GERMANY AS "PROTECTING POWER"
IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
Date of Report 6 September 2001
Translated 29 September 2002
HAVING BROKEN UP EUROPEAN NATIONS
WITH ITS "MINORITY RIGHTS" POLICY
GERMANY APPLIES THE POLICY TO LATIN AMERICA
Americans may be puzzled at the sudden intransigence
of Germany towards operations in Iraq, given that Germany relied on
the USA for its defence over 50 years. This can be understood as the
working out of a long-standing policy to position Germany and re-establish
it (with the European Union under its control) as a world power. Since
the fall of the Berlin Wall, this project has gone into overdrive.
Germany has successfully used its "Minorities Policy" to
undermine nation states and has already achieved its aim in Czechoslovakia
(peacefully) by splitting it into the Czech and Slovak republics.
With intense subversion over many years and eventual NATO intervention,
the state of Yugoslavia was split into Slovenia,Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina,
Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo. (For detailed analysis see
Rodney Atkinson's book Fascist Europe Rising)
This article details one attempt to export this policy
to Latin America. Please see also Introduction and Background Report
on the in this section, also the reports in the "Voices from Europe"
section by Miroslav Polreich (a former ambassador of Czechoslovakia)
and by Jan Myrdal (Sweden).
BERLIN/MEXICO CITY : Germany is now seeking to extend its policy on
minorities to central and south America and offers itself as a "Protecting
Power" to "indigenous peoples" of the subcontinent. According
to the theme of a conference organised by the German Foreign Office,
South America must "open itself" to permit its peoples to
exercise their "human rights". Several South American states
felt that the conference was a "provocation". The ambassador
of Ecuador spoke of a German "affront".
The conference theme was the responsibility of the Foreign Office,the
Federal Press Office and the Federal Ministry for International Co-operation.
Invitations were issued for a conference at the end of September (2001)
in Berlin under the title "Indigenous peoples - human rights, cultures
and developments. Readiness for change in central and south America".
Several south American states felt the conference to be a provocation".
The obvious aim of the organisers was to enlist foreign minorities in
the cause of German foreign policy. Luis Fernando Serra, Brazilian Ambassador,
was quoted in the Daily paper, Die Welt, with unusual clarity "The
whole project is unacceptable. It is an attempt to talk up an ethnic
conflict which just does not exist.... We are a multi-ethnic country
with a very clear, distinctive, national culture".
The Bazilian ambassador called the written aim of the conference "To
create an opening for the achievement of a civil society in central
and south America" "a totally unnecessary provocation of Latin
America".
In the run-up to the conference, the Foreign Office had not informed
the authorities of the target countries and only invited a section of
their representatives. The ambassador of Ecuador Werner Moeller, called
this diplomatic dealing a German "affront".
The Heinrich Boell Institute is busying itself with the "opening
up" of central and south
America, acting as an auxiliary of the German Foreign Ministry. The
Institute is financed out of official funds from the party organisation
"Federation 90/The Greens" and acts as
co-organiser with the Foreign Office. It planned to confront the Mexican
ambassador with representatives of the Zapatista Liberation Army (EZLN)
at the Berlin conference.
This systematic tactic of German policy has already been successfully
used in Yugoslavia. It plays the role of "mediator" between
separatist organisations in order to supplant governments which it opposes.
The plan by which Berlin sought to make itself "Protecting Power"
of German-discovered "peoples" broke down after the protest
of the Mexican embassy.
Numerous camouflaged and front organisations assist German foreign policy.
Amongst them are "The European Centre for Minority Questions"
(EZM/ECMI), various departments of the "Bertelsman Institute"
(writing papers like "Costs, Advantages and Prospects for the European
Union's expansion to the East") and the most recently founded "National
Institute for Human Rights". These are rapidly building on Germany's
policy of intervention, dressed in the guise of ethnic concerns.
"HUMAN RIGHTS"
The German care for "human rights" in central and south America
is flanked by a steadily
advancing economic penetration of the sub continent. Large German corporations
use the cheap labour force (amongst which are many people of indigenous
origin) to create competition for the USA along its southern border.
The weight of German pressure on wages became known as the result of
a three week strike in the Mexican Volkswagen plant. The International
Herald Tribune reported on 6 December (2001) that the strikers at Volkswagen
were campaigning against an hourly rate of around 3 dollars. Comparable
hourly rates in the US were around 20 dollars and in Germany around
25 dollars.
SOURCES
Schroeder's visit should speed trade with Mexico; Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung 28.06.2001
Diplomatic Tension between Foreign Office and Latin America ; Die Welt
04.09.2001
Strike ends at VW Mexico; International Herald Tribune 06.09.2001
