exclusive
Surrounded by the police – for up to eleven hours, without the opportunity to go to the toilet, without an adequate supply of water, there are also reports of police violence. A Monitor-Team accompanied the demonstrations in Leipzig and investigated the allegations.
Black masked demonstrators throw stones and bottles at the police. It seems as if the situation could escalate at any time. The police reacted promptly – and encircled almost 1000 people. Scenes from a demonstration last weekend in the southern suburbs of Leipzig.
The officials had prepared for riots. It was one of the largest police operations in recent years: Thousands of police officers from twelve federal states were on duty in Leipzig. The city looked like it was in a state of emergency.
The background to the protests was the verdict against the Leipzig student Lina E. and other defendants. They had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for attacking suspected neo-Nazis. The left scene had therefore called for a “Day X” in Leipzig. Demonstrations in solidarity with Lina E. were banned in advance. This meeting was approved.
Even peaceful participants encircled
The monitorThe team observed how the hooded demonstrators were repeatedly asked by the police to remove their masks. In order not to let the situation escalate any further, according to the police, the suspected rioters were then surrounded. The camera shots of Monitor-Teams show how peaceful demonstrators and bystanders get caught up in the police encirclement, including many very young people who apparently cannot be assigned to the group of masked people.
According to the police, around 1,000 people are surrounded. At temperatures below ten degrees, they are sometimes held all night. People have to hold out until five in the morning, around eleven hours, without being able to leave the police encirclement. A drinking water container from Stadtwerke Leipzig only arrives on site several hours later.
Minors among the encircled
The Monitor-Team speaks to dozens of those trapped, including two girls, ages 14 and 17, respectively. They report that the police did not provide them with a toilet. A bush would have served as a makeshift toilet for all those trapped. “Most of them were really quite young, and it’s not okay to hold them until late at night,” they say. They wanted to send a signal against the right, which is why they went to the demonstration, they say. They didn’t attack anyone.
The 14 and 17-year-old girls were also surrounded.
The legal scholar Clemens Arzt, professor of constitutional and administrative law at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, considers the police’s actions to be legally questionable: “There is no legal way of encircling and arresting 1,000 people and detaining them for hours without adequate care , because it could be that they were involved in crimes. That is not legally tenable.”
Reports for serious breach of the peace
Almost everyone who was surrounded received a report that night, including the two girls. The accusation: serious breach of the peace. “The conditions for a breach of the peace require violent clashes. I don’t understand how this accusation against such a large number of people could be justified,” said Arzt.
The mother of a 14-year-old boy shows him monitor-Team the complaint against her son. They were at the demonstration together, she says. Her son got caught in the cauldron, she didn’t. She accuses the officers of anyone who got caught in the police encirclement, happened at random: “I happened to be five meters in a different place.” Children were undressed in the cauldron, her son reported. “My son’s panties were looked at. That’s not worthy of a constitutional state.”
These statements cannot be proven. But another mother is shocked by the police’s actions: “That’s actually the bad thing about all this behavior, both by the state and the police, that our children realize they just don’t have a chance. They’re disillusioned. They see the no longer a friend to the police.”
Demonstrators were beaten
A young student accuses the officers of brutal violence against the people in the police camp: “I saw people who were hit in the face, and I also saw people who were beaten with clubs.” Also a camera shot of monitor shows several punches by police officers against the heads of demonstrators in the encirclement.
At a request from monitor The Saxon Ministry of the Interior did not respond to the allegations. They want to wait for the special session of the interior committee on Monday in the Saxon state parliament on police action. Previously, Saxony’s Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) had in a TV interview with the MDR however, defended the police encirclement and called for a concept against left-wing extremism, similar to the action taken against right-wing extremists.
Significantly more legal than left-wing extremist crime
So far, however, the figures from the Federal Criminal Police Office show far more right-wing crimes than left-wing crimes. For example, 23,493 right-wing crimes were counted last year – an increase of seven percent. On the other hand, there are 6,976 left-wing crimes – a decrease of around 31 percent.
monitor Current figures from the Federal Ministry of the Interior are available for 2023 – for example on right-wing and left-wing extremists, i.e. people who are believed to be capable of committing serious acts of violence. As of June 1, 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior counted nine left-wing threats. In contrast, there are 73 right-wing extremists.
The reports against the people in the Leipzig police encirclement are now included in the police statistics. Many of those affected fear that numbers will also be used to make politics monitor could speak on site.