siempre - demo

19. November 2008

Today (Saturday, 15.11.2008) a big antifascist demonstration took place in the northeastern borough of Berlin, called Pankow. Pankow is well-known for its massive Nazi problem. Immigrants or leftists cannot, should not walk alone in that area at night. Last week about a dozen assaults and other right-wing disturbances occurred there.

I arrived the jumping-off point of the demonstration about one hour ahead of time, so I could walk a bit around and take a look at this area. Only the police tried to prevent that: They controlled me around a half-dozen times in half an hour. I was clearly marked as press and had my press id-card with me. But that was no reason for the riot-cops to cease stopping and searching me.

That there would be a problem with Neo-Nazis was soon clear - a group of young leftists were attacked by Nazis on their way to the demonstration. The police was unable to detain the Nazis - in spite of there being several hundred riot-cops stationed all around the area.

As the demonstration got underway it numbered about 850 to 1000 people. From young punks to older activists and some Pankow residents. The police soon began to (illegally) film everybody in the demonstration and to make a narrow moving cordon around the demonstrators. With that kind of threatening deployment the police only further stoked up the overheated atmosphere.

I walked aways in front of the demonstration to see if there were really such massive Nazi-problems. First I only found some stickers from the "NPD" and the local Nazi-Groups. But than three people stopped, as they saw me, and one of them made the Hitler salute - directly next to some police officers. But nobody reacted - although the Nazi salute is illegal in Germany and can be severely punished - and the demonstration was still several hundred meters away from my location.

The demonstration moved through the boroughs Pankow, Niederschönhausen and Pankow-Heinersdorf, where a Nazi clubhouse, called "Fire on Ice", is located. At that point the situation slowly escalated due to the intervention of police. Here they also tried for the first time to prevent the press from doing its job. I was filmed by the police camera team almost the whole time, especially when I talked to demonstrators or residents of the area.

Also, after I took photos of some provocative police operations, they said if I should continue to take photos they would ban me from that area and will remove the flashcard from my camera.

So I moved a bit on....

After the demonstration was dissolved the police started to arrest several people (some of them French and unable to speak a word German) without any evident cause. In addition a water-canon was transported to the area where the concluding speeches were made and people began to depart the protest march. When I took photos of those apparently illegal detainments, the police forced a colleague and me behind a police-line and controlled us both. If the photos should appear in "dubious" newspapers (whatever that may mean, as there is no such concept in German law) or posted in the internet they will start investigative procedures against us. There was no legal cause for that kind of action - but it clearly exposes police policies directed against the free press and left-wing protesters, a policy which completely negates civil rights and is getting more drastic all the time.

But we intend to insist on our rights as photojournalists and stay at our, sometimes dangerous, posts - incorruptible, inconvenient (when the police exceed their legal powers or behave brutally), humanistic - and against the surveillance state.

Quelle und Bilder: www.benjamin-hiller.de/