How Germany silenced pro-Palestine activists during the Euros

Germany did not win, or even come close to winning the Euros, but German authorities no doubt felt they had scored a victory in their handling of the tournament. A month of international football matches had passed with relatively little fallout. In the days after Europe’s best teams had packed up and left, German police and ministers hailed the policing of the tournament as a success.

“Our strong security measures worked in all areas,” Interior and Security Minister Nancy Faeser said after the tournament. “We were prepared for all conceivable dangers, from Islamist terrorism to violence by hooligans, cyberattacks to dangerous drone flights - and we armed ourselves against all threats.”

Faeser and police credited this success in part to preparedness and to pre-emptive action before the tournament’s 14 June start. In a country that is tightening the screws on Palestine solidarity activism amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it comes as no surprise that Palestinian activists and their allies were targets of such action.

In the run-up to the Euros and in its first few days, several Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists in Berlin received knocks at their front doors from police officers.

In an action known as Gefährderansprache, which roughly translates as “address to potential offender”, officers handed over cautionary notices that told them that they had been identified as prospective disruptors of the tournament and warned them against breaking the law and “democratic order” of the country.

“When assessing individual people associated with pro-Palestinian gatherings (protests), a potential threat was identified, which is why the Gefährderansprachen were initiated regarding these people,” Berlin Police spokesperson Beate Ostertag told The New Arab.

Ostertag told TNA that these notices “were sent to a selected group of recipients based on relevant prior police information”. In instances where the police cannot reach the recipient, the notice is posted through their mailbox, she said.

According to copies of the notices, both shared publicly and with The New Arab, the Euros were going to be an occasion of “joy and excitement” - albeit during a time of “situations of political conflict around the world”. Such occasions “can be used by different groups of people to commit disruption and crime”, they said.

Gefährderansprachen are commonly employed as a pre-emptive measure by German police in the run-up to major cultural and sporting events, with the stated aim of pre-empting potentially disruptive behaviour.

In the case of the Euros, about 1,000 Gefährderansprachen were made, according to German interior ministry figures. Among the recipients were hundreds of German football fans who featured on the state’s controversial “Violent Offenders in Sports” file.

Palestinian activists have also previously received such notices - for instance, before Nakba Day protests that have in recent years been banned in Germany.

The notices handed by police to pro-Palestine activists say that the recipient “is known to have acted in a way that gives rise to fears that they could disrupt the Euros”. They make no explicit reference to Palestine, instead using “since 7th October” and the “Middle East conflict” as markers for the cause of the protests and other gatherings.

The notices say that these have been used by “violent and politically motivated people” to “commit crimes” including injuring people and damaging property.

For Palestinian activists put through the wringer by German police in recent months and years, the Gefährderansprache is a cakewalk, relatively speaking. The address is not legally binding, and its wording is vague. The visiting officers are meant to do little more than wag their fingers in warning.

In the space of a year, Zaid Abdulnasser has had his residency revoked, making him vulnerable to deportation; the organisation he volunteered for, the Palestinian prisoner solidarity organisation Samidoun, was banned by the German government; and police have raided his home and confiscated his belongings.

“They [the officers] said to me, ‘We know you are an activist in the pro-Palestine movement, and as you know we have the European championship happening here… we would ask you to tone it down’,” he recalled of the latest police visit.

“I asked them, ‘What exactly do you mean by tone it down?’. They said ‘stick to the laws. For example, when you go to demonstrations, don’t take weapons with you.’ So I was like, ‘can I take weapons with me otherwise?’. They said ‘no’.”

But the ambiguity of the Gefährderansprache presents its own kind of threat - a reminder that people are being punished for acts or gestures that seem minor or trivial and that activists are almost constantly visible on a police radar working in overdrive.

“Illegal in Germany is a very low bar,” Abdulnasser said. “If you say ‘From the river to the sea’, that’s illegal. If the cops are trying to arrest you and you just stand still, that’s resisting arrest. If the police decide to end a demonstration and you refuse to leave the place, then you’ve broken the law. When it comes to Palestine, breaking the law is very, very easy.”

German-Palestinian activist Salah Said was also subject to a Gefährderansprache around the start of the Euros. He has received multiple home visits from the police in the space of a few months.

“They said to me that I hadn’t done anything illegal,” Said told The New Arab of the officers who visited his home in December. “So I asked them why they were here. They said, ‘we were told to come here because we were observing your activity, and you could pose a potential threat. So we’re here to tell you not to speak up,’” he explained.

“The last visit was for the European championship, and I just thought, are you actually crazy… What the hell do you want from me? There is nothing I’ve done that is illegal, I’ve not been prosecuted for anything – why are you doing this?”

For Said, it is about sending a message. “It’s clear when they come and talk to you, they want to show you: I’m here, I see you,” he said.

“They’re just using every single instrument that they have to terrorise you and intimidate you, because they have nothing on you. You haven’t done anything criminal.”

Germany continues to be one of Israel’s staunchest allies, nine months into a genocide whose confirmed death toll creeps close to 40,000. For Palestinian activists, the police visits have been no deterrent from expressing their opposition to the genocide, during the tournament and beyond.

“To me this is a driver,” Said said of the police notices and visits. “I’m definitely going to speak up, I’m not going to let you shut me down while Israel continues its war crimes and Germany is aiding and abetting those.”

'The cops are still here'

Asked if any pro-Palestine group had posed a public safety threat to the Euros, Ostertag told The New Arab that no “specific, topic-related threat” had been made during or in the run-up to the tournament.

The activists who spoke to The New Arab said police violence at protests had only worsened in recent weeks – not necessarily because of the Euros, but simply because the crackdown on sustained pro-Palestine activism has been getting worse over time.

“What we’re seeing is that the violence increases more every time. Children being arrested, elderly people being beaten,” Salah said.

“I feel like sometimes they [the police] do this on purpose because they know people will resist and they will not allow them to just go and beat people, so that people confront them.”

A day before the Euros final, more than 30 people were detained by police at a protest in Berlin that called for an end to the genocide. Activists in the city said several protesters had to be taken to hospital for injuries incurred by assault and manhandling by police officers.

“The police presence on the streets since the Euros has increased to a really scary scale… what was called a police occupation of Neukolln seems to have levelled up to expand to other areas of Berlin,” one activist, Daria, told TNA.

“The Euros have finished, but the cops are still here.”

Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab.

Follow her on X: @shahlasomar