Germany: Campaign for the release of RAF prisoners
01 September 1999
In the wake of the killing of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) member Horst-Ludwig Meyer and the arrest of his companion Andrea Klump by Austrian police in Vienna in mid-September, a concerted effort to campaign for the release of political prisoners seems to be back on the agenda of German activists. Meyer and Klump, who were members of the third generation of the RAF, had been living underground since the 1980s. The killing came unexpectedly as the RAF had officially declared an end to its military campaign in April last year. Eight former RAF members are still imprisoned (some for 20 years and often in isolation) in special departments of Germany's high security prisons.
With their latest issue the association of lawyers against miscarriages of justice and the defence of political legal cases, Die Rote Hilfe, has launched a broad based campaign for the release of prisoners connected to the RAF. It aims to include groups and individuals from a wide political and social spectrum. To make this possible, discussions are based around three arguments: firstly, the political context of RAF activities and the relevance of their political ideas to recent developments in German and US imperialism; secondly, the judicial process and thirdly, the humanitarian aspects of a demand for the release of political prisoners.
Great emphasis is put on international solidarity and contributions include those of the Belgian Prisoner's Collective of the Communist Cells (CCC) and a report on the International Conference on the release of political prisoners worldwide, which took place on 1-5 April 1999 in Berlin. The conference was prepared by the German groups Libertad!, the Rote Hilfe e.V itself and Kurdish solidarity groups. The international contributions to the conference included Adameer from Palestine, Gestoras Pro Amnestia from the Basque country, Coordinamento Mumia Abu Jamal from Italy, Comision Argentina por la Libertad de los Presos Politicos, ODEP from Chile, a Guatemalan refugee organisation (ARDIGUA), International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, the Turkish Human Rights Organisation IHD as well as several former political prisoners.
Die Rote Hilfe (3/99) Postfach 6444, 24125 Kiel, rote-hilfe-kiel@cl-hh.comlink.de, www.nadir.org/periodika/rhz; Observer 19.9.99; Junge Welt 17.9.99