Online Speech Given by Yanis Varoufakis After German Police Raid Palestine Congress

https://www.commondreams.org/news/varoufakis-palestine-congress

The Online Speech Given by Yanis Varoufakis After German Police Raid Palestine Congress

"Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine."

BRETT WILKINS
Apr 12, 2024

Prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis on Friday condemned the German government's complicity in Israel's ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza as well as its domestic crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy in an online speech originally meant to be delivered before a conference that was raided by Berlin police earlier in the day.

Varoufakis—a former Greek finance minister who heads the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—was scheduled to address the Palestine Congress, which was slated to run through Sunday in the German capital. However, hundreds of police officers blockaded the event venue on Germaniastraße in Templehof before storming the building and demanding organizers cut the livestream and end the event. Several people including at least one Jewish participant were led away by police.

"This is what democracy in Europe right now really looks like!" DiEM25 said on social media.

In his speech, Varoufakis lamented that "a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity."

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