From Chartists and Suffragettes to Irish republicans and today’s Palestine activists, the treatment of hunger strikers exposes a consistent pattern in how the British state represses those it deems political prisoners, says KEITH FLETT
AT THE press conference announcing the new party project, Sahra Wagenknecht commented on the war in the Middle East. She condemned the terror attacks perpetrated by Hamas.
At the same time she described the Gaza Strip as an “open-air prison” and spoke of an “unbearable situation” while calling for a political solution with Palestinians having their own state within a two-state solution.
The chairman of the Die Linke (the Left party) parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, criticised this immediately, saying: “I distance myself in the strongest possible terms from the term ‘open-air prison’ used to describe the Gaza Strip at the Wagenknecht press conference.”
The cancelled China trip of the German Foreign Minister marks a break with Helmut Schmidt’s China policy and drives Germany further into Washington’s confrontation course, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN
In part two of May’s Berlin Bulletin, VICTOR GROSSMAN, having assessed the policies of the new government, looks at how the opposition is faring



