Discrimination in Germany dates way before pro-Palestine protests

Since the launch of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, which has already killed tens of thousands, mostly women and children, the authorities in Germany and in particular Berlin, have been oppressing pro-Palestine demonstrations using strong-arm tactics.

These include forcibly taking off the hijab of Muslim women demonstrators, raids on demonstrators’ homes and tailing the leaders of the demonstrations in plain clothes, the activists claim.

All these are part of the expansive legal rights given by the German State to the police, and are a reminder that all-pervasive anti-Muslim discrimination and racism in Germany dates back years, says Yasemin Acar, an activist of Turkish origin.

She shares how male officers raided her home at 6 am, stepped all over her carpet with their muddied shoes, and barged into her bedroom with scant regard for the resident — a woman and a Muslim.

“It was brutal. I woke up to men in my room crashing through my door, guns in hand,” she describes the moment.

“They know they are raiding the home of a woman. They could easily have sent female officers along if they wanted,” she tells TRT World.

Despite living next to Turkish migrants for over 60 years, they show complete disregard for our cultural sensibilities, she says, adding that behind their insensitivities and brutality is systemic racism.

‘Getting away with brutality’

“If the police brutality and racial profiling of Muslim, black and brown people hadn’t been there before, they wouldn't have been able to get away with what they're doing now,” Acar says.

She recalls how two years ago, her brother was stopped by German cops just because he was driving a brand new sports car. Apparently, they even went on to explain why they had stopped him, saying, “When we saw a young Turk in a fast car like this, we wondered what you do for a living,” further declaring him a "danger to public safety and order" without any explanation.

When her brother refused to let the cops search his car and asked for an official search warrant, they pepper sprayed him inside the car and pulled him out. They proceeded to blow up the events further, by calling in five big trucks to close down the whole street, just for her brother.

With the pro-Palestine demonstrations, Acar says the racism is becoming even more transparent and brazen, narrating as example the experience of a person whose house was raided by the police solely because of her links with the protests.

Undercover cops following pro-Palestine demonstrators

When eight police officers arrived at Acar’s home at 6 am on March 22, they first said that they had a search warrant. She immediately asked to see the warrant by a court, and was taken aback when they actually produced one.

“It's not something that you would need to search someone's home. It's all connected to the protests and everything. They didn't like the way I'm protesting,” she says.

After the search, they confiscated her laptop computer and two phones.

Before the May 1 protests, the police sent a letter to warn her. It read that if she were to attend the demonstration, she should behave peacefully, implying that she had not been peaceful before.

Earlier on April 26, a month after the police raid on her home, she had taken part in the protest in front of the Bundestag, where demonstrators reiterated their demand for Berlin to halt arms exports to Tel Aviv. That day, the police violently removed the protesters, dismantled their tents and blocked the road to obstruct other demonstrators from arriving at their predetermined meeting point.

While Yasemin was in the area, undercover cops pulled her and said, “When will you stop, Miss Acar? Isn't it enough that we come to your house so many times?” That’s when she realised that they follow her back home after every protest, just to see where she is going.

“These cops are quite provocative. Whenever they spot me at a demonstration, they snigger and wave hands as if to send the message that she is under their surveillance,” she explains. “They are watching, and making it clear, just to intimidate,” she adds.

After the April 26 demonstration, Yasemin had to visit the hospital because of the wounds from the disproportionate use of force at the time of her arrest. Now, she says that having been raised to be a law-abiding citizen, she had never faced any issues with the law, until she began amplifying the voices of Palestinians.

‘Israel-haters’

German media is also constantly displaying the profiles of pro-Palestine demonstrators on TV, publishing their names and pictures.

While referring to them, they mostly use the term ‘Israelhass (Israel-haters)’ ditching even the contested ‘anti-Semite’, which has become the global standard.

“With this new term, they are trying to build up a new narrative, because if they call me anti-Semite, I could sue them for defamation,” says Yasemin, emphasising that as Arabs, all Palestinians are actually Semites.

She adds that in the German mind, the two terms are the same, as it implies that “whoever hates Israel now hates Jews”. Through this new term, while they shield themselves from prosecution, they also spread the narrative that rather than Germans and Christians who killed 6 million Jews during World War II, it’s actually Muslims who hate Jews.

The label Israelhass completely disregards the experiences of Palestinians and pro-Palestine people in both Germany and globally, serving as a tool to silence criticism against Zionism that seeks to uncover systematic crimes committed against the Palestinians, she says.

All these issues point to an ongoing problem within German society that is raising pressure on Muslims and pro-Palestine people, she adds.

Overall, the narrative aims to portray Muslims as predisposed to violence as an inherent characteristic, in order to establish restrictive policies and to justify excessive force in dealing with Muslims, Acar says.

Apart from the repression on freedom of assembly and speech, activists for Palestine feel endangered, as the ruling coalition of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the Berlin Senate have proposed a draft law that would grant universities the authority to evict matriculate students for participating in demonstrations, even as a new nationality law being discussed aims at tightening citizenship requirements for individuals perceived as anti-Semitic.