We call on our people, our nation, and all the resistance forces and their supporters to reject, condemn and defeat the German decision
April 14, 2023
The Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, responded to the action of the German authorities in Berlin to ban marches and events on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day this year. Zaid Abdel Nasser, a member of the movement’s executive body, said, “We will not abandon the cause of the prisoners, nor will we submit to repression and the decision to cancel the Prisoners’ Day marches in Germany, and we will confront this decision by all legal means and intensive popular and political campaigns.”
Abdel Nasser called on all gatherings of our people, our nation, resistance forces and human rights institutions “to reject the German decision and to strongly express their support for the prisoners’ movement, which expresses the demands all of our people and their struggle. We consider the prisoners’ movement to be the solid core of the national liberation movement and the first line of defense for the Palestinian people and their just cause.”
In her turn, Charlotte Kates, the international coordinator of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network said, “A decision was issued by the police in Berlin to ban the popular march on Sunday, April 16, organized on the occasion of Prisoners’ Day, in defense of Jerusalem, and against the daily Zionist crimes against the Palestinian people.” She noted, “We received a decision from the German police banning the marches and activities commemorating Palestinian Prisoner’s Day in Berlin. This action is dangerous and racist, and it must be condemned. The justifications for the racist decision are mere pretexts, lies, and flimsy arguments from the German police, not only about our demonstration, but about what is happening in al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem and throughout occupied Palestine.
“The German state implements these repressive policies on behalf of the racist Zionist entity, and the German police are now involving themselves in a political issue and have apparently decided that storming Al-Aqsa and attacking the Palestinian people was done by the occupation regime to ‘protect worshippers’. Their acceptance of this falsity only underlines the injustice of today’s ban,” Kates said.
The Masar Badil further notes that the decision to ban marches and rallies in solidarity with the prisoners comes in the context of the ongoing efforts of the German state to appease the Zionist embassy and the racist, extreme-right-wing forces in the government, which just one week ago launched a renewed incitement campaign against the Samidoun Network. Today’s dangerous decision reflects a blatant bias towards the occupying power.
This comes following the Berlin police’s prior bans on marches commemorating al-Nakba in May 2022, the International Al-Quds Day marches, and other events for Palestine.