During a demonstration in downtown Düsseldorf against a planned assembly law for North Rhine-Westphalia, journalists were attacked by police officers on Saturday. A photographer from the German Press Agency reported that he had been beaten several times with a baton by an officer. He also reported on at least one other colleague who had also been attacked.
As the police announced on Sunday night, pyrotechnics and smoke pots were burned down several times. Participants also attacked officials. The police then used batons and irritant gas. A journalist got caught between the emergency services and an aggressive group of troublemakers. The police initially did not provide any further information about the incident. A spokeswoman had already announced a criminal complaint against the officer on Saturday – on suspicion of bodily harm in office.
The German press agency protested against the violent attack on its employees and other journalists. dpa editor-in-chief Sven Gösmann called the process an “unacceptable attack on freedom of the press”. In a letter to the responsible North Rhine-Westphalian interior minister Herbert Reul (CDU), he demanded the complete clarification of the events. The chairman of the NRW-SPD, Thomas Kutschaty, announced the application for a current hour in the state parliament on the incident. “We demand complete clarification,” he tweeted.
An alliance called for the “Stop the NRW Assembly Act! Receive basic rights”, in which groups and organizations on the political left took part, called for the demonstration. Larger groups of football fans from Cologne and Düsseldorf also took part in the demonstration at the beginning. In the law, the state government wants to give the police a better way of dealing with marches by extremists with a so-called militancy ban.