Knife violence and brawls among Germany’s growing migrant population have become commonplace in many German cities; however, police, at least in one city, are now threatening to pursue anyone who publishes a video of one such scene in the city center of Lübeck.
When the brawl first occurred in broad daylight, the Schleswig-Holstein police did not make any announcement about it or release a police report; however, when footage of the incident began to spread on social media, the police began to take notice and are now seeking to ban its distribution on social networks.
The video shows men kicking a young person’s head, while another migrant tosses a metal trash can at an elderly German pedestrian. The senior citizen, uninvolved with the brawl, tumbles to the ground next to him.
Police showed up on the scene with 10 police vehicles to try to control the violence.
Despite the huge police mobilization during the brawl, there was no newspaper or police report about the incident. The only evidence that it even happened in the public domain was a video uploaded to Facebook by someone who filmed it on their phone.
Only then did one authority, which works under the Schleswig-Holstein Interior Minister Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU), even address the incident, stating: “The police warn against the further distribution of this video and ask that you immediately delete the video from your own devices and under no circumstances spread or share it further. This could result in criminal offenses.”
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Someone responded to the police message on Facebook, asking: “Isn’t anyone allowed to see the truth?”
The authority’s response was that “it’s enough if the right authorities see the truth and investigate.”
There are now concerns that the authority is using the threat of criminal prosecution to silence the public, especially considering the vastly disproportionate role of migrants in the crime statistics in Germany. Just three days ago, Remix News reported on the issue of migrant brawls involving dozens of people and public disorder in a number of eastern German cities.
The head of the German police union, Rainer Wendt, has responded to the censorship efforts, stating: “This is a very strange approach by the authority, and no one should be surprised if there is now speculation about the motive. The police certainly don’t decide what is and isn’t in the public interest.”
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Although Remix News has published a wide range of articles featuring such violence in German cities and elsewhere in Europe, it has in fact only been possible for this publication to showcase a very limited number of such incidents due to their overwhelming volume. However, police have rarely stepped in to claim that distributing such a video would ever amount to a criminal offense, especially when it is in the public interest.
