On the Publication of the German edition of Alaa's Book
This is a short text I sent to be read at the launch event for Alaa’s book in German tonight in Berlin after I had to cancel my attendance at the last minute.
“Hello,
I’m very sorry not to be there with you today. I do not miss this event lightly, but due to a serious health crisis of a very close friend.
The publication of Alaa’s book in German is a significant event and one that we have been looking forward to for months, and there could be no better home for it than with the publishing house, Wagenbach. We are all grateful to the Heinrich Boll Foundation for making this possible.
Just a few days ago the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, became the first world leader outside of the UK to publicly call for Alaa’s release from prison.
We wait, now, to find out what those words mean.
Was the Chancellor expressing a political intent, that will be backed up by policy?
The Chancellor made the statement on stage in Egypt at COP27, where Germany also signed deals for more natural gas exports, to build a major new rail network and to make major investments in green hydrogen and further offshire Europe’s deadly border regime to Egypt.
This, we are told repeatedly, is how the world works.
But it is this accommodation of contradiction that also prevents mechanisms like COP from really working.
Egypt is endlessly accommodated; liberal governments trade with it for profit while claiming diplomatic access is needed to help steer countries towards democracy; it therefore retains its position within the international community to the extent that it can win the role of COP President; and as COP President, Egypt’s true loyalties were undoubtable.
In Foreign Minister Baerbock’s own analysis: “we would have liked to see more binding commitments. The industrialized countries and the countries hit hardest by the climate crisis were ready for this, but an alliance of and oil-rich countries and major emitters has prevented this.”
Egypt was in charge of negotiations and held the pen with which the agreement was written. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have kept the government in power with consistent cash injections since the coup d’état of 2013.
And, so, business as usual has cost us another year in the battle for 1.5 degrees.
We are not asking Germany to free Alaa, but for Germany to free itself, to free us all, from business as usual. To free itself from the lure of Egyptian debt repayments; to free itself from the fear of boats crossing the Mediterranean. That is the truest route to freeing Alaa, freeing them all, and ensuring that he himself is here to launch the second edition of his book with you all.
Reading the book, we are reminded of all the different ways and times Alaa has inspired us. His return to Egypt to stand against the transitional military council, his essays from the depth of prison that still managed to be cutting edge on labour and tech, his speeches to the prosecutor in the interrogation chamber – his work is an impossible combination of a poetic depth of feeling with a speed and conviction of production. His tweets alone, if all compiled, would fill 100 printed books.
Today, we don’t know exactly how he is. We know that he came close to death during COP27, that he – in that moment – chose to allow his hunger strike to be broken.
Alaa inspires us. But he also needs us to inspire him.
I have no doubt if he could have felt the way the world shook with solidarity for him during COP27, he would have been inspired.
And now we all need to keep it up. If we press on through the winter, if we take his ideas and his analyses and apply them to our own lives and our own politics, if we take Alaa’s message – that we have not yet been defeated, that the most important thing any of us can do is tend to our own democracies – then there can be no doubt that together we will free him, and we will free them all.”
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