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 in this
"Germany Calling" section, also the reports in the "Voices
from Europe" section of Free
Nations website (click here) 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
