Anne Roth's presentation on the 24th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, 27.12.2007.

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• Part II: Download as mp3 (26mb) | Listen

Extreme cases of surveillance carried out against punk-bands, members of the "Eastern German magazine" 'telegraph' and other press representatives is raising the degree of uneasiness felt throughout the country.

The Venezuelan opposition is once again crying about the "terrible repression" the poor rich suffer from the "Chavez regime." Strikingly, they never compare their situation to the pre-Bolivarian period, nor other Latin American countries, nor to the United States, nor to Europe. It's clear why: such a comparison would come out negatively for the opposition. The following is small example of the repression, which has occurred in Germany, a country often serving as "model" of modern bourgeois ideology.

Germany's highest court has overturned the arrest warrant of a Humboldt University academic who was detained for more than three weeks this past summer on suspicion of conspiracy with an alleged terrorist group accused of arson attacks against German military vehicles.

A German federal court has overturned an arrest warrant for a Berlin-based university professor accused of links to a left-wing terrorist group.

Germany's Federal Court has overturned the arrest of a sociologist accused of being a member of an extreme left group. The professor's imprisonment had sparked protest by academics on both side of the Atlantic.

Neil Smith, author of the seminal book "The urban frontier" (1996) and countless articles on gentrification, spatial scales, globalization and state revanchism, came to Berlin in May and agreed to answer a few of our questions concerning gentrification in Berlin.

This report was made at the recent demonstration in Berlin against increased surveillance, data retention and repressive anti-terror activity by the German state.

Over the past years, political opposition and investigative journalism have come under attack by police and secret services in Germany. In line with a general erosion of civil liberties in Europe, exacerbated by the "war on terror" and egged on by shady secret service activities, investigative journalists have been spied on (see Statewatch Bulletin vol 16 no 1), G8 protesters have been criminalised (see Statewatch Bulletin vol 17 no 2), and most recently critical social scientists have been accused of membership of a terrorist organisation for being associated with social movements and using words such as ‘gentrification', ‘precarisation' and ‘Marxist-Leninist' in their publications; words that also appeared in letters by a group claiming responsibility for arson attacks against cars and buildings in and around Berlin since 2001. Next to the social scientists, one of whom was also arrested, three activists were arrested and accused of having attempted to set fire to military vans on an industrial terrain near Berlin.

The past few months have seen a wave of repression unleashed in Germany. Houses, offices, social centres and bookshops have been raided by police and several people accused of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’ – sometimes for as little as having written academic texts about ‘gentrification’. Frank Meyer reports from Hamburg.

Gentrification is bad for you. How bad? Just ask a group of German researchers who find themselves accused of belonging to a "terrorist organization," largely because they published on the subject.

The signs from Europe on the antiterrorism front look increasingly ominous, less because of any discernible upswing in terrorist activity than because of European governments' attempts to criminalize opposition.

The past three weeks have been extremely worrying for Germany's intellectuals. Under § 129a of German penal law, a number of people, among them university-based social scientists, have been accused of membership in a terrorist association, several were arrested.

IVORY TOWER ARSON ARREST - Who can be defined as a terrorist? It is a question Germany is wrestling with after a Berlin sociology professor was imprisoned for terrorism after allegedly helping leftists torch cars.

Berkeley residents who get tired of being called NIMBYs and worse by the powers-that-be think they have problems.

The Suspect - German academic Dr. Andrej Holm is the father of three children and lives in Berlin. He is a sociologist interested in the power relations of gentrification and urban renewal and is a critic of German government policies. He is also a suspected terrorist and under arrest in solitary confinement.

A wave of protest is growing against the arrest by German authorities of an academic accused of belonging to a terror group opposed to urban gentrification.

In the name of the war on terror, our colleagues are being persecuted - for the crime of sociology.

Robert Siegel talks with Kate Connolly, Berlin correspondent for The Guardian newspaper.

Academics from around the world have protested to Germany's federal prosecutor about the arrest and detention of a Berlin sociologist who is accused of associating with a terrorist group - apparently on the basis of his academic work.