this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
117 points (85.9% liked)

Germany - Deutschland, but in English

480 readers
137 users here now

The place to talk/ask about stuff in Germany in English.

No sock puppet discussions.

Wiki: https://lemmygermany.github.io/wiki/

Many thanks to @Vittelius@feddit.de for creating this!

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So just to make something clear here, because this has been hotly debated in Germany, and people have been doing a disservice to both sides, IMO:

Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.

But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.

So, the former is usually brought up by people, when arguing this is not a case of just protest, numbers I've seen were something like 100k in damages and threatening people with axes used in the break-in. This is usually used to elicit a response of "Oh, okay, they deserve it then."

Thing is: No matter what they did, they deserve proper legal procedure happening, put in front of a court, and to be considered innocent until proven guilty. The whole deportation rhetoric is being used to create a precedent to suspend the rule of law. It's also clearly used in bad faith, also targeting people that haven't had a home outside of Germany in many years, up to decades.

The whole issue of Palestine is very contentious in Germany, as the article points out, and a tool used to create division, not just in society as a whole, but also specifically to create division within the left. My point being: No matter, if you personally think that these people deserve some big punishment, and that the things done were not okay - if you end up supporting this specific way to get there, you are supporting suspension of law, encroaching a new standard of punishment without trial, and the growth of fascism. It really is a "first they came for" situation, don't ever think that this is implemented by people that won't ultimately also use it against you and your own interests down the line.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 22 points 1 day ago

Note that they're accused of attending a protest where these things (the property damage stuff) happened, not actually doing these things. None of the four protesters face any criminal accusations.