Germany: Police break up banned far-left protest in Leipzig
June 3, 2023
Several police officers were injured in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Saturday in clashes with left-wing protesters.
Leipzig police spokesman Olaf Hoppe described the situation as "very dynamic," with "sometimes massive clashes here in the south of Leipzig."
He said that "roughly 1,500 people" turned up to the demonstration, even though several courts had refused to authorize it.
"According to our estimates, one-third of them were either inclined towards violence, or were actively seeking violence," Hoppe said. "We observed numerous cases of people intentionally obscuring their faces, which is an offense in and of itself."
Hoppe said that as the demonstration grew and as people who appeared to seek violence gathered, organizers and police negotiated for around an hour seeking a way to allow the banned demonstration to go ahead "in the name of freedom of assembly."
Police had tried to keep the demonstration, originally envisioned as a march from the south of town to the main train station, contained in an area around the Alexis-Schumann Platz square on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse.
"Even before these talks were concluded, some at times massive attacks were launched by individual demonstrators against our security forces," Hoppe said. "At this point, the organizers recognized that this was no longer working from our point of view and declared the gathering to be concluded."
Hoppe said that because police officers were being pelted with "stones, pyrotechnics and other objects" as the clashes intensified, "we were forced to bring water cannons to the scene but did not have to employ them."
Hoppe described the current situation, following the protest's dissolution, as "calm again, but still strained."
Around an hour later, police said that "roughly 300 people" were provisionally detained as part of a police operation on suspicion of severe breaches of the peace and attacks on law enforcement.
"Here there were isolated attempts to escape the police cordon," police said, adding that underage individuals were among those suspected and that they were prioritizing processing those cases.
What are the demonstrators upset about?
The activists are demonstrating in the aftermath of a young woman from Leipzig, identified as Lina E., receiving a 5-year jail term earlier in the week for her part in organized attacks on neo-Nazis in Germany. She also received a last-minute reprieve of sorts, when the judge said she would only have to serve the remainder of her jail sentence should she also lose at appeal.
The scheduled date for the verdict had been known for months, and Lina's supporters evidently were not optimistic about her chances of acquittal, as they had been drumming up support for protests on the following weekend since last year.
They referred to it as "day X" (Tag X), a term often used in German to describe a moment in the future that you believe will be somehow decisive or crucial.
They wanted to stage the march under a motto that roughly translates as "United we stand — defend autonomous antifascists, in spite of all this."
Overnight clashes
Police and firefighters already had their hands full overnight on Friday, clashing with protesters in some parts of the city. By morning, they were still extinguishing fires set by vandals and counting the costs of property damage.
Impromptu demonstrations took place and then turned violent as local courts upheld a ban on the larger protest march planned for Saturday.
Police said that as many as 700 people had gathered in the south of the city and that many had thrown objects at law enforcement, some of them from balconies and rooftops.
"Barricades were erected and fires were lit," Leipzig police said in a statement. "By the current count, the police has 23 lightly wounded officers and 17 damaged vehicles." They also noted comparatively major damage at one branch of the Sparkasse bank.
Why did they need permission?
Major protests in Germany require authorization from authorities. Local governments and courts can restrict them if they deem that the event could pose a risk to public safety, among other reasons.
Leipzig city authorities and two courts in the city ruled that Saturday's demonstration should not go ahead, saying that advanced online appeals calling on people to protest either showed a tendency towards violent acts or sometimes even included explicit calls for violence.
"Leipzig's Higher Administrative Court is also of the conviction, that the city of Leipzig plausibly predicted that the protests could turn violent and therefore pose a threat to the broader public," Leipzig's Higher Administrative court said late on Friday when upholding the first court decision finding that the march should not be allowed.
The German Constitutional Court, meanwhile, said on Saturday that it would not hear a last-gasp emergency injunction on the issue, meaning the protesters had exhausted their legal avenues.
Police had also said that the estimated turnout from organizers of between 400 and 500 people did not seem realistic, given the far larger turnouts — including 3,500 people in 2021, when Lina E.'s trial opened — for past protests with much more muted and shorter periods trying to mobilize support online.
Protests also coincided with Leipzig's bid for German Cup
Leipzig police might have anticipated a busy Saturday even prior to Lina E.'s verdict and the aftermath.
RB Leipzig played Eintracht Frankfurt in the German Cup (or DFB Pokal) football final in Berlin on Saturday evening. Although many of Leipzig's most involved supporters might have traveled to the capital for the game, interest on the streets in the city is also liable to be great.
It also coincided with a march by the environmental protest group calling itself Last Generation in the city, and some other demonstrations that law enforcement saw no reason to block.
City police said that after Friday's unrest, checks were still being carried out at some points in the city.
"Police have made it their target for today, as well, to secure all demonstrations that take place and to be able to deal with any possibly violent gathering or mobilization. Police helicopters will again be used today to monitor and direct operations. The previous night confirmed how necessary this was," police wrote.
msh/nm (AFP, dpa)