Oury Jalloh was burned alive in a detention cell of the Dessau police department on January 7, 2005. Both accused police officers were acquitted in a first court trial in 2007. In the following appeal case it was insisted on Oury Jalloh igniting himself while being bound to and lying on a fireproof mattress. Independent opinions commissioned by the Oury Jalloh Initiative proofed this to be a lie: Where did the lighter come from? What are the origins of his many injuries? Why has the smoke alarm been turned off and the intercom been muted? Oury Jalloh became victim of a racist murder!
But Oury Jalloh is no exception. Already in 2012, homeless Mario Bichtemann died in the same police station – also this case was tried to be hushed up. But racism as well as the indifference of the state in view of right-wing terrorism are a daily occurrence in Germany. The right-wing terror organization NSU murdered nine people between 2000 and 2007 – two of them in Munich. The state and the secret service of the interior („Verfassungsschutz“) assisted – through concealment, covering up and lies, the destruction of records and the support of the right-wing by state agents („V-Leute“). What is more, the last years were coined by the strengthening of asylum laws, deportations, so-called integration laws and racist police controls in everyday life. The hatred against Black people, refugees, Jews and Rom*nija is part of German normality.
Fitting to the socially acceptable racism in the interior, Germany and the EU rely on a more and more aggressive sealing-off against the exterior. Their goal is to stop refugees from African countries from entering Europe not with the help of Libyan militia cooperating with Germany, but already before by a metres high border wall which is planned to run right through Africa. What it means if refugees are stopped in or sent back to these countries becomes clear by the example of Libya. People there are sold as slaves and are subject to forced labour. They are threatened by abuse, rape and even death.
But these conditions are far from new. They are rooted in a world-wide capitalist system, which is secured via military operations and the extension of border fortifications . Therefore people have been dying for many years – in the Mediterranean or in detention camps, where they are sold as slaves, abused and murdered. If they inspite of all this manage to flee to a European country, they face violence and exclusion. Oury Jalloh and all other victims of racist violence show this clearly.
This is why we take to the streets today – against the racist German conditions in Dessau, Munich and everywhere. Against racist police brutality. For uncovering the truth behind the circumstances of the death of and the cover-up in the case of Oury Jalloh.