This speech was read out by two comrades on the demonstration in Dortmund on the 12.08.23. The demonstration was held in remembrance of Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, a 16 year old Black youth who was shoot dead by police on the 08.08.22 in Dortmund. Since then particularly the Solidaritätskreis Mouhamed is working relentlessly on justice for Mouhamed and complete clarification of the circumstances leading to Mouhamed’s murder. Support them if you can.

Dear friends, dear comrades,

we are part of No Lager Osnabrück, an anti-racist local group struggling against deportation, camps and borders and fighting for a safe, liberated life for all. Today we are here as a coalition of political groups and people from Osnabrück, united in our struggle against state violence and suppression. We only want to say a few words and are grateful for the room to speak up!

When one comes to Germany hoping for protection, they take away their name and call them „refugee“. From now on authorities will make decisions on the lifes of people at their desks without even looking at the circumstances. And society already made a mindset that „refugees“ are a problem. They don’t see that we are humans, too. Humans that were forced from their homes. The only difference between you and a „refugee“ is you were born in different places. As „refugees“ we did the impossible to search for another life in hope for freedom of opinion and speech, in hope for human rights and justice.

Now, for me, Germany has turned into prison, where I cannot even breath without asking for permission. Security staff in the camps is controlling us. Foreigners authorities are taking our autonomy and self-determination. Police is marking us as criminals, deporting us, killing us like they did with Mouhamed.

Mouhamed’s death – as thousands more – shows once again that racism kills. It kills within a system that pretends to be build upon and to protect human rights and dignity while it is based on exploitation, patriachy, colonial racism. This system attacks us and anyone who is seen as „the other“, as outsiders to society, just because we are refugees, Black or People of Colour, queer, women, without a home, outside of what is defined as the neurological norm or healthy.

For some of us the possibility of deportation hangs over our heads like a sword of Damocles. It can fall any time, resulting in you being deported from a clinic where you found refuge in times of depression and suicidal thoughts, back to a country where your safety is not guaranteed at all – as it happened to one of us recently. „Racism kills“ is not an empty phrase, it is a state of being.

That is why to the friends and family of Mouhamed, to all those fighting for justice, we say: We are with you! We see the pain and the suffering. We see the sorrow and anger. We see the struggle for justice, we see the power of solidarity, friendship and comradeship. We are in this struggle together and together we will demolish and abolish this system of deep racist injustice to build another world!