Photo Gallery: That was Summer Camp 2021
Photos of the LINKE Berlin Internationals Summer Camp in the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf, 4th-5th September 2021
Antony Hamilton
08/09/2021
The Left Berlin News & Comment
This is the archive templateCategory: Uncategorised
Mikis Theodorakis belongs to us
Obituary to the great Greek composer, MP and activist who died this week
Dimitra Kyrillou
06/09/2021
“Always I have lived with two sounds — one political, one musical,” Mikis Theodorakis interview to The New York Times in 1970.
The death of the acclaimed Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis on September 2nd had a world-wide impact. Mainstream press like the New York Times, The Guardian and many others paid tribute to his immense musical work, one which spanned from classical music, operas and oratoria to Greek popular music and soundtracks. The latter like “Zorba the Greek”, “Z”, “Serpico” became almost more famous than the films they were written for. Of course, all obituaries commented on his political standing, his affiliation to the Communist party and the Left and his later move to the right wing. So, who was Mikis Theodorakis? Was he simply –just the “national” composer, one who could speak for all Greek regardless of ideas and politics?
The government of New Democracy answered “yes”. They declared a three-day national mourning for the loss and rushed to praise the genius of Mikis Theodorakis and his work which “speaks for Greece, the land and the nation”!
What hypocrisy! The world of the ruling class bows to a great artist who became great just because his work and he himself identified with the world of the working class and the oppressed. Most important, this was shaped in an extended time period when the latter were in a fierce and unresolved conflict with the former, the 1960s and 1970s.
There are contradictions in the entire life, views and activity of Mikis,. These open the door to such attempted hi-jacking, although they are not successful. Because Mikis himself, approaching the end, wrote a letter declaring that what is important are the “Big Figures”, and that he wanted to die as a communist. But also – most significantly, because his songs were shaped within the struggles of the left people, with the great uprisings of the working class and the poor. Still today, in moments of social unrest people come back to sing them as a means of historical reference and inspiration.
First steps, WWII
Mikis was born in the island of Chios in 1925, the son of a civil servant from Crete and a refugee from Izmir. It followed the Greek-Turkish war of 1921-22, both parents coming from a democratic background in times of hard repression. When Germans occupied Greece during the second world war, Mikis was studying in the conservatory and composing choral works. Soon he became an activist in the struggle for survival, at a time when poor people starved and black market traders were thriving. This led him to join the youth group allied to the partisan resistance, EPON and later the partisan army ELAS.
In December 1944, by the end of the WWII, British troops attacked the leftwing forces that had led the resistance against the Germans in the bloody battle of “Dekemvriana”. Mikis escaped arrest during these street battles, only to be arrested later and tortured almost to death in 1945 and again in 1946. During the Greek civil war the regime established exile camps on desert Aegean islands to «reform» the rebels, actually torture and force them sign statements to redeem themselves by denouncing communism. Mikis paid the price of his political engagement by spending several months in the notorious Makronisos.
After the Greek civil war
By the end of the civil war he was released, graduated from the Athens conservatory and began composing and working on his first symphony. Receiving French government scholarships he left with his wife Myrto, so that they both would continue studying in Paris.
The post-civil war years were hard for left-wingers in Greece, as repression and exclusion from public life was the norm. Despite being aware of this harsh reality, Mikis decided to return home and participate actively in Greece’s cultural and political life. Instead of engaging with what was the musical establishment in Athens, he chose to compose music for “Epitaph”, the poem that the communist poet Yiannis Ritsos had written. This was inspired by the bloody Mayday of 1936, when the police attacked and killed hundreds of tobacco-workers in Thessaloniki. Ritsos and his poetry were almost illegal in 1960, but Theodorakis released an LP album and made his breakthrough in the public, shocking the mainstream intellectual circles.
1960s – Acknowledgment in Greece
One can see here the elements that made his music unique: He would pick poems by acclaimed poets, such as Georgios Seferis, Tasos Livaditis, Garcia Lorca, Odysseas Elytis and compile music introducing innovations such as the use of bouzouki. This was the traditional string instrument. He also used popular-folk singers of humble origins. The outcome was prestigious. It was music stemming from the people and going back to the people. In this way, poetry ceased to be a “high art” thing for the educated elites, it entered working-class houses and was sung in workplaces, in protests and concerts. In 1965 Mikis released “Mauthausen” based on the lyrics of Holocaust survivor Iacovos Kampanellis. It would be described as the most beautiful music written about the Holocaust.
Mikis was an active member of EDA (the legitimate left party, as the communist party was illegal). The 1960s marked an upturn in the class-struggle, in which he he founded the youth organization “Democratic Youth Grigoris Lambrakis” (the lost athlete and political activist assassinated in 1963 by far-right thugs) and became its first leader. As an elected MP with EDA, he toured the country from city to city to perform with his ensembles and then discuss with the audience. Young people would defy the bans by the police and take part in the concerts, turning them into political events. This process elevated both, his political understanding and his art, which was dialectically related to the popular movement. In these years he became known worldwide, especially after the international success of “Zorba the Greek” (1964).
Rise and fall of the dictatorship
Unfortunately the political unrest of the ’60 was defeated by the military coup d’ etat of 1967, which put Greece under a colonels regime for 7 years and introduced a new significant role for Mikis. He was in the small circle of the people who called for armed resistance from the very next day of the coup. Unlike the leadership of the left parties, he felt optimistic about the potential to organize against the regime. He paid the price for his standing, but he also sowed the seed for the next phase of the movement. Mikis was arrested, tortured, imprisoned, put in house arrest before fleeing to Paris in 1970 following an international campaign. He was already famous. In 1969 he had written the score for Kosta Gavras’s “Z”, a film narrating the assassination of his friend, Lambrakis (see above). From Paris he toured the world giving concerts with his band and speaking for international solidarity with Greece. His international audiences could be found from Allende’s Chile to Palestine and from Castro’s Cuba to London. He wrote music based on the lyrics of Pablo Nerouda (Canto General, 1971), film and TV scores, notably Gavras’s “State of siege” and Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico” (1973), starring Al Pacino as an idealist cop.
With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, Mikis returned to Greece a hero. That was a time of rebirth for the working-class movement and the left. Thousands of people packed into stadiums to cheer the victory of the resistance. Unfortunately at that moment Mikis gave his open support to the new conservative prime minister, Karamanlis by declaring that the choice in the elections was “Either Karamanlis or the tanks”! He was 100% wrong, as the dynamic of the movement that brought down the dictators was strong and oriented to the left. Mistaken in suggesting that the right wing is the guardian of democracy, this put a brake on the potential of that period.
It can be understood though, as in the heart of Mikis’s thought was his country, Greece, namely “Romiosyni” – after one of this albums – more as a nation than as a society divided into capitalists and workers. Although he reconciled briefly with the Communist Party (KKE), gradually the patriotic concept became prevalent in his entire activity. This created tensions and controversies. Mikis Theodorakis would visit Lebanon to support the PLO and Yasser Arafat and undertake to write the national anthem of Palestine. But he would also compose music to celebrate François Miterrand’s electoral success in France. He continued to compose all sorts of musical pieces, but without doubt, the songs that he picked for his concerts were mainly the stuff of 1960s and 1970s.
Turn to the right
By the 1990s, his political orbit brought Mikis into the government of the right wing Konstantinos Mitsotakis. Although this collaboration didn’t last, it was a big disappointment for the left rank and file, which felt betrayed. Collaboration with the right wing was not introduced by Theodorakis but by the unified “Synaspismos of the left” in 1989, when they formed a coalition government with the right wing party. Mikis did not invent these collaborations, he only pulled to the edge strategies that the reformist parties had already practiced.
In the following years he had a couple of brilliant moments, opposing NATO’s wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). During the “squares movement” of 2010 in Greece he intervened and founded an initiative called “Spitha” (spark). He had his dark moments as well, most notorious his involvement in nationalist protests against North Macedonia. But in any case, his role in the political life had diminished.
To whom does Mikis belong?
The life of Mikis Theodorakis has been full of controversies and zig-zags but his musical work was not. His songs transcend them and constitute a kind of national and global heritage, they are great art. But they are art that speaks for those from below fighting against those from above. This is the main reason why the attempts of the right wing to connect with Mikis’s legacy are illegitimate. Left-wingers may have felt disappointed by many certain stances Mikis took, but his work identified with some of the leading events of the class struggle and the Left in Greece, it is an asset of the movement. This is the reason why, during a demonstration people would sing his songs spontaneously and this is the best way to say farewell to Mikis Theodorakis. Not by idealizing him, but by reviving the spirit of resistance they were made with.
Film Review: The Man Behind the Microphone
On Saturday, Berlin Mondiale is showing a film about singing, revolution and family in Tunisia. We review it in advance
Phil Butland
03/09/2021
The Man Behind the Microphone is a fascinating film about the development of a post-colonial nation through the work of one of its leading artists. It tells the story of Hedi Jouini (Papa Hedi), a feted singer and composer of over 1000 songs known as the ‘godfather of Tunisian music’. Claire Belhassine, the film’s director, discovered the illustrious past of her grandfather by chance in a taxi in Paris, when a song came on the radio in Arabic and she asked the taxi driver who the singer was.
Hedi became a musician because of his mother Fatma, who didn’t care much for social norms. She bought him his first lute, which was smashed to pieces by his father who didn’t want any son of his becoming a musician – they were all drunkards and womanisers. So, Fatma divorced her husband, taking the young Hedi with her.
Hedi grew up in a Tunisia occupied by France, but in which there was a growing movement for Tunisian independence. He joined a group of radical artists who called themselves Taht Essour (Under the fence) and integrated Egyptian and Andalusian elements into his music. A talking head in the film describes him as being “both inside and outside his culture.”
Hedi met and fell in love with the Jewish singer Ninette; both sets of parents disapproved of their union – Hedi’s refused their permission for the marriage. Hedi started to get film roles, and the director of one of his films in Morocco offered a part to Ninette. Further roles were offered, but Hedi banned her from acting and sent her back to Tunisia. His justification was, he didn’t want her to become famous – there was only room for one star in the family.
Ninette was not the only one to be held back. In the 1960s, film makers were looking for Arab actresses and Roberto Rossellini visited Tunisia. He expressed interest in talking to Hedi and Ninette’s daughters, but again Hedi insisted that his daughters were not going to enter the world of acting or singing. While the girls were forbidden from any artistic activity, their brothers formed a band, The Viscounts.
As Tunisia finally gained its independence in 1956, Hedi wrote over 100 patriotic songs. One of these was unsuccessfully submitted in a competition for a new national anthem. It is suggested in the film that Hedi may have been overlooked because he was too Westernized. For instance, he wore a sharp suit rather than traditional robes.
With Hedi forever on tour and many of her Jewish friends leaving the country, Ninette became increasingly isolated. Twice she tried and failed to join her family in Israel (we don’t learn exactly why she failed). Then, the new national government started to support local artists, and Hedi returned to take a job as artistic director at the state radio and television station.
The film is at its weakest when Belhassine brings in her own personal history – there is a little too much gossip about family feuds, and when a copyright lawyer is brought on, you do get a sense of old scores being settled.
And yet these are just small details. Belhassine’s family history shows how the development of a society affects individuals – the limited opportunities under colonialism, the emancipating effect of the National Liberation movement, but also the inequalities which are not simply solved by this movement – particularly concerning the role of women.
And yet none of the women in the film are remotely submissive. Belhassine, her mother and aunts, her grandmother do not look like they’d let anyone push themselves around. Even when one of her aunts wistfully regrets that she never pursued a singing career, you get the sense both that she’s trying to own this decision and that she’d never let such a ban be imposed on her daughters.
On 4th September, Berlin Mondiale is showing The Man Behind the Microphone at the Dammweg Campus in Neukölln. For those of us not at Summer Camp, its an opportunity you shouldn’t miss. For those of us who are away, let’s hope they organise a second screening soon.
Summer Camp is this week-end
Last minute information about Summer Camp week-end. You still have time to register
Want to meet non-German political activists? Want to discuss how we can change the world?
Then you’re warmly invited to the LINKE Internationals Summer Camp. This week-end in the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf (similar to a youth hostel).
Registration and accommodation are free. And you get the following:
- Speakers from India, Turkey and Western Sahara
- Introduction to campaigns like Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen, Migrantifa and the Jewish Bund
- Workshops on how can socialism be fun (with the Right2TheCity cheerleaders) and how can parents be involved in politics?
- Discussion with candidates at the coming elections
The full programme is here. Register by filling in this survey.
For last-minute information, the following information will appear in this week’s weekly Newsletter from theleftberlin. If you don’t get the Newsletter already, you can subscribe by sending a mail to teamleftberlin@gmail.com.
After all the waiting, Summer Camp starts tomorrow (hence the Newsletter coming out a day early). We’ll be meeting at 12.45 on the Northbound platform (direction Wittenau) of the U8 at Alexanderplatz. For people who want to stay in Berlin to attend the unteilbar demo (more later), you need to get the U-Bahn to Wittenau (S-Bahns are on strike this week-end) and then the 220 bus to Almutstraße. From Almutstraße it’s a 10 minute walk to the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf, Seebadstraße 27.
We’ve spent enough previous Newsletters telling you what you can expect, and you can see a full programme here. Here’s a little practical information:
- All the beds are now booked, but there are some sofas and camp beds. If you want to stay overnight, best bring a sleeping bag – even if you have a bed, as bedding costs extra.
- Please take a Covid test before coming, even if you have been vaccinated. A self-test is ok.
- Everything is free, but we will have a whipround to pay for the food. Drinks will be sold Saturday evening at a reasonable price.
- If you tried to register on Monday or Tuesday, the survey software wasn’t working. Don’t worry, there are still places if you just turn up, but it would help us know how much food we need if you fill in the survey again.
As mentioned already, tomorrow also sees the great unteilbar demo – for a society of justice and solidarity. Summer Camp was booked months ago, hence the clash. But you can go to the unteilbar demo – meet at the Straße des 17 Juni at 1pm, and come along to Summer Camp afterwards. Unteilbar is our Campaign of the Week.
Afghan Refugees trapped on the Polish Eastern Border
European migration policies are putting vulnerable refugees in even more danger
Alicja Flisak
02/09/2021
According to the Ocalenie Foundation, an organization which provides assistance to refugees, 32 refugees are trapped on the Polish border with Belarus, close to Usnarz Górny. They include women and a 15 year old girl.
The refugees can’t move forward and they can’t go back. They are trapped on the border surrounded by the Polish military on one side, and Belarusian soldiers on the other. The standoff has been going on for about 20 days already, and they say that they have no water or food. Images show them soaked by the rain and freezing. One of the women is complaining about difficulties breathing and pain in the kidneys. Her condition is critical. It is not exactly clear what’s wrong with her, because no medical workers are present. There has been no help, either from the Polish side or from Belarus.
The Ocalenie Foundation also reports that the health of other refugees is also deteriorating: 25 people are ill, 12 of them seriously. Yet potential help is just a few hundred metres away. For weeks activists have been trying to organize support and to provide food, water and necessities to the group of trapped refugees, but the border guards are actively preventing contact. Belarusian authorities have closed the country’s borders to prevent the refugees from returning. Poland is arguing that the refugees are currently on Belarusian territory, meaning they should apply for asylum in that country.
The situation all over the Eastern EU-border is tense and inhumane. According to activists’ reports, illegal push-backs from Poland to Belarus are happening on a regular basis. These are the actions of state services which prevent migrants from applying for international protection by forcing them to return to Belarus after crossing the Polish border, even when they declare their will for protection. The actions of the border guards are violating both human rights and the Polish Constitution and are exposing refugees to unnecessary danger.
The violations by the Polish border guards, who are commissioned by the Defence Ministry, have caused great indignation in Poland. Protests demanding that the refugees are welcome have taken place all over the country and are supported by the left parties. Demonstrators hold posters and banners with slogans saying: “Border of Shame”, “Enough cruelty!”, “Enough of the policy of torture and humiliation!”, “No human is illegal”, “We do not want Polish borders of death”, “Decency is more important than order”, “Accept Refugees, kick out the Nazis.”
There are fundraising campaigns to help collect food, water, clothes, tents, sleeping bags, and money for legal aid. The MEP of the left party Razem, Maciej Konieczny, was admitted by the border guard to meet the group of refugees. He managed to hand over sleeping bags and powers of attorney for legal representation in Poland. Grzegorz Pietruczuk, the only left-wing mayor of a district (Bielany in Warsaw) offered to provide housing for Afghan families after they are allowed to enter Poland.
Fortress Europe and “Migration Diplomacy”
This group of Afghan refugees is not an isolated case. Soon after they arrived, information reached the public about nine Somalian women trapped on the Polish-Belarus border near the village of Bobrówka. Many groups of migrants, including women and children, have arrived at the Polish border to the West of Belarus and at the Latvian and Lithuanian borders to the North. While some of them are Belarusians seeking refuge from Lukashenko’s regime, many more are Middle Eastern refugees – mostly Iranians, Afghanis, Syrians, Kurds, and members of the Yazidi minority in Iraq. They’re hoping to ultimately reach the EU.
The governments of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland are interpreting the increase in migrants reaching their territory as a threat to their national security. Speaking to the Financial Times, the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, accused the Belarusian authorities of engaging in a “hybrid attack against Europe” by offering package travel deals via the state-run tourist agency Tsentrkurort.
On Monday 23rd August at a press briefing near the Belarus frontier, Polish defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak said “we are dealing with an attack on Poland. It is an attempt to trigger a migration crisis”. Many commentators see the reason for the current escalation at the Belarusian borders as an effect of sanctions which the EU imposed on Belarus last year. It is also an impact of the politics of its neighboring countries, especially Latvia and Poland, who present themselves as allies of the Belarusian opposition and take in people fleeing Lukashenko’s regime.
The kind of “migration diplomacy” implemented by Lukashenko is nothing new. A similar situation occurred in the aftermath of 2015 when the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan adopted a more aggressive stance toward the European Union. Erdoğan threatened to flood Europe with migrants if European Union leaders did not offer him a better deal to keep refugees in Turkey.
In May 2021, Morocco froze a deal with the European Union about managing migration to the Spanish exclave, Ceuta. The reason was Spain’s decision to offer medical treatment to Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Frente Polisario, a political organisation claiming liberation for West Sahara from Moroccan occupation. Fearing a new refugee influx, Poland is increasing its security measures on the border with Belarus by building a 2.5m high wall, similar to the one built by Hungary on its border with Serbia in 2015, and Lithuanian soldiers are installing razor wire on the border with Belarus. Turkey and Greece are both installing walls and surveillance systems to prevent asylum seekers from Afghanistan from reaching Europe.
It’s a disturbing state of affairs considering the various reports pointing out that increased border security leads directly to violence against refugees. It puts them at risk of returning to unsafe countries and leads to a disturbing rise in avoidable deaths, as countries close off certain migration routes, forcing migrants to look for other, often more dangerous, alternatives. This is a fatal sign of a failure of European migration policy. EU politics are leading to migrants being detained and subjected to gross human rights violations in transit countries in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, West Asia and Africa.
The argument propagated by the right-wing and liberal media saying that letting migrants in would favor Lukashenko and Putin is dehumanizing and acts as a cover for the real reasons why people decide to leave their homes. It is also is the main reason for the polarisation and destabilization of society. The Polish authorities are running a heated campaign using the state-owned media, presenting refugees as a threat to health, security, and stability. This has been accompanied by right wing politicians declaring the need to “protect the Polish family and guarantee security for the nation from possible terrorist attacks”. This form of fear management policy was previously used by politicians in 2015. The racist rhetoric turned out to be successful: in May 2015 72% of Poles were in favor of letting refugees in, in October 2015 – after a massive hate campaign – the support sank to 21%.
European countries have adopted policies of outsourcing migration outside of the EU to keep migrants out of their own territory at all costs. The securitisation of the EU’s asylum and immigration regime is currently funded by billions of Euros. The idea that a hard external border is important has been imposed into the European economic integration project and serves to construct refugees as the dangerous Other.
Capitalism needs borders in order to maintain its system of wealth accumulation through maximum exploitation. The borders of the European Union are entangled with global postcolonial politics of race and the global neoliberal politics of labour mobility and subordination that produce and capitalise upon these racialized differences. Poland’s policy of marginalisation and exclusion of racialized non-Europeans aims at stabilising the internal economical order. Thus capitalist territorial imaginations remain central to the European project.
Eastern European Route
The human rights violations happening at the Eastern border of the European Union aren’t new. Since 2016, activists and human rights organisations have been reporting cases of regular disregard of EU- and international law for people trying to apply for international protection at the Terespol/Brześć.
People have been camped for weeks on the train platform on the Belarusian side of the Polish border sometimes, trying to cross. The Polish Border Guards arbitrarily refused passage to refugees, mainly from Chechnya, Ukraine and Tajikistan. According to many reports, the vast majority who tried to pass at official border crossing points were returned immediately and refused the right to seek asylum. Officers refused to submit an application for international protection. The main reasons for the refusal were the lack of valid travel documents and a claim that those people were “economic migrants”.
In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights decided that Poland has ignored applications for asylum submitted by newcomers to the Border Guard officers, and violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (including the order to protect against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment). There have been cases reported which expose the inhumane treatment of migrants by the Polish and Belarusian border authorities including sending back Chechen refugees to Russia and violent treatment by armed border guards.
The European Commission has maintained cooperation with Belarus since 2016, and supports it financially in the construction and/or renovation of detention centres. While the EU is sanctioning Belarus and refusing to recognize Lukashenko as the lawful president, the cooperation on migration continues. Once again, this shows the hypocrisy of the European Union’s border regime: it presents itself as a protector of fundamental rights while equipping regimes violating those rights.
Although European nations may have formally rejected their colonial past, there is still a deeply uneven and imperialist power balance between Europe and countries of the Global South. Western powers are unable to face the consequences of leading and/or participating in the imperialist war in Afghanistan, including an inability to rescue people and establishing safe escape routes. This clearly shows the brutal failure of Western interventionism and the idea of “peace and state building” which is based on domination-submission dynamics which aim to maintain the peripheral status of the region in global capitalism.
It is time to take responsibility and face the consequences of years of intended destabilization and exploitation in the region. Countries on the outskirts of the European Union need to follow international law instead of breaking it. People seeking asylum must be let into the European Union while their cases are handled. This is the minimum that must be guaranteed under the current conditions.
The Left should go even further and demand opening the borders and freedom of movement as a fundamental right. We must criticize the European asylum system and migration law, as part of global migration management, which creates and reproduces inequality and secures Europe’s position in global capitalism through restrictions on immigration. The function of such restrictions is on the one hand to maintain a high competition between workers, so that they agree to work for less, and on the other to keep the undocumented migrants down, so they can be even more easily exploited and intimidated with the threat of deportation. More restrictions will never stop migration.
The economic needs of workers struggling to make ends meet will force them to cross borders, no matter what the risk is. Borders exist almost exclusively for the world’s working classes. Fortress Europe is becoming more and more militarized, as European powers fear the uncontrolled migration from the Global South. While there are very few legal routes for migrants in the global context, for the world’s billionaires and their capital it is quite the opposite. Their capital can flow under the almost borderless globalized economy.
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared that “the working men have no country” which means that national divisions are just another obstacle preventing the working class from realising their common interests. A common struggle for freedom of movement is an essential part of international working class solidarity and a basis to build networks of resistance.
Gallery 1: more photos from the Poland-Belarus border
Gallery 2 – photos of the protests in Poland (first picture – 2nd day of protest in Wrocław (01.09.2021). Others taken from the Pracownicza Demokracja facebook page. Reproduced with permission)
