Germany deports family to Iraq despite legal ruling declaring they can remain

Marianne Arens

In the early hours of July 22, the Qassim family, including four young children, were violently awakened. Police officers immediately took them to the Leipzig/Halle Airport, where they were forced to board a plane to Baghdad for deportation to Iraq.

The Qassim family [Photo by permission]

That same morning, the Potsdam Administrative Court granted an emergency application to stop their deportation, ruling that their obligation to leave the country was invalid. The family should therefore be allowed to stay in Germany. The court ruling, however, came while they were already on a plane to Baghdad.

The deportation of the Yazidi family, who fled Iraq in 2014 from the terrorist militia ISIS, is an example of the brutal tightening of asylum and deportation policies under Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU). The German government, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), headed by former BlackRock employee Friedrich Merz (CDU), has declared war on the working class, with refugees first in line.

The Qassim family had lived in Lychen, in the state of Brandenburg, for three years. They had integrated themselves into society; the children attended school, with the youngest in daycare. The administrative court’s ruling, scheduled for the end of July, had been expected since April. However, the Saxon Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) deliberately created a fait accompli before the ruling arrived. The family was deported to Baghdad on Tuesday as part of a group of 43 people.

Deportations have increased rapidly under the Merz government. In the first half of 2025, there were 11,800 deportations, 2,300 more than in the same period last year (9,500). Last year, under Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), deportations had already reached a record number of 20,000.

Regarding Tuesday’s deportation flight, Thuringia’s Justice Minister Beate Meissner (CDU) stated that it was “completed without incident.” As if speaking on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), she added, “Our message is clear: Anyone who does not have a right of residence must leave our country.”

The family’s lawyer is now trying to secure their repatriation. However, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has classified the Yazidi family, whose house in the Sinjar Mountains was destroyed by ISIS and whose relatives and friends were murdered, not as members of a persecuted minority, but as “economic refugees.” The entire process exemplifies the bottomless mendacity and hypocrisy of the German ruling class.

Just 10 years ago, in the summer of 2015, when the idea of stationing the Bundeswehr in northern Iraq was being discussed, the case of the Yazidis was exploited relentlessly for propaganda purposes. It was argued that it was absolutely necessary to bring the Bundeswehr to Iraq so it could defend not only the Kurdish Peshmerga but also the Yazidis against the advance of ISIS.

“If genocide can only be prevented with German weapons, then we must help,” declared then-Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (now head of the European Commission). Referring to the “attempted genocide against the Yazidis,” she trumpeted at the Munich Security Conference in February 2015: “Indifference is and remains not an option!”

However, Yazidis like the Qassims in Germany are now classified as “economic refugees.” The Potsdam Administrative Court found that serious doubts exist about the legality of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees’ rejection of the asylum application. The situation in Iraq, and especially in Sinjar, remains far from safe for Yazidis.

Twelve-year-old Maatz Qassim, who was able to make a phone call from Baghdad on Tuesday, told an rbb journalist, “We are afraid.” He reported on the nighttime police abduction: “They shouted ‘police’ and shone their flashlights in our faces.”

Maatz’s classmates have since initiated a petition against the deportation and have already collected over 400 signatures in three days. Lychen Mayor Karola Gundlach (Independent) also said she was dismayed and “could hardly believe that the family was deported.” The Brandenburg Refugee Council described the deportation as “scandalous.”

This deportation is not an isolated incident. In Hesse, the Afghan Kapoor family was deported to India (!) in April, even though they too were well integrated and their two sons had been attending school in Frankfurt for years. Another example concerns a daycare teacher from Offenbach who was deported to Afghanistan, despite support from her colleagues.

Since the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, a particularly large number of Syrians have been deported, even though the situation in their homeland has by no means stabilized. Most of the Syrians who came to Germany are well integrated and indispensable as workers. The German government is increasingly adopting the policies of the AfD.

German government adopts 2026 budget: Rearmament and social cutbacks

Peter Schwarz

On Wednesday, the German government adopted the draft budget for 2026 and the financial plan through to 2029. The figures—and the accompanying campaign in politics and the media—make clear that the greatest social attacks in twenty years, since the infamous “Agenda 2010” of the Schröder government, are imminent. The coming period will be marked by intense class struggles.

Lars Klingbeil, current Finance Minister, speaking in the Bundestag in 2023 [Photo by DBT / Tobias Koch]

Finance Minister Klingbeil is earmarking vast sums to make the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) “fit for war,” to build Germany into the largest military power in Europe, and to continue the war against Russia. These funds are to be recouped at the expense of working people, pensioners and the disadvantaged, as well as from education and healthcare. The enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the majority, which has already reached grotesque proportions, is to proceed unchecked.

Klingbeil, who is also chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), has already begun to prepare the cabinet for massive austerity measures. “Looking ahead to the coming years, we will pursue a strict course of consolidation,” he said. All ministries are obliged to contribute. “Everyone in government will have to make savings. This is an immense challenge.”

The financial plan foresees the accumulation of €851 billion in new debt by 2029. That is nearly as much in five years as the Federal Republic incurred in the first 60 years of its existence. From 1949 to 2009, the national debt grew to one trillion euros. Nevertheless, Klingbeil's financial plan contains an unfunded gap of €172 billion. Six weeks ago, when presenting the 2025 budget, Klingbeil had expected it to be €28 billion less.

The rapidly growing deficit is due to the already approved “growth booster,” which provides tax relief for companies and compensates states and municipalities for lost revenue, as well as mounting interest payments. These are expected to rise from €35 billion currently to €60-€70 billion within four years—assuming interest rates do not increase. If rates rise, the figure could reach €100 billion. The effects of the tariff war with the US, the deep crisis in the automotive, steel and chemical industries, and continued economic stagnation are not yet factored in.

Nor does the federal budget address the financial crisis facing municipalities, which are responsible for a significant share of social spending, public services and investment. According to a recent report from the Bertelsmann Foundation, local authorities posted a deficit of €24.8 billion last year. Until 2022, they had recorded ten consecutive years of surpluses. That turned negative in 2023, and in 2024 the deficit tripled.

Meanwhile, the chorus of voices calling for massive cuts to social spending is growing louder. At €127.8 billion, the federal contribution to pensions is the largest item in the 2026 budget, which totals €520.5 billion, and it is projected to rise to €154.1 billion by 2029. Expenditure on the citizens’ benefit (Bürgergeld, welfare payments) amounts to €41 billion in the 2026 budget and has already been cut by €1.5 billion compared to the previous year.

This is a direct consequence of the war policy. The 2026 budget allocates €82.7 billion to military spending, €20 billion more than the current year. Added to this are further outlays from the Bundeswehr “special fund” established three years ago, bringing the total military expenditure to €128 billion. By 2029, this is set to rise to €153 billion, which corresponds to NATO’s target of 3.5 percent of GDP, and will be funded entirely from the regular federal budget.

Economics Minister Katherina Reiche (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), a long-time energy industry lobbyist, was the first cabinet member to launch a campaign for a further increase in the retirement age, which is set to reach 67 by 2031. “We must work more and longer,” she demanded in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, saying that was “unavoidable.” In the long run, it was not sustainable, she argued, “that we work only two-thirds of our adult lives and spend one-third in retirement.”

While Reiche encountered broad public opposition, the media eagerly picked up her demand. A lead article in Der Spiegel accused all those who protested of “denying reality.” The CDU politician had 'merely said what experts have been preaching for years—and what should be obvious to anyone who can do basic arithmetic: Germany’s pension system cannot continue as it is, unless we are willing to risk its collapse with open eyes.”

The present campaign recalls the early 2000s, when unemployment, rising social insurance contributions and mounting public debt dominated the headlines and Germany was labelled “the sick man of Europe.” Under pressure from the business lobby, the government of Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and Joschka Fischer (Greens) responded at the time with “Agenda 2010,” initiating the greatest social rollback in the history of the Federal Republic.

As a result, the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically. More than a fifth of the population is affected by poverty or social exclusion, while at the top, a growing number of billionaires and multimillionaires revel in unimaginable luxury.

Now, Merz and Klingbeil are preparing another “agenda” that will put that of Schröder and Fischer in the shade. They had not specified the details in their coalition agreement, as they needed time to get their massive rearmament programme under way. But now they can no longer avoid confrontation. Klingbeil will recover the missing €172 billion and more from where it hurts working people the most.

Kremlin steps up internet censorship

Evgeny Kostrov

On July 22, the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) passed (306 votes to 67) in its third reading a law imposing fines for searching the internet for what the Kremlin classifies as “extremist material” and advertising VPN services. Virtual private networks (VPN) hide users’ IP and thus enable people to access sites and apps that are otherwise banned. Many sites and encrypted messaging services in Russia, such as Signal, are no longer accessible without VPNs.

The bill is expected to be signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The bill means that if a user “deliberately” searches for “extremist material,” they face administrative liability with all possible fines. The list of “extremist materials” includes neo-Nazi and radical Islamist literature, as well as literature by figures associated with the NATO-backed liberal opposition and generally critical of the war. The list, which has been significantly expanded in recent years, now includes more than 5,500 items.

Based on the bill, law enforcement agencies must prove that the user is doing this intentionally and did not come across the material by accident. This raises questions: How will the Russian secret service, the FSB, and the police “obtain evidence”? How will users be able to remember all 5,500 prohibited materials, the list of which is constantly being arbitrarily expanded and now includes many materials critical of the war in Ukraine?

The new law allows for increased pressure on anyone who does not “cooperate” with the authorities in providing information about users of VPN services and internet providers. Telecommunications operators, internet providers, and VPN service administrators will be required not to disclose information about their interactions with the state, otherwise they will face fines of millions of dollars.

For ordinary users, this means virtually no privacy in their online lives. Moreover, the constant updating of the list of extremist materials makes it possible to ban content that has long been publicly available and widely popular. In effect, this means virtually unlimited possibilities for restricting what remains of internet freedom in Russia.

Before the third reading, State Duma Deputy Speaker and leader of the New People party Vladislav Davankov conducted a poll on his Telegram channel about the new law. Seventy-five percent of participants voted against the law. A total of 430,000 people voted, which is impressive given that the poll was created just one day before the State Duma session. The results of the vote and Davankov's speech against the law did not convince Putin's party (United Russia) to reject the law. In the end, the misnamed “people's deputies” passed the reactionary law, clearly opposing themselves to the majority of the population.

The adoption of this extremely unpopular new law comes amid an increasingly fierce proxy war against NATO in Ukraine and economic stagnation in the country. Under conditions of growing social discontent and opposition to the war, it marks another step by Putin's regime to increase censorship and deprive them of all opportunities to obtain alternative information in the future.

The tightening of internet censorship in Russia has a long history. Back in 2012, a law on “blacklists” was passed, which created a register of websites that violate Russian law. In 2016, the Yarovaya laws were passed, requiring telecommunications operators and internet companies to store user metadata for three years. This metadata must be handed over to the authorities upon request, without a court order.

In effect, all these laws have allowed the authorities to begin building up their internet control apparatus. The general rehearsal for the use of the new technology took place in 2018, when a decision was made to ban the popular messaging app Telegram, due to its unwillingness to comply with the authorities. In the end, the censors had to back down, partly because of mass discontent and partly because of the imperfection of their own blocking technology.

In the years leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state further improved its ability to block and monitor the internet. Just before the beginning of the war, the news agencies Meduza and Dozhd, which are both associated with the NATO-backed liberal opposition in the oligarchy, were blocked. Since the start of the war, Putin's regime has banned Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Signal, Discord, and slowed down YouTube. Amazon Web Services, an important cloud service for the IT industry, was also blocked. Starting in 2023, the blocking of popular VPN services intensified, and laws related to VPNs began to be tightened.

Most recently, the popular internet speed tester SpeedTest was blocked. The bitter irony is that SpeedTest was blocked just after a series of obvious failures of the Russian internet. At one point, the internet disappeared or slowed down dramatically in almost every region of the country. According to Sboy.rf, in the first month of 2025 alone, there were at least 195,000 complaints about mobile internet outages. This compares to 431,000 complaints in all of 2024.

This graph shows the impact of internet shutdowns in Russia on July 16, 2025. The areas marked in red experienced a partial shutdown of of mobile and wired internet. The areas in yellow experienced a partial shutdown of wired internet and the areas in orange a partial shutdown of mobile internet. [Photo: Telegram channel "Na sviazi"]

The adoption of the new VPN law is only an intermediate step by the Putin regime to restrict the information space for the working class and the laboring masses. We must expect further intensification of censorship and attacks on the most basic democratic rights of the working class.

Most recently, the Kremlin has also floated a ban of WhatsApp, one of the few Western apps still available in Russia without a VPN. For many, it is an important means of communication, including with friends and family abroad.

It should be noted that the issue of internet censorship is not only one of basic democratic rights. It also has a major socioeconomic dimension. 

By blocking numerous messengers, services, applications, and websites that are important for coordinating production, design, and development, the Kremlin is worsening economic chaos in the country, which no “domestic means” of development can resolve. In fact, censorship leads to the further isolation and decay of the economic foundations of Russian capitalism, threatening huge social disasters for the Russian working class.

Moreover, the efforts to restrict the internet for ordinary users forces the Russian oligarchy to invest huge amounts of money and resources in strengthening internet censorship, which could be spent on healthcare and education — areas where the oligarchy has made major cuts. This poses the same fundamental question for Russian workers as the working class of every country today: the question of who controls the social and economic resources and who has state power.

As long as Russia is ruled by a class of billionaire gangsters who are living off the export of raw materials and profiting from the war in Ukraine, while seeking to strike a deal with imperialism, workers are confronted with an existential threat. Through its bankrupt policies, the oligarchy is, in fact, contributing in every way to the ruin of the country and the outbreak of a third world war.

Angola’s MPLA regime kills 22 anti-austerity protestors, arrests 1,200

Alejandro López

At least 22 people have been killed, hundreds injured, and more than 1,200 arrested in some of the largest protests Angola has seen since the end of its civil war in 2002.

The protests erupted in response to austerity measures imposed by the long-ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Police fire on protesters in Luanda, Angola (screenshot from video) [Photo: X/mozinforma]

The immediate trigger was the decision to cut fuel subsidies, raising diesel prices from 300 to 400 kwanzas ($0.33 to $0.44) per litre. This sent transport and food costs soaring in a country mired in poverty and inequality. In early July, small-scale protests began following the announcement. But the movement escalated into mass demonstrations on Monday when candongueiro drivers, who operate the blue and white minibus taxis that transport much of Angola’s working class, launched a three-day strike.

Tens of thousands joined the strike nationally. In Luanda’s Cazenga district, police shot at protestors and people storming shops to get food and supplies. Shops and businesses shut down as armed security forces patrolled the streets. Clashes were reported in Rocha Pinto and Prenda, while protests spread to Huambo, Lubango, and Benguela. In Lubango, a police officer shot and killed a 16-year-old who was part of a group attempting to enter MPLA offices.

“Why do you make us suffer like this? How will we feed our children? The prices have to go down,” one woman told TV Nzinga. “People are fed up. Hunger is everywhere, and the poor are becoming miserable,” another told the BBC. “The government ignores its people,” Luanda teacher Daniel Pedro told AFP. “They say youth are the future, yet today we are unemployed. I feel deeply insecure.”

Fuel subsidies have served as a lifeline in Angola, helping the population afford basic goods. But under IMF demands, the government is phasing them out. This follows subsidy cuts initiated in 2023 and April 2024, which raised gasoline prices by about 87 percent in June 2023 and diesel prices by 48 percent in April 2024. The Finance Ministry aims to eliminate all fuel subsidies by the end of 2025 to reduce the budget deficit and meet debt obligations, which stand at approximately $58 billion, accounting for 63 percent of the country’s GDP.

At a press briefing in March 2024, the IMF stated: “The removal of subsidies is very important to ensure fiscal consolidation.” The IMF cynically emphasised the critical need for “good strategic communication and mitigation measures aimed at the poorest sections of the population.”

Angola’s deepening crisis is rooted in the collapse of global oil prices since 2015 and declining domestic production. Although it remains sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer, the vast revenues generated have enriched only a narrow elite in the MPLA and their foreign backers. Over half the population lives below the poverty line, unemployment stands at nearly 30 percent, youth unemployment surpasses 50 percent in some areas, and inflation neared 20 percent in June. Public services are in ruins.

What began as a protest against subsidy withdrawals has now become an uprising against decades of social misery.

The massacre of demonstrators by the MPLA regime exposes the rotten character of bourgeois nationalism. Nearly 50 years ago, MPLA leader Agostinho Neto declared, “Concretely realizing the aspirations of the great masses of our people, the People’s Republic of Angola will, under the guidance of MPLA, gradually advance toward a people’s democratic state. With the alliance of the workers and the peasants as its nucleus, all patriotic sectors will be united against imperialism and its agents in the struggle for the construction of a society without exploiters and without exploited.”

That promise was made in the aftermath of a heroic 13-year guerrilla war against the fascist Portuguese dictatorship, which ended with the Carnation Revolution in April 1974. But soon after independence in 1975, Angola was plunged into a 27-year civil war, stoked by the US and South Africa, which backed the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) to crush the Soviet Union/Cuban backed MPLA. Up to a million people died, and millions more were displaced.

Troops of the MPLA, the new rulers of Angola, arrive to take over positions around the Bay of Luanda which have been abandoned by Portuguese colonial troops earlier this day, November 10, 1975. [AP Photo/Horst Faas]

Following the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the MPLA—like its counterparts FRELIMO in Mozambique and the African National Congress in South Africa—abandoned any nominal reference to socialism, rebranding themselves as pro-business parties and imposing IMF market reforms, austerity and privatisations.

Today, Angola is being dragged into the maelstrom of imperialist war amid the new scramble for Africa. Angola has now become one of the most pro-US regimes on the continent. The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) is deepening military cooperation with the MPLA regime under the guise of “preventative security assistance.”

In a statement during a recent visit to Angola and Namibia amid the anti-austerity protests, AFRICOM’s Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Brennan cited bogus claims of threats of ISIS/Islamic State in southern Africa and “emerging Mexican drug cartels” to justify expanded US-Angolan military exercises and maritime surveillance support. AFRICOM’s aim was to “keep Namibia and Angola free of those threats as well as to prepare them for any future threats” through training and equipment.

This amounts to the militarisation of Angola’s strategic coastline and its integration into the US’s global war machine, as Washington accelerates preparations for conflict with China.

Angola is a key component of the Lobito Corridor, which the previous Biden administration and now Trump have aggressively promoted as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The corridor links the copper and cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to the Atlantic Ocean via Angolan rail and port infrastructure. US officials openly describe how “security is leveraging economic development and vice versa.”

The military drill Obangame Express in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Guinea last May, that stretched from Cabo Verde to Angola, is one of three African regional “Express” military exercises organised by AFRICOM and facilitated by the US Sixth Fleet. They are being conducted alongside naval upgrades to protect these strategic trade routes, with AFRICOM helping Angola track and intercept vessels off its coast.

The plunder of Angola’s and Central Africa’s vast natural resources—oil, gas, copper, and rare earth minerals—is driven by the logic of war. The same imperialist powers enforcing IMF austerity, backing the genocide in Gaza, waging war against Russia in Ukraine, and preparing for conflict with China in the Pacific, are embedding their military forces across the African continent under the guise of “capacity-building.” They are transforming African territory, airspace, and infrastructure into a forward base for war, positioning for a confrontation between US imperialism and China.

China has played a central role in shaping Angola’s post-war economy. Since the early 2000s, Beijing has become Angola’s largest bilateral creditor, extending tens of billions of dollars in oil-backed loans to finance infrastructure projects—roads, railways, hospitals, and housing developments—constructed largely by Chinese state-owned firms. These deals, dubbed the “Angola Model,” tying credit to guaranteed oil exports have allowed the MPLA elite to maintain liquidity. But like other African regimes, Angola’s ruling elite is being forced to choose sides in an escalating conflict.

The masses in Angola have no allies in any faction of the Angolan bourgeoisie. A way forward is to be found in the rising struggles of workers and youth across Africa and the world.

The collapse of the old anti-colonial nationalist movements is accelerating across the continent.

In Namibia, SWAPO has seen its support collapse under the weight of mass unemployment, inequality, and corruption. In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled since the fall of apartheid, lost its parliamentary majority last year for the first time in 30 years. In Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), in power since independence in 1966, suffered a historic defeat last December.

In Mozambique, the ruling FRELIMO regime declared itself the winner of last October’s elections amid widespread accusations of fraud. The contested results unleashed mass protests, fueled by poverty and corruption, and led to the deaths of over 300 people in the largest opposition mobilisation in post-independence history. In Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu’s elimination of fuel subsidies in 2023 provoked mass protests and rampant inflation. In Kenya, President William Ruto’s IMF-backed tax hikes have sparked an ongoing nationwide protests that has left hundreds dead, disappeared, and tortured.

These experiences confirm the organic incapacity of Africa’s bourgeois nationalist parties to fulfil the aspirations of the masses for democracy, social equality, and liberation from foreign domination. Having abandoned all pretence of national liberation, they now function as local enforcers for global finance capital.