No-go area

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The term no-go-area or no-go-zone comes from the military terminology and stands for military restricted area . As part of psychological warfare , South Vietnam was divided into go areas, the domestic areas, in which the population was supplied and supported, and no-go areas, the opposing areas, during the Vietnam War . Today, the term is used in the social discussion in German-speaking countries, but also generally for locations with allegedly unlawful areas or in some cases perceived increased crime (cf. Angstraum ). The Duden describes the use of the military and politics in particular for "district, district in which violent clashes repeatedly occur and where public safety is not guaranteed."

Etymological considerations

"No-go-Area" is a new English word creation. The term was added to the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary in 1971. The underlying adjective "no-go" (dt. Defective, broken), originally a slang word , has been known since 1865–1870.

Overview

Originally the term was of military origin and was used in the context of the Bush War in Southern Rhodesia in the 1970s , when the white minority government was opposed by black nationalists operating from neighboring countries. The Rhodesian army only maintained a permanent presence in strategically important areas, such as industrial centers and transport hubs, and instead barely controlled other parts of the country. These were left to the insurgents and were declared “no-go areas” for civilians.

In the inner-German social debate about racist violence, the term gained international significance for regions in Germany in which visitors expected racist violence in the run-up to the 2006 World Cup.

Another form of no-go areas relates to so-called nationally liberated zones , in which the streetscape is so dominated by right-wing extremists that foreigners and members of left-wing groups , for example , cannot show themselves publicly without risking violent attacks.

Since the discussion about juvenile delinquency , the term no-go area has also been used to draw attention to the problem of street crime.

Northern Ireland Conflict

No-go areas played an important role in the Northern Ireland conflict between 1968 and 1972. In particular in Northern Ireland's two largest cities , Belfast and Derry , there was already segregation in residential areas before 1968 , each of which was almost exclusively inhabited by pro-Irish, Catholic nationalists or pro-British, Protestant unionists .

Mural - "You Are Now Entering the Free Derry"

From 1968 onwards, demonstrations by the Northern Irish civil rights movement led to clashes with unionist counter-demonstrators, the predominantly Protestant Northern Irish police Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and their auxiliary police B-Specials . The residents of the Bogside district in Derry, which is almost exclusively inhabited by nationalists , succeeded in building barricades in October 1968 to keep the Northern Irish police out of the district overnight. This was the hour of birth of “Free Derry”, which developed into a no-go area for the security forces. After further unrest that lasted for several days, the inscription “You are now entering Free Derry”, which still exists today, appeared on a gable wall in January 1969. In the same month so-called “Local Vigilante Committees”, comparable to a vigilante group, were formed in the district.

The unrest from August 12, 1969, which also became known as the “Battle of the Bogside”, formed a preliminary climax of the conflict. After two days, the RUC police in Northern Ireland were no longer able to guarantee order and security. The use of the British Army began and the following day it was extended to residential areas in the west of the capital, Belfast. There, over 200 houses, almost exclusively inhabited by Catholic nationalists, were burned down during clashes. Six people died in the riots in which the Northern Irish police shot heavy machine guns at the nationalist-inhabited Divis Flats . The deployment of the army was initially welcomed by the Catholic nationalist side. The barricades that arose during the riots were partly removed, and in September 1969 they were partly replaced by barbed wire barriers from the army on the borders between Catholic-nationalist and Protestant-unionist residential areas. From these barriers of the army, existing " peace lines " (English: Peace Line , also Peace Wall ) developed, which often consist of concrete walls. The police and army tolerated the creation of no-go areas in Belfast and Derry in order to prevent further escalation. In the no-go areas of Belfast, civil defense committees were formed which coordinated their activities in the “Central Citizens' Defense Committee” (CCDC). The CCDC consisted of up to 95 delegates representing 75,000 Belfast residents. One of the leading figures in the CCDC was Northern Ireland MP Paddy Devlin . The defense committees organized the guarding of the barricades, and their members patrolled the residential areas, some of them equipped with knives and clubs.

The initially few and poorly armed members of the IRA only played a minor role during the unrest of 1969. In December 1969, the IRA split into two wings: the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA . The Provisional IRA, in particular, managed to reorganize itself within a short period of time and to develop a reputation for defending the Catholic residential areas. Several clashes between the British Army and Catholic nationalists led to a "profound alienation" on both sides. In July 1970, more than 50 houses on Lower Falls Road in west Belfast were searched . The army imposed a three-day curfew ; Gun battles between security forces and both wings of the IRA resulted in the death of five people and another 60 injured. According to eyewitness reports, the soldiers' searches were ruthless and brutal.

In early 1971, the Provisional IRA took offensive actions against the British Army. The Northern Irish government introduced detentions without trial in August 1971 , which contributed to the further escalation: The previously warned IRA was hardly affected by the arrests, and the data from the security forces was out of date. Serious civil unrest claimed 17 lives in 48 hours, including ten Catholic civilians shot by the British army. During the riots, barricades again sprang up in many Catholic-nationalist residential areas. Smaller towns such as Newry , Armagh and Strabane were temporarily affected by this . In particular, the Bogside in Derry and, to a lesser extent, the Lower Falls Road area in Belfast became no-go areas to which the British Army could only gain access through major operations. For the Provisional IRA in particular, areas were created in which weapons could be stored almost unhindered, members trained, press conferences held and bombs built.

On January 30, 1972, 13 people were shot dead by British paratroopers on the Bogside border during a demonstration in Derry on Bloody Sunday . The Northern Irish government resigned on March 24; it was replaced by direct administration by the British government, represented by the newly created post of Minister of Northern Ireland. The Protestant side called for action against the Catholic no-go areas. In May 1972, the paramilitary Ulster Defense Association (UDA) began to establish temporary no-go areas in Protestant residential areas to underline these demands. Since the beginning of 1972 the Provisional IRA had carried out a series of bomb attacks. On July 21, 1972, about 20 bombs exploded in 75 minutes in downtown Belfast; nine people were killed and about 130 others injured. This Bloody Friday had a huge impact on public opinion. Ten days later, the British Army invaded the no-go areas in Belfast and Derry in " Operation Motorman ". The barricades were removed with heavy clearance equipment. Resistance was low, the IRA had assumed such a military operation and had withdrawn. Michael Rainsborough , Professor of Strategic Theory at King's College , called the no-go areas "perhaps the most important military factor that made the IRA a major threat."

Police and army barracks in Crossmaglen (April 2001)

After the "Operation Motorman", the army moved into public facilities such as schools and gyms. In the former no-go areas, a dense network of watchtowers and heavily fortified army bases was created, from which the residential areas were monitored with cameras and directional microphones. Nevertheless, the former no-go areas remained centers of the Northern Ireland conflict. From the 1980s onwards, the west of Belfast in particular developed into strongholds for the IRA-affiliated Sinn Féin party .

A situation comparable to the no-go areas in cities existed from the mid-1970s in the rural areas bordering the Republic of Ireland ; particularly in the south of County Armagh . The area around the village of Crossmaglen - also known as "Bandit Country" by the British - is surrounded on three sides by the inner-Irish border and is almost exclusively inhabited by Catholics. The local IRA unit was - Having regard to the support among the local population - operate with far greater freedom than in other parts of Northern Ireland. The British army guarded the area with a system of bases and watchtowers, which were largely supplied by helicopters because of the risk of attacks.

Debate ahead of the 2006 World Cup

The African community in Berlin wanted to better protect foreign visitors such as Asians, Africans, Americans, Southern Europeans and Israelis in Germany from racist attacks and therefore planned to present a map with the no-go areas in Germany for the 2006 World Cup . After heated discussions, the lead “Africa Council Berlin / Brandenburg” refrained from this plan and limited itself to publishing a series of general security advice without information on the location of the no-go areas. It is known that comparable maps have been available from the trade associations in the USA and Japan for many years and that these form a basis for location decisions by foreign investors.

In May 2006, the former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye caused some severe criticism, especially from East German politicians, when he warned, among other things, of Brandenburg as a potential danger zone for dark-skinned people. Literally he said, “There are small and medium-sized cities in Brandenburg and elsewhere where I wouldn't advise anyone with a different skin color to go. He might not leave her alive ” . He later withdrew his testimony, apologizing that he did not want to stigmatize a state. At the same time, however, he warned against small talk and trivializing racist attacks in Germany. The Brandenburg Interior Minister Jörg Schönbohm called Heye's statements an “unbelievable derailment” . After initial criticism, Brandenburg's Prime Minister Platzeck also confirmed that Heye was right in his statement that there was a problem with right-wing extremism, right-wing extremist violence and racism in Germany and especially in the East . The Central Council of Jews in Germany also criticized the fact that leading politicians are playing down right-wing extremist violence because of the upcoming soccer World Cup. The crime statistics show four right-wing extremist violent crimes for every 100,000 inhabitants in Brandenburg, while in Rhineland-Palatinate it is only 0.5.

Critics such as the Berlin police chief Dieter Glietsch argued against it that so-called “no-go areas” for foreigners would play into the hands of neo-Nazis because they were pursuing this very goal. After some politicians criticized the police in this regard, he replied “If politicians can think of nothing better than unjustified blanket criticism of the police after xenophobic attacks, then that is an expression of helplessness. Everyone knows that right-wing extremism and violence are not simply security problems that can be solved by the police ” . The Federal Minister of the Interior at the time, Wolfgang Schäuble , said "There must be no no-go areas, there are no zones in the Federal Republic of Germany in which the state's monopoly of force does not apply."

In Germany, but also in other Western European countries, there is increasing talk of problems with “no-go areas”. a. Large Arab-Turkish families, so-called clans , have settled there and determine the streetscape and social manners in their quarters. Here it is particularly difficult for the police to enforce the state monopoly on the use of force and generally applicable social rules with simple means. The tactical "de-escalating" withdrawal from the area concerned then often appears to be the means of choice - with the relinquishment of state regulatory powers. The well-known German-Lebanese political scientist, Islamic and clan researcher Ralph Ghadban describes the problem as follows: “Clan solidarity ... leads, among other things, to the fact that you can mobilize 30 or 40 relatives within a short time to terrorize others and also to intimidate the police . When police officers want to check on a suspect, they are suddenly surrounded, pushed, verbally abused, threatened. This is how no-go areas were created ”.

literature

  • Uta Döring: Anxiety zones : Right-dominated places from a medial and local perspective , VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 3-531-14690-4

Web links

Wiktionary: No-go area  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gregory R. Clark: Words of the Vietnam War. The Slang, Jargon, Abbreviations, Acronyms, Nomenclature, Nicknames, Pseudonyms, Slogans, Specs, Euphemisms, Double-talk, Chants, and Names and Places of the Era of United States Involvement in Vietnam. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina and London 1990. page 202.
  2. ↑ Cf. this US TV report in the CBS political magazine " 60 Minutes " about "No-Go-Zones" in Sweden, stored on Youtube , here from minute 3:20 using the term: " 60 Minutes on Sweden's 55 Muslim No Go Zones, Media Attacks & Immigration Crisis ” , presumably broadcast in mid-2018
  3. ^ No-Go-Area , in duden.de, accessed on November 18, 2016
  4. ↑ on the use of the term in Northern Ireland see Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN, English)
  5. ^ Entry Bogside in: Adrian Room: Brewer's dictionary of modern phrase & fable. Cassell, London 2000, ISBN 0-304-35381-7 , pp. 89f.
  6. ↑ Johannes Kandel: The Northern Ireland Conflict. From its historical roots to the present. Dietz, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-8012-4153-X , p. 113f.
  7. ↑ English: “Battle of Bogside”, see Kandel, Northern Ireland , p. 116; Entry Battle of the Bogside in: Room, dictionary , p. 56.
  8. ↑ Kevin J. Kelley: The Longest War. Northern Ireland and the IRA. Lawrence Hill, Westport 1988, ISBN 0-86232-764-4 , pp. 118f. Chronicle of the events at the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN, English)
  9. ↑ see entries 'Peace Line' / 'Peace Wall' and September 9, 1969 at Conflict Archive on the Internet. (CAIN, English). The German term in: Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Ralf Sotscheck: The long war. Power and people in Northern Ireland. Verlag die Werkstatt, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-923478-34-8 , p. 323.
  10. ↑ Kandel, Northern Ireland , pp. 123f.
  11. ^ Kelley, War , p. 121.
  12. ↑ Kandel, Northern Ireland , pp. 132f.
  13. ↑ a b Kandel, Northern Ireland , p. 135.
  14. ↑ Kandel, Northern Ireland , p. 136.
  15. ↑ Kandel, Northern Ireland , p. 140.
  16. ↑ Chronicle of the events at the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN, English)
  17. ↑ a b Kelley, War , pp. 157, 178.
  18. ↑ For the conditions in "Free Derry" in May 1972 see NORTHERN IRELAND: Shot through the knee . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1972, p. 96 ff . ( online - May 22, 1972 ).
  19. ↑ Schulze-Marmeling, Krieg , p. 91. See also: Robert Bell: Chronology of events 1970–1990. In: Robert Johnstone (Ed.): Troubled Times. Fortnight Magazine and the Troubles in Northern Ireland 1970-1991. The Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1991, ISBN 0-85640-462-4 , p. 155.
  20. ↑ see Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN, English)
  21. ^ Kelley, War , p. 184; Kandel, Northern Ireland , p. 170. See also: NORTHERN IRELAND: Voice falls silent . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1972, p. 62 ( Online - Aug. 7, 1972 ).
  22. ^ MLR Smith: Fin de Siècle, 1972: The Provisional IRA's Strategy and the Beginning of the Eight-Thousand-Day Stalemate. In: Alan O'Day (Ed.): Political violence in Northern Ireland. Conflict and conflict resolution. Praeger, Westport, Conn. 1997, ISBN 0-275-95414-5 , pp. 15–32, here p. 29 MLR Smith is the pseudonym of Rainborough (accessed December 22, 2011).
  23. ↑ Kelley, War , p. 185; Kandel, Northern Ireland , pp. 170f.
  24. ↑ The term is traced back to the British Northern Ireland Minister Merlyn Rees , see entry Bandit Country in: Room, dictionary , p. 51. Description of the situation at the end of the 1980s in Schulze-Marmeling, Krieg , p. 308ff.
  25. ↑ The debate on “No-Go Areas” concretized: Africa Council: Focus on Overcoming Racism ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  26. ↑ Advice on how to behave in the event of racist attacks by the Africa Council ( Memento from December 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  27. ↑ Take special care in the east by Florian Rötzer June 7, 2006 Telepolis
  28. ↑ a b Everyone can do something against right-wing extremism , Welt, May 21, 2006
  29. ↑ a b Right-wing extremism: Platzeck agrees with Heye . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 19, 2006
  30. ↑ Xenophobia before the World Cup. Visiting friends? , SZ from May 20, 2008
  31. ↑ "There must be no no-go areas" . In: stern.de . May 22, 2006 ( stern.de [accessed October 12, 2017]).
  32. ↑ In: Islamic scholar Ralph Ghadban: When women rebel, the clans fall apart , Interview with the Berliner Zeitung , Nov. 4, 2019