[Air-L] FW: [CPE=RN] International Protest Over Berlin Sociologist's Arrest

[Christian Fuchs]

Dear colleagues,

Please consider to sign the petition against the criminalization of 
critical social research in Germany in the case of a sociologist from 
Berlin who has been accused with charges of membership in a terrorist 
group due to categories like "gentrification" that he used in his 
scientific papers (!).

With Kind Regards,
CF

-- 

_____________________________

Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs

Assistant Professor for Internet and Society

ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research

in Information and Communication Technologies & Society

http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at

University of Salzburg

Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18

5020 Salzburg

Austria

christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at

Phone +43 662 8044 4823

Fax +43 662 6389 4800

Information-Society-Technology:

http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at

http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/

Managing Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access

online journal for the foundations of information science:

http://triplec.uti.at

Forthcoming BOOK:

Fuchs, Christian (2008) Internet and Society: Social Theory in the 
Information Age. New York: Routledge.


****

Dear all,

On 31st July 2007 the flats and workplaces of Dr. Andrej Holm and Dr. 
Matthias B., as well as of two other persons, were searched by the 
police. Dr. Andrej Holm was arrested, flown by helicopter to the German 
Federal Court in Karlsruhe and brought before the custodial judge. Since 
then he has been held in pretrial confinement in a Berlin jail. All four 
people have been charged with "membership in a terrorist association 
according to ァ 129a StGB" (German Penal Code, section 7 on 'Crimes 
against Public Order'). They are alleged to be members of a so-called 
"militante gruppe" (mg). The text of the search warrant revealed that 
preliminary proceedings against these four people have been going on 
since September 2006 and that the four had since been under constant 
surveillance.
All four accused are critical social scientists and they do exactly what 
sociologists and political scientists should be doing.
To read more about this situation, please visit:
http://einstellung.so36.net/en/openletter.
Newspaper article about those accused:
"International Protest Over Berlin Sociologist's Arrest"
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2742395,00.html
You can sign a petition at:
http://www.policing-crowds.org/petition.html
Best wishes,
Manuel

Manuel B. Aalbers
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University
New York
m.b.aalbers at gmail.com <mailto:m.b.aalbers at gmail.com>
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Economy Research Network of the European Sociological Association 
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