Who will be next?

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
c/o Ermittlungsrichter Hebenstreit
Herrenstraße 45
D-76133 Karlsruhe
Germany

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
Brauerstraße 30
D-76137 Karlsruhe
Germany
Fax + 49 7 21 819 14 92
eMail: presse@generalbundesanwalt.de

We the International Critical Geography Group, which include academic affiliates in more than forty countries on six continents, vehemently protest the arrest and incarceration of our academic colleague Andrej Holm, an urban sociologist at the Institute for Social Research at the Humboldt University in Berlin. We also decry the incrimination in the same case of other critical social scientists, including Dr. Matthias B. who had their apartments raided, computers and address books confiscated.

All of this is happening under the powers of a 1970s era anti-terrorist law, section 129a, which allows the state specifically to make alleged links between critical intellectuals and “terrorists”.

Andrej Holm is a scholar researching the impacts of gentrification in Berlin and is active in tenant’s rights movements.  It is incomprehensible that the German government could construe this individual as a terrorist, or for that matter anyone associated with progressive research and action: their arrest is a blow to academic and intellectual freedom around the globe.

The evidence that has been marshaled to justify Holm’s arrest is without any conceivable merit.  It would appear that the criminal activities that Dr. Holm is accused of are 1) access to library resources,  2) critical research on the processes of urban development and gentrification 3) advocating on behalf of low income tenants and 4) protest of the World Economic Summit in Heiligen.

That these could be considered reasonable grounds for arrest, worse still that the term “ gentrification” and analysis of its impacts on the urban poor constitutes evidence that he is the intellectual leader of a terrorist association, (based on shared terminology with the publications of a so-called terrorist group), is frankly ludicrous.

A cursory search on scholarly work on the gentrification of Berlin turns up 156 papers: are all these authors possible “intellectual masterminds” of terrorist cells? Who will be next? The German government’s actions are shameful: a despicable turn for a government with any pretense to democracy.

We protest the arrest of Dr. Holm and his colleagues.  We are joining an international campaign to demand the immediate release of these prisoners and the repeal of Paragraph § 129a.

Source: International Critical Geography Group | 16.08.2007