[Nettime-bold] Freedom of Speech; Just Watch what you Read

[Curt Hagenlocher <curth@motek.com>]

Tariq Ali: Karl Marx led to my arrest as a terrorist in Germany
>From http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=102144

30 October 2001
I was arrested at Munich airport at 7am yesterday. After one day of
interviews and book signings and two days spent at a Goethe Institute
seminar on "Islam and the Crisis", I was desperate for a cup of coffee.
I checked in and soon my hand luggage was wending its way through the
security machine.

No metal objects were detected, but they insisted on dumping the
contents of my bag onto a table. Newspapers, dirty underpants, shirts,
magazines and books tumbled out in full view. Since news always reaches
Germany a day after it has appeared in the US press, I thought the
locals might be looking for envelopes containing powder in ignorance of
FBI and CIA briefings that Osama bin Laden and Iraq were considered
unlikely to be involved in the anthrax scare.There were no envelopes in
my bag.

The machine-minder brushed aside the copies of the Sued-deutsche Zeitung
(SDZ), the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde Diplomatique. He
appeared to be very interested in The Times Literary Supplement and was
inspecting my scribbled notes on the margin of a particular book review
when his eyes fell on a slim volume in German that had been handed to me
by a local publisher. Since there had been no time to flick through the
volume, it was still wrapped in cellophane. He grasped the text eagerly
and then, in a state of some excitement, rushed it over to the armed
policeman.

The offending book was an essay by Karl Marx, On Suicide. It was the
reference to suicide that had got the policemen really excited. They
barely registered the author, though when they did real panic set in and
there were agitated exchanges. The way they began to watch me was an
indication of their state of mind. They really thought they had got
someone. My passport and boarding card were taken from me, I was rudely
instructed to re-pack my bag, minus the crucial "evidence" (the SDZ, the
TLS and the offending text by Marx), and I was escorted out of the
departure area and taken to the police headquarters at the airport.

On the way there the arresting officer gave me a triumphant smile. "After
11 September, you can't travel with books like this," he said. "In that
case," I replied, "perhaps you should stop publishing them in Germany,
or, better still, burn them in public view."

Inside headquarters, another officer informed me that it was unlikely I'd
be boarding the BA flight and they would make inquiries about later
departures. At this point my patience evaporated and I demanded to use a
phone. "Who do you want to ring?" he said. "The Mayor of Munich," I
replied. "His name is Christian Ude. He interviewed me about my books and
the present crisis on Friday evening at Hugendubel's bookshop. I wish to
inform him of what is taking place."

The police officer disappeared. A few minutes later another officer (this
one sported a beard) appeared and beckoned me to follow him. He escorted
me to the flight, which had virtually finished boarding. We did not
exchange words. On the plane a German fellow passenger came and expressed
his dismay at the police behaviour. He told me how the policeman who had
detained me had returned to boast to other passengers of how his vigilance
had led to my arrest.

It was a trivial enough episode, but indicative of the mood of the Social
Democrat-Green alliance that rules Germany today. It is almost as if many
of those who are in power are trying desperately to exorcise their own
pasts. While Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was in Pakistan insisting that
there could be no pause in the bombing and that the war of attrition would
continue, his Minister for the Interior, Otto Schily, was busy master-
minding the new security laws, which threaten traditional civil liberties.

Mr Schily, once a radical lawyer and a friend of the generation of 1968,
first acquired public notoriety when he became the defence lawyer for the
Baader-Meinhof gang, an urban terrorist network active in the Seventies.
It was said at the time that he also supported their activities.

In 1980, Mr Schily joined the Greens and was their key spokesman in the
fight against the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Germany.
In 1989, he moved further by joining the Social Democrats. Today he is
busy justifying extra powers for the police and instilling a sense of
"realism" in his Green coalition partners.

One of the "realist" proposals being discussed is granting jurisdiction to
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the German
equivalent of the FBI) so that it has the right to spy on individuals it
suspects of working against the "causes of international understanding or
the peaceful coexistence of nations". And since - in the debased coinage
of the present - "peaceful coexistence of nations" includes waging war
against some of them, I suppose that my experience was a dress rehearsal
for what is yet to come. It was a tiny enough scratch, but, if untreated,
these can lead to gangrene.

--
Curt Hagenlocher
curth@motek.com

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