Mr. Reul, last Friday there was an ostensibly pro-Palestinian demonstration in Essen by Islamists who bluntly called for the establishment of a caliphate and marched through the city center shouting Allahu Akbar. Why were the security authorities completely surprised by the march with 3,000 participants separated by gender?
They were not surprised – neither by the relatively large number of participants nor by the fact that Islamists were there. What surprised us was that the issue of Palestine was just a pretext. It wasn’t primarily about the Middle East conflict, but rather about Islamist messages and demands. It was the first pro-Palestine demonstration in North Rhine-Westphalia that was exploited in this way.
After the Islamist demonstration in Essen, calls for a ban became louder. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) also said that we would not tolerate the propagation of an Islamist theocracy on our streets. If there is a threat of anti-Semitic agitation, a meeting must be banned. You like to portray yourself as a zero-tolerance minister. What is your position?
A ban on extremist demonstrations: I’ll take part in that if it’s possible. But most of the time it is not possible because the right to assembly and the right to freedom of expression are important constitutional rights. It also covers things that are absurd, abstruse and difficult to bear. The limit is where laws are broken, someone is insulted or denigrated, the Holocaust or Israel’s right to exist are denied. At least none of this seems to have been the case in Essen. However, the authorities are still intensively evaluating video material.
Ms. Faeser’s ramblings make no sense whatsoever. As Federal Minister of the Interior, she should know better and think about what concrete contribution she can make. I have an idea: it’s now a matter of seeing which Islamist organizations can still be banned. I have already written her a letter about this. The recent ban on Hamas and the Samidoun network should only be the beginning. Because a banned organization is no longer allowed to call for demonstrations and is no longer allowed to display its symbols.
I warn everyone not to fight in the wrong place – i.e. when it comes to the ban on demonstrations. This only works in rare cases, i.e. if someone has already called for a demonstration that resulted in riots or other crimes or if a person who registered has proven to be unreliable. As a rule, we will have to concentrate on designing the requirements in such a way that ensures that demonstrations remain within the framework of German law.
Anyone who wants to turn Germany into a caliphate is striving to eliminate the free-democratic basic order. Isn’t that a reason for a ban on a gathering?
Yes, that is a reason – but only if someone really calls for a system change. In Essen, a poster praised the caliphate as “the solution”. This is a religious expression that cannot simply be banned. In Essen, the Islamists apparently knew very well how to exploit the leeway for themselves. Nevertheless, I am convinced that a lot can be controlled with very clearly formulated requirements. This has worked very well so far in over 90 pro-Palestine demonstrations in North Rhine-Westphalia since October 7th.
However, requirements can also be exploited. At the beginning of the demonstration on Friday in Essen, a speaker read out the rules, non-observance of which would lead to the dissolution of the meeting, including: “Israel’s right to exist must not be questioned.” The crowd responded to this sentence with loud boos, thus banning the ban Demand was placed after all…
… it is all the more important that the authorities regularly follow up on the processing. In this case that happens too. If the announcement of requirements is made in such a way that the opposite effect is achieved, then this can be an important indication to future meetings of the unreliability of a declarant. The rule of law is a learning system. After what we have seen in the past few weeks, we will push the law to the limit – even at the risk of defeat in court. Another problem is that we have a lot of trouble checking foreign language embassies with the help of local translators.
20 years ago, the recently deceased Social Democrat Hans-Ulrich Klose called for foreign-language banners and slogans to be banned at demonstrations in order to prevent, for example, “Jews back to the sea” being propagated in a language unknown to the police. Would German as a demonstration language be a solution?
That would definitely make our work a lot easier. German as a demonstration language is one of the considerations that we are currently having intensively examined. Here too, it is important to keep an eye on the freedom of expression and assembly guaranteed by the Basic Law.
The organizers of the Essen meeting are said to come from the environment of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has been banned from operating in Germany since 2003. The German-Israeli society accuses the interior authorities of not consistently enforcing the ban – including for the successor organizations “Generation Islam” and “Muslim interactive”. Is that true?
Yes, I think the accusation is justified. The successor organizations must also be banned. But only the federal government can do that. Ms. Faeser should check very carefully whether she has done her homework – and if not, do it as quickly as possible.
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