News about Germany

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German police crack down on pro-Palestine rallies, raising alarm

Berlin, Germany – Early-afternoon on Saturday in central Berlin, officers led an elderly German woman away to a police van so her sign could be checked.

She was preparing to attend a march calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Her banner, which said she was ashamed to be German and that there was a “genocide” taking place in the densely populated Palestinian enclave being bombarded by Israel.

Police let her and her sign go, and she joined the march.

Later, as the rally got under way, a group of officers in riot gear readied themselves in front of a crowd of chanting protesters.

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people marched in the German capital. About 1,000 police were deployed in part to prevent any anti-Semitic speeches or signage.

Until recently, most pro-Palestinian demonstrations were banned in Berlin because local authorities feared an outburst of violence or anti-Semitism. But the decision was criticised as breaching the democratic right to freedom of assembly.

In the past two weeks, several protests have been permitted, including Saturday’s march.

At about 4pm, police pushed into the crowd and, to calls of “shame, shame”, pulled Monika Kalinowska out.

Her sign, written in red, read, “Israel is a terrorist state.”

“I am really starting to question whether we actually have freedom of speech in Germany,” said Kalinowska, who described the episode as exasperating.

After she was frisked and her identification checked, she was told there was nothing wrong with her sign – even though it was confiscated – and she was allowed to leave. She could pick up the sign the next day, police said.

“But the thing that made me really mad was when the policeman asked me if I identified as a woman,” she said. “I was not saying anything illegal and, I mean, if you don’t respect my freedom of speech, how are you going to respect whether I identify as a man or a woman?”

The officer who briefly removed Kalinowska from the protest told Al Jazeera that there was no formal list or any particular guidelines to follow.

“Really, I just use my intuition,” he said. “If I see something I think is bad, we go and get it.”

In another case, a large poster calling German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “deadly assassins” was taken away.

A group of young Italians were told to destroy theirs, which said, “Stop the genocide. Stop the apartheid.”

“He told me that if I said these things, I could be arrested,” one of the Italians, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

“No, I didn’t,” the police officer argued back. “I said you could be arrested if you said those things under certain circumstances.”

Asked what those circumstances might be, the officer told Al Jazeera, “I don’t want to get into this with you.”

“There are certain symbols that are forbidden,” said another officer, referring to Germany’s recent ban on Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules Gaza and was behind the deadly attacks in Israel on October 7.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, police spokesperson Anja Dierschke said officers had acted in line with previously issued guidelines on the Middle East conflict and a public prosecutor had been available in the operations room during the protest to answer any legal questions.

In the end, seven offences related to signage were recorded, police said.

While the job of identifying illegal signs is difficult for police, their measures at protests have a “chilling” effect, lawyers at the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), told Al Jazeera.

“People now wonder if what they wear or say will get them arrested or even deported,” said a spokesperson for the ELSC, which provides legal support regarding Palestinian issues and has an office in Berlin.

“The police are basically deciding the law on the street. They seem to have deployed wide discretionary powers, almost declaring a state of emergency, but without any legal basis. It resembles the practices of an authoritarian regime.”

‘It still has to be tolerated’
Germany has what it calls a “special responsibility” to the Jewish people, to Israel and to combatting anti-Semitism because it was responsible for the Holocaust.

The country mainly uses two laws to prosecute the public expression of hate speech.

Section 130 of the criminal code regards incitement against a certain group of people, which has previously been used to combat the glorification of Nazi Germany, Holocaust denial, and anti-Semitic, racist or homophobic hate speech. Punishment ranges from a fine to up to five years in prison.

Section 140 looks at whether crimes are being condoned in a way that incites further violence or disturbs the peace.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/germany-gaza-protests-crackdown

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