Germany is becoming a police state when it comes to Palestine activism ( mondoweiss.net )
At 6 a.m. on March 22, pro-Palestinian activists Said and Yasemin, who were asleep in their respective Berlin homes, were awakened by armed and masked police officers who broke down their doors at the same time. Berlin police then looked through their belongings and confiscated their electronic devices, including their phones. The simultaneous raid was to deter one from communicating with or warning the other.
In a series of posts on social media, Said said that this raid was the police’s third visit and he maintains that he is being targeted for his activism and that he did nothing wrong. “I am not okay,” he wrote, “Why is the German government trying everything possible to criminalize me? I have done nothing wrong. I make the German government and the media responsible for everything that might happen to me!”
“One time, after they arrested me for absolutely no reason, they took my fingerprints and mugshots and imprisoned me,” Yasemin said. On at least one occasion, undercover police even followed her home. “All of this because I am actively protesting against human rights violations by Israel. I am worried because for me, now there is this question of what’s the next step? Are they going to shoot me?”
This is not the first time Berlin police raided people’s homes over social media posts. Earlier this month, police knocked down the door of a middle-aged woman who wrote “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” on her social media and arrested her. She was charged with “using the symbols of unconstitutional organizations,” Berlin police said in a statement. In Germany, the Interior Ministry determined on its own that the popular protest chant was the slogan of Hamas and the Samidoun Solidarity Network, a banned pro-Palestinian organization.
A Palestinian friend of mine, Mahmoud, is currently being targeted by the state of Karlsruhe for saying the following during a protest: “Palestine is for all people, from the river to the sea, regardless of their denomination or religion.” That was enough for the state to say he had committed a hate crime by questioning Israel’s right to exist. He is being forced to pay 7,500 euros in fines.
