Germany : “We are preparing now for October 3rd the next national demonstrations.”

What do you expect from the conference “No to NATO, Yes to Peace” and the march on Sunday?

I expect from the conference first that we all understand that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a lie. That NATO is a global military alliance, the biggest military alliance in the world. Not only on both sides of the Atlantic, that is a new development since the last years. And even in the peace movement, this development is not really understood. This development means that we have a new war situation all over the world.

We must understand that we have to develop more coalitions with the global south against militarization and the preparation of the big war.

From the rally, I expect the protests against the global NATO to show on the street that we are united in these protests,

• that we don’t want to have higher military budget,
• that we don’t want to have more military bases all around the world,
• that we really want to go another way, a way of cooperation and disarmament

and above all restart negotiations for reducing and in the end abolishing of nuclear weapons.

You mentioned also some important achievements?

Peace movement has not so many successes, above all not in the last years. We were more or less fighting with the back to the wall. And so it is for my point of understanding very important to mention successes we have.

One of the successes definitely happened with the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Parliament. Because the whole British mafia, Tories, Labour and all the media were doing everything to ban him from this Parliament. And the people in his region elected him. He got more votes than Starmer in his elected circle. He developed a brilliant campaign with independent new people. He got a lot of old Labour fighters on his side and he has won. This is a big success.

In addition, we have four new independent Muslim parliamentarians, who were elected in opposition to the Gaza war. You know that the Tories and the Labour are both fighting to support the genocide perpetrated by Israel. These are some small successes by these elections, where the bourgeoisie changed one party to the other one, but not the policy.

And the other one is that Julian Assange is free.

This was such an intensive fight. I was totally surprised when I saw that Julian Assange is free. I couldn’t believe it. And I think this was the impression of millions of people. It was really a big success. We were fighting for it.

It is not only great that a person like Julian is free and now can live with his family.

It is also a big success that people who are bringing the truth to the public can be at the end free and can survive. We all know the old story, Sacco and Vanzetti in the US, the Rosenberg family. They were killed of their engagement by the elites of the United States.

Julian is free. This shows for me that people, when they engage themselves, when they are united, when they are willing to fight for a long time, they can win.

In this time, when we are nearer to a big war than ever since 1945, I think it’s important to know that we have a chance. And this creates hope, this creates hopefully more engagement which we need for winning the fight for peace.

Following the call against the war that was adopted on 4th of May and signed in 20 countries in Europe, many unionists have signed on this paper despite the attitude of the union leaders who support the war in Ukraine. What is your opinion on that?

You know, I’m deeply engaged in coalition building with trade unions since years. And it is for me one of the biggest disappointments, that the unions are quiet and even they are supporting the war. The only suggestion I have is to develop in all countries from the basis more engagement against the war, also in the unions.

Only when more people are on the streets, the position of the unions and the leaders of the unions will change.

Frankly speaking, for Germans, it is not a totally new situation. When we started our fight against the Pershing II and cruise missiles, the new rockets in the 70s, beginning of 80s, the unions were also quiet.

At the end, they were happy to stay with us on the stage of the big demonstrations. Why? Because hundreds of thousands and millions of people were on the streets. Members of the trade unions were on the streets. The problem up to now is that we cannot mobilize the majority of the trade union members.

This is our job. To convince them, to show them that it’s in their peace and in their social interest to be engaged in a process for peace and negotiations in Ukraine. And so for me this situation is more or less something we have to take the responsibility and to do more to convince members of the trade unions to be engaged.

In Germany, the alliance Sarah Wagenknecht took some initiative to organize demonstrations against the war in Ukraine. Were you part of that?

Sarah Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer, one of the leading feminists, were organizing in February the first big protest actions. I was a part of the team which were organizing the demonstration. And the peace movement in Germany were organizing the second big demonstrations on the 25th of November against the war in Ukraine and for disarmament.

We are preparing now for October 3rd the next national demonstrations. The two headlines are peace and negotiations for Ukraine and the second headline is stop the militarization of the military budget in Germany, come back to disarmament.

We are really engaged. Sarah and the new party is a very active part of this engagement. In Germany, the peace movement tries to be really active. The key challenge is to get more people coming to the actions. That is the huge challenge we are facing also to our activities in the preparation of our demonstrations in October.