GERMANY: Strike Ends & more – 28th Mar 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 28th of March twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

e. As the GDL demanded, until: 2029

In international affairs, after the US changed its stance on a ceasefire in Gaza, the UN Security Council was able to vote in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate pause in fighting. While Germany’s stance on the matter has always been close to the Israeli government’s position, in recent weeks, voices from German officials in favor of a ceasefire have become louder.

Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, who is currently in Egypt, expressed her happiness about the UN resolution. She also urged the Israeli military to call off the ground offensive in the city of Raffah. She arrived in Egypt on Monday the 25th to get a first-hand picture of the humanitarian situation of Palestinian refugees and those still stuck in Gaza. She used the occasion to intensify her calls for a ceasefire and express her intentions to organize aid for Palestinians.

On a related note, the senate of Berlin is debating whether a planned Palestine congress should take place. Several Palestinian organizations have called for a congress in Berlin to discuss and organize actions in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Since the terror attacks of Hamas on the 7th of October, Pro-Palestine demonstrations in Germany have come under intense scrutiny, and organizers have faced heavy repression. In this climate, the congress in Berlin would spark controversy, but there are several organizations calling for it that are known for their close ties to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP. Because of these ties the Berlin senate is now thinking of banning the congress.

Still on foreign politics, on Tuesday the 26th, chancellor Scholz arrived in Slovenia where met with his friend and colleague Prime Minister Golob. The meeting reportedly was an easy one with little differences in opinion dividing the two countries. Talks were about the good economic ties between the nations and Slovenia’s efforts to prepare the way for southern Balkan countries to enter the EU.

Back to internal matters, following the terror attack on a concert hall in Moscow, fears of similar attacks in Germany increased. In an interview, Faeser, the interior minister, said that the danger of a similar attack in Germany is “acute.” With the European Football Championship coming to Germany in the summer, security services are worried about acts of terrorism. Faeser announced that Germany would introduce broad border security measures while the tournament is taking place and increase security around the venues where the games will be played and sites for public viewing. The Western intelligence community widely regards the organization responsible for the attacks in Moscow, the Islamic State Province Khorsan or ISPK, as the most dangerous of the islamist terrorist organizations. They were also responsible for the bomb scare in the city of Cologne in December.

On to some better news about Cologne since it will no longer imprison people for not paying the fare on public transport. German civil law has a paragraph concerned with sneaking services. It can be applied in cases where people routinely get access to public services without paying for them. The Nazi regime introduced the regulation in the nineteen thirties in a wider campaign to brandmark, isolate, and punish asocials meaning unwanted subjects that aren’t supposed to be part of society. As with so many laws of the Nazi era, the new Federal Republic of Germany didn’t overturn it and continued to apply it. Right now, in some municipalities, if you are caught several times without a ticket on public transport, the public service companies will sue you, and the court will set a fine. If you don’t pay it, you will go to jail. Unsurprisingly, these laws are disproportionately applied to people with little or no income. Luckily, more and more municipalities are discontinuing the practice, the latest one is Cologne.

On to health-related news. On Monday the 25th, some newly released files of the Robert-Koch Institute, or RKI, related to the COVID measures of early twenty twenty sparked uproar across social media. A conspiracist magazine had won in court, forcing the RKI to publish several files. COVID-skeptics carefully cherry-picked and took out of context the contents of the files to make up conspiracy theories — and chaos broke out.

Among other things, those files contain minutes of meetings held to discuss the recommendations the RKI would make to the government for the early response to the pandemic. Some saw those recommendations for measures, such as wearing masks and social distancing, as the dawn of a new dictatorship, but most people thought that these measures were meant to save lives. The files the RKI released didn’t contain anything out of the ordinary.

Moving on to the state of Bavaria, in an effort to combat the imagined language dictatorship (or gender-inclusive language), Bavaria is preserving the freedom to alienate by banning gender-neutral language in all state institutions. Bureaucrats, who are generally not known for using easy or inclusive language, will not be allowed to use gender-neutral language anymore. Interestingly, there has not been a single recorded case of the use of gender-neutral language in bureaucratic communiques. From now also schools and universities will be banned from using inclusive language. In the past, it was debated whether students should even be punished for using gender-neutral language in their school work, by lowering their marks, for example, or in extreme cases, reprimanding and expelling them. But, the current law does not include any specific punishments.

To finish off we take a quick look at the world of sports, since women's football made a big step this weekend. Women’s football is rapidly gaining popularity across Germany. One reason might be that it has been so unpopular in the past that you can stream the National League’s matches for free. Almost all big men's teams in Germany have a women’s team as well. But women don’t play in big stadiums, unlike men’s teams. However, this changed this weekend when the top match of the league between VFL Wolfsburg and Bayern Munich took place in a major venue, the Stadium of the VFL Wolfsburg. Even though Wolfsburg has, for the longest time, been the strongest team in the women’s division in Germany, Munich beat them this weekend with a devastating score of 0 - 4.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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