it was submitted too late. The BUND has announced that it would take further legal steps. The argument of BUND and the consortium of environmental protection organizations is that the planned storage facility for radioactive waste that was commissioned in the early two thousands is no longer up-to-date with the latest scientific knowledge and thus might represent a danger to both the community and nature on site.

A defense politician of the Green party has come out in support of Germany’s navy joining the security forces in the Red Sea. Currently, the alliance to protect civilian shipping in the Red Sea, codenamed Operation Prosperity Guardian, consists of naval assets from the US, the UK, the Netherlands, among others. If Germany decides to participate, it would face several legal issues. Without a mandate from the United Nations, Germany’s armed forces aren’t constitutionally allowed to operate abroad.

For the first time in German history since the nineteen thirties, a candidate of a right-extremist party has been elected into the mayor's office. In the Saxon town of Pirna, the candidate backed by the Alternative for Germany party, or AFD, won the race for the mayor position against a coalition of democratic parties with 38.5 % of the votes. Three democratic parties, the CDU, the, SPD, and the Green Party, had formed a coalition all supporting the same candidate, but lost.

During the national elections last year there were many irregularities in Berlin. In several districts the elections for municipal parliaments had already been repeated, due to numerous irregularities. Now the federal constitutional court ruled that a few districts, just over 20%, also had to repeat national elections. Though there might be slight changes in outcomes, the repeated elections probably won’t change the composition of the national parliament.

Andrea Tandler, the daughter of the former finance minister of Bavaria and a multi-millionaire, has been convicted of tax evasion and faces four years in prison. At the beginning of the pandemic. Tandler made an amoral but legal deal with the state. She bought masks and sold them to the state at extraordinary prices. Off this deal, she made over 48 million euros in twenty twenty. Even though this deal has been widely criticized and many politicians lost their mandates in the episode dubbed The mask scandal, many politicians from the CSU who were sued were acquitted. What has now been ruled illegal is the tax evasion. Andrea Tandler will have to spend the next four years in prison, once she recovers from her stomach disease — but she will still be a multimillionaire.

The Union of Locomotive Drivers has won a small victory in their ongoing labor dispute with the national train company. One competing company has signed an agreement to grant one of the key demands: The thirty-five-hour week. The medium-sized regional train company Netinera has agreed to a step-by-step program that will guarantee the thirty-five-hour week by twenty twenty-eight. The head of the union said in an interview on Wednesday the 20th that this agreement shows that companies can meet their demands, and once again made clear that the problem arising from strike action is not the fault of the workers who want better living conditions, but of the greedy management. Recall that they have just given themselves several million euros in bonus payments even though the national train company is notoriously unreliable. The agreement with Netinera is a blueprint for the demands the union wants to put in place with the national train company as well, a step-by-step reduction of work hours at a step-by-step increase in pay.

In August twenty twenty-two, a policeman shot and killed a Senegalese refugee in Dortmund. On Tuesday the 19th, a case against the five policemen that were involved in the murder was opened. The shooter is charged with manslaughter, three others with inflicting grievous bodily harm, and the commanding officer with incitement. Mouhamed Dramé was sixteen years old and lived in a youth center. The police were called because he said he wanted to kill himself. When the police arrived, he was sitting in a fenced-in courtyard not accessible from the outside and pointed a knife at his chest. When he didn’t respond to the police, they first pepper sprayed him, and when he got up, they tasered him. While the police were tasering him, one opened fire with a full automatic submachine gun. Five shots hit and killed the sixteen-year-old. The police quickly said they were attacked, which just as quickly proved to be impossible due to the fence separating them from the teenager. This trial is one of the first cases in Germany in which a policeman has been charged with manslaughter

A secret treaty between Germany and Iraq became public on Friday the 15th. According to research by German journalists, the German executive has a secret treaty with the Iraqi government, which allows deportations for greater numbers of Iraqi refugees. Apparently, the deal became active at the beginning of this year, after a visit of Nechrivan Barzani, Iraq’s president, in June. Until then Germany only deported convicted migrants, but the new deal allows for deportations of all Iraqi refugees who aren’t granted asylum. This includes people from minorities, such as the Yezidi, who are often persecuted in their home country. The conservative opposition only criticized that the government kept the deal quiet, while the progressives pointed out some of the many alleged and proven violations of human rights.

Aaand that's it for this week!

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