The Berlin police lied and the lie is now used to justify repression

On May 15, a pro-Palestinian objection was held successful Berlin to commemorate the 77th day of the Nakba, the taste cleansing and expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. What unfolded that time was not lone a lawsuit of constabulary violence, but a coordinated effort by German authorities, the media, and politicians to crook fabrication into information successful bid to further criminalise Palestinian protest.

According to a nationalist connection issued by the Berlin police , a demonstrator had violently assaulted 1 of their officers, resulting successful superior wounded and hospitalisation. The constabulary claimed the serviceman was dragged into the crowd, deliberately attacked, knocked to the ground, and past trampled oregon kicked by protesters. The connection was clear: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are violent, irrational, and dangerous.

But this full communicative is simply a lie.

Video evidence, meticulously analysed by Forensis, an autarkic probe bureau founded and led by members of Forensic Architecture, has unequivocally disproven each azygous 1 of the Berlin police’s claims. The footage shows an serviceman with the fig BE24111 written connected the backmost of his azygous overgarment advancing into the assemblage with colleagues to apprehension a protester. As they propulsion radical around, BE24111 starts punching protesters successful the caput and kicking them. He appears to injure himself during this convulsive acceptable and retreats with his colleagues.

There is nary convulsive mob. No 1 is dragging him into the crowd. No 1 knocks him to the ground. No 1 kicks him. On the contrary, the footage shows demonstrators actively distancing themselves and shielding 1 different from BE24111’s assault. It was the officer, not the crowd, who carried retired violence.

Despite the information being uncovered, the harm has already been done.

The Berlin Police’s mendacious communicative was rapidly amplified by media outlets and authorities officials, unleashing a question of fearmongering and governmental opportunism. A constabulary national typical appeared connected Welt TV transmission and described the demonstrators arsenic a “gang of murderers” who “would person killed the serviceman if they could have”.

The tabloid BILD ran a header reading: “Jew haters footwear constabulary officers”  and quoted Stephan Weh of the German Police Union arsenic saying, “when a workfellow is dragged into a assemblage and trampled, losing consciousness aggregate times, we person to accidental it’s axenic luck that helium survived the nighttime […] This madness indispensable extremity earlier 1 of our colleagues loses his beingness astatine specified a gathering.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office stated it was “an onslaught connected the organs of the regularisation of law” and launched a ceremonial probe into the incidental nether charges of “dangerous bodily harm” and a “serious breach of the peace”. The precise radical assaulted by constabulary whitethorn present look transgression prosecution based connected events that ne'er happened.

Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt besides seized the moment, declaring successful the Bundestag: “An serviceman astatine an anti-Israel demo successful Berlin was dragged into a assemblage by assertive demonstrators and earnestly injured… The constabulary request the champion imaginable instrumentality and due powers. We volition marque this wide successful the law.”

The authorities is not conscionable spinning falsehoods; it is besides bent connected utilizing them to legislate repression. This is portion of its wide strategy to criminalise pro-Palestinian activism, protestation and code nether the guise of warring extremism.

On June 10, little than a period aft the incident, the State Office of the Protection of the Constitution, a authorities information agency, released its 2024 report, successful which it categorised aggregate pro-Palestinian organisations arsenic “extremist” groups, including Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, BDS, and Palestine Speaks. This categorisation volition apt effect successful much aggravated surveillance, imaginable constabulary raids connected radical members, and adjacent bans connected organisational activities.

Other groups person already been proscribed. In May 2024, Palestine Solidarity Duisburg relation was banned and its website unopen down by the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia state. Previous to that, successful November 2023, the national authorities banned the pro-Palestinian group, Samidoun.

The authorities has travel aft not conscionable groups but besides individuals. In April, 3 European Union nationals and 1 US national were threatened with deportation for their pro-Palestinian activism. A twelvemonth earlier, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a UK-based Palestinian surgeon, was barred from entering the state to talk astatine an event.

My hubby and I were placed connected a achromatic database aft we were expected to talk astatine the aforesaid event. For a twelvemonth now, we person been taxable to interrogation, harassment, and invasive searches each clip we question extracurricular the country.

Various “symbols” of pro-Palestinian solidarity person besides been suppressed. The operation “From the stream to the sea, Palestine volition beryllium free” was officially banned by a Berlin justice successful August 2024, for allegedly expressing enactment for terrorism. Then, successful an adjacent much chilling move, the metropolis of Berlin banned each Arabic-language chants astatine demonstrations successful April of this year, efficaciously criminalising an full connection and silencing full communities, peculiarly the Palestinian one, which is the largest successful Europe.

Meanwhile, constabulary brutality astatine pro-Palestinian demonstrations successful Germany has go disturbingly routine. Protesters are regularly kettled, beaten, and arrested without origin oregon explanation. What erstwhile mightiness person seemed exceptional is present modular operating procedure.

The combat to extremity German complicity successful genocide is being violently suppressed, some successful the streets and successful the courts. State-sponsored censorship, racialised policing, and convulsive erosion of civilian liberties are carried retired nether the mendacious banner of nationalist safety.

While the German authorities continues to assertion that it is “atoning for its past” by cracking down connected anti-genocide protests, successful Gaza, the genocide is raging astatine afloat force. Bombings continue, small children are starving to death, and assistance seekers are massacred astatine assistance organisation zones. The Israeli subject is pushing guardant with plans to make a ample attraction campy for Palestinians successful the confederate Gaza Strip successful mentation for their taste cleansing.

Acting to halt this fearfulness has ne'er been much urgent.

In these acheronian times, those who enactment soundless astir the German state’s lies and repression indispensable see cautiously what they are acquiescing to. Today, it whitethorn beryllium the pro-Palestinian activists and radical of conscience who are criminalised, but time it volition beryllium others. German ideology is collapsing, and authorities repression volition not halt astatine a racialised assemblage of protesters.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.