Mainz ‘ February 23rd, 2005, will be a day to remember for Martin Wejbera. At seven thirty in the morning a stranger entered his bedroom, opened the window, removed the five foot banner saying ‘George who?’, and left the room. No one said a word. The 22 year old rubbed his eyes. Then his cohabitant entered the room and said, ‘don’t you want to get up? The police are here.’February 23rd was the day the US president visited the German city Mainz ‘ and turned it into a ghost town.
After the policemen had removed and confiscated another banner saying ‘Would you like a beer or pretzel?’from the living room window, the officers G. and K. explained their delict to the students. As they surely knew the US president was in town and they had ‘become conspicuous’through their banners. The apartment is on the second floor, flanking the rout of Bush’s convoy. For this special day, Central Mainz has been shut down for everybody except residents.
The Mainz police told the students who insisted on their freedom of speech, removing the banners was covered by the law. When the students wanted to know the exact paragraph they were told ‘this is not law class’. After about half an hour the officers left, not without warning the psychology students to not catch their attention again. Otherwise ‘the guy where you only see the eyes will come and then it’s going to hurt.’
‘The worst thing’ was, says Wejbera, that it wasn’t about security at all. ‘We were not risk, we only wanted to demonstrate.’Around nine thirty officer G. returned with officer D., who was obviously in charge of the action. D said, since he had only heard good news about the students, it would suffice to declare all rooms to the street ‘restricted area’and let two policeman observe them. Around that time Wejbera heard people in heavy boots climb the stairs.
Terror against terror?
There is a second apartment-sharing community in the fifth floor. They had a banner to the street saying ‘Terror against terror?’Joining the three apartment owners were six visitors from Berlin’s initiative ‘Cowboys and cowgirls for peace’. Because they had surprisingly arrived at night, Svenja Vieluf didn’t know about her guests. She woke up around nine thirty because in the hall the guests had a discussion with the police officers D. and G. Visitor Markus Reuter felt ‘completely taken by surprise’and asked the policemen to leave the apartment. D. warned the students to cooperate and said the banner and the unannounced visitors constituted a security risk.
By now, a twelve person strong seize and arrest unit in full gear was in the apartment and 23 year old psychology student was up. The police told the students the banner was a ‘call for violence’and had to be removed. Insisting on the freedom of speech, Vieluf was told police law covered the measure and if they didn’t cooperate the apartment would be turned upside down. The students followed orders. The banner was confiscated. Persons were separated, registered, and filmed. Vieluf wasn’t allowed to change her nightdress. Police ordered a ban on smoking and using the phone.
Markus Reuter reports ‘we were shocked. One of us cried.’ Around eleven officer D. gathered everybody in the living room and said, the apartment would stay ‘occupied’until president Bush had left. The guests were then searched, a ‘Stop Bush’patch was confiscated, and all but one were escorted out of restricted Central Mainz. Only Henning Henn stayed in the apartment because he hadn’t planned to join the anti-war demo anyway. Being watched by two armed policemen made him, feel ‘like the second important person behind Bush’. Around five in the afternoon his company left.
No isolated cases
There are more cases. Near the Gutenberg Museum the police broke open an apartment door to remove a banner saying ‘Not welcome, Mr. Bush’. A fourth case is known, but the person doesn’t want it to be reported to ‘not wake sleeping dogs’. All cases have in common that the Bush-critical banners would have been visible from the statesmen’s convoy and their press entourage. That’s why Markus Reuter has the impression that ‘the police consequently removed critical banners along the route’. Instead, the city had mounted a US flag in front of the apartment’s window.
Heinrich Comes also views these events as ‘attempts to do the US government a favor’. The German attorney calls the events an abuse of power by the police. Calling ‘Terror against terror?’a call for violence seemed to be a ‘deliberate misinterpretation’to create an operational requirement. ‘Those are antidemocratic tendencies.’
Only a breach of German criminal law, in this case the defamation of a foreign head of state, would constitute a basis for police action. However, since the argument the banners represented a security risk are ambiguous, law professor Max-Emanuel Geis from the University of Erlangen calls the police action into question. From many possible interpretations the police must not automatically assume the criminal one. ‘With liberal interpretation of the law the police action is against the constitution and a violation of the freedom of speech’, Geis says.
As the senior prosecutor of Mainz, Klaus Puderbach, explains the first two banners are inoffensive, and ‘Terror against terror?’should be guarded by the freedom of speech’. And although the theme of the demonstration ‘Not welcome, Mr. Bush’were ‘clearly no violation’and hadn’t been objected all day, the police broke open an apartment to remove the banner.
No directive?
Remains the question who ordered the police measures? The German Department of the Interior claims to ‘know nothing’about such a directive and refers to the regional department in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. There, one gets referred to the Mainz Police Department (MPD) that was in operational control. The BKA, Germany’s FBI, says it was only responsible for immediate personal security. And there came ‘surely no directive from the government of Rheinland-Pfalz’, says Wolfgang Lembach.
René Nauheimer, spokesperson for the MPD, says there had not been a directive at all. It was a mistake having broken open one apartment. The person would of course be compensated. The Berlin group had been displaced due to ‘restricted rights of assembly’in Central Mainz because they were ‘obviously belonging to the demonstrators’. Altogether, says Nauheimer, police action had unfortunately develop a ‘life of its own’due to some ‘individual officers’.
Guilty was the weakest part of the chain? Hard to believe. In the second floor apartment, after minds had quieted a little, students Martin Wejbera and Christian Mack were told by officer G., if Otto Schily ordered that Bush shouldn’t become aware of negative vibrations, that order would be followed. Schily is Germany’s Secretary of the Interior and a friend of John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge.
Mack ‘did not suffer the shock of my life, but it shook my comprehension of our democracy.’Student Henning Henn calls himself a convinced democrat and he has ‘nothing against our system. But if you experience that, you ask what is happening to our constitutional state?’
The ‘unannounced’guests from Berlin are outraged because the police said it was averting a danger. ‘It would have been enough to accept our offer to leave the restricted area’, finds Markus Reuter. ‘Something like this must not happen in a democracy. That’s why we use all judicial means possible’. As a next step the students will formally request court to investigate the police measure. Friday they also charged their attorney to check a complaint.
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