Press Release #8, July 4th 2017

The hamburgian police tries to find excuses to legitimate their repression. First they started with verbal warnings against specific persons (Gefährderansprachen), then they raided buildings in Hamburg and Rostock. Now they also published a video in which they attempt to connect the confiscated items to the upcoming protests against the G20 summit.

Chief of Police Ralf Martin Meyer claimed that such items are “part of militant protest” and speculated that they “should be used to commit violent crimes”. With statements like those he accuses the victims of the raids of planning serious crimes without providing concrete evidence. Contrary to the claim of “providing proven facts”, in the police video the paint-filled fire-extinguisher becomes a “flamethrower” and the flare a dangerous weapon capable of “inflicting heavy burns”.

Despite the lack of evidence against the accused person, the hamburgian Police had already set out reporting obligations. Starting at the 2nd of July, he would have had to report at the local police station on a daily basis. The ordered preventive detention is therefore – in legal terms – neither necessary nor proportional.

But not just left-wing activists are under attack. The police nowadays also targets independent lawyers. In an administrative procedure they not just used the alleged political beliefs of the clients, but also the fact that their counsels are member of a lawyer specific civil liberty organisation (the “Republikanischer Anwältinnen- und Anwälteverein e.V.” – RAV) as evidence for a possible danger to public safety.

The chairman of the RAV explaines: “the reasoning of the police command fits perfectly into the strategy of the past days and is a further disregard of the separation of powers.“ The choice of legal counsil has become part of threat assessment and prejudgement. The separation in appreciated and dangerous activists has moved to the level of their legal counsil.