Marianne Arens
Germany’s Scholz government is in the process of building a police state against the working class. This is demonstrated by the new “security package” from Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrat, SPD). The package further undermines the right of asylum, tightens gun laws and gives the federal police and the domestic intelligence service more powers.
The package, which consists of two new laws—“Improving Internal Security and the Asylum System” and “Improving the Fight against Terrorism”—was adopted in the Bundestag (parliament) on October 18 with the votes of the coalition parties, the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens. Minister Faeser commented that it was “the right answer to the current threats from Islamist terrorism, from antisemitism, from right- and left-wing extremism.”
However, the package was partially blocked on the same day by the Bundesrat (Upper Chamber), which objected to not providing biometric data matching for the security authorities. At the same time, the Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) state premiers made it clear that the package did not go far enough for them, and the CDU interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Herbert Reul, called on Deutschlandfunk radio for even more leeway for the police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is called.
Meanwhile, large parts of the package concerning the right of asylum and the law on firearms had already come into force at the end of October.
Attacks on refugees
The attacks on the right to asylum in particular are aimed at dividing and intimidating the working class. They expand the “major repatriation package” that the Scholz cabinet passed in June. The door is being opened to arbitrary actions, because in the future, the grounds for deportation will also include crimes with a “xenophobic or inhumane” motive, including “antisemitism, racism, sexism or queer hostility.”
The number of deportations, which has already increased significantly, is set to rise sharply again. Almost 10,000 people were deported in the first half of 2024. The government is now also in negotiations with Turkey about weekly mass deportation flights. Since August, deportations have also been taking place to Afghanistan, and Minister Faeser promises: “We are currently working on Syria.”
The asylum and residence laws are being increasingly restricted. For example, the aim is to withdraw all benefits from so-called “Dublin cases,” i.e., people who are already registered in another EU country, within two weeks. In addition, the double punishment of convicted criminals through deportation is to be enforced even more rigorously. In future, anyone entitled to asylum who briefly visits their home country will lose all protections.
The aggressive political agitation has led to a wave of protest letters and many people leaving the Green Party. According to Pro Asyl, the provisions are “obviously contrary to the German constitution and European law.” However, “it cannot be ruled out that some authorities will begin to try to implement the will of the legislature 1:1” and that “those affected will not have sufficient support for legal action.” As a result, “homelessness of people seeking protection, which has so far been unknown in Germany, could actually occur,” warns Pro Asyl.
A declaration against the new laws has thousands of signatures, including organisations such as Amnesty International, Pro Asyl, various charities including Der Paritätische, Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk, Internationaler Bund (IB), IPPNW, Kindernothilfe, Save the Children, Terre des Hommes, etc. The declaration states:
People who have fled to Germany are part of our society: they work and get involved here, raise their children here and belong here. The misconduct of individuals must never lead to the blanket stigmatisation, racialisation and labelling of certain groups of people as not belonging. We will not be divided.
Gun control and the police
In order to strengthen “internal security,” gun laws are also being tightened. Not only should the trustworthiness of gun owners be better checked in the future, the ban on knives is being extended and will in future apply to public festivals and other public events, as well as to public transport, train stations and all “crime hotspots.”
Clubs for hunters and marksmen are already opposing this, arguing that people who are about to commit terrorist acts like those in Mannheim or Solingen are hardly likely to care about such administrative offences.
Enforcing knife bans requires significantly more police officers, who must also be given more powers. For example, they must then be allowed to carry out checks without prior suspicion. This is exactly what the government intends to do, as it increasingly tramples on fundamental democratic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly.
In recent months, the police have been deployed with increasing frequency to suppress peaceful rallies, for example by environmental activists of the Last Generation or by people protesting against the Israeli massacre of Palestinians.
The consequences of this can be seen in a statistic recently published by the dpa news agency. It has evaluated police reports this year and concludes that police officers have already shot 17 people in 2024. This is significantly more than in the same period in all the years before. Police have very often shot and killed people “who were in an exceptional psychological situation or were already being treated for mental illness.”
Heated atmosphere
In public, almost all the voices to be heard from the media and political parties are those that support the government or call on it to enact even tougher laws.
For example, Sahra Wagenknecht criticises the Interior Minister from the right. The BSW chairwoman writes: “For years, Interior Minister Faeser has slowed down the fight against uncontrolled migration … Her failures are being paid for by citizens, local authorities and the police every day.” According to Wagenknecht, in the evenings, train stations “have become no-go areas, especially for women.”
The mainstream media (not only the tabloid Bild) carry reports almost daily on “foreign criminals,” “integration refuseniks” and the “failure of the asylum system,” etc.
In this heated atmosphere, observers from charities Diakonie and Caritas at Frankfurt Airport have reported an increasing number of truly brutal deportations. People are taken to the flights without the barest of necessities, “in slippers and flip-flops,” and often handcuffed. In most cases, those affected have had no opportunity to pack or withdraw money from their accounts beforehand.
One terrible example is the deportation of 18-year-old Aysu on September 12 from Hesse, where she could have started training as a nursing assistant. She was deported to Azerbaijan, where she has no family or friends. This happened completely unexpectedly for her foster family.
While the daily life of the population is becoming increasingly insecure in terms of work, family and finances, the coalition government’s “security package” is playing into the hands of growing fascism and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose programme of “remigration” it is effectively adopting.
This can only be understood in the context of the current attacks on wages and jobs. The railways, public services and car industry (most recently at VW) are cutting jobs, closing plants, privatising and cutting wages, while the costs of the pro-war policy are exacerbating the situation. This is provoking explosive class struggles. That is why the government is striving for more “security” in an almost panicked manner—not for working people, but for the ruling class and the capitalist state.
The foreign policy of the bourgeois politicians shows what they are capable of. All the establishment parties, from the coalition government and the opposition, support Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In Ukraine, they are arming the Zelensky regime, which openly relies on fascists.
Faeser’s idea of “security” was demonstrated this week in Poland: she visited the border with Belarus, which is guarded by metres-high border fences, barbed wire, an electronic surveillance system and heavily armed security guards, where she suggested that EU Frontex forces should also be deployed in the future.
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