In the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since I’m a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from another EU country is practically impossible. I contacted a lawyer and, given the lack of substantial legal reasoning behind the order, we filed a lawsuit against it, after which I didn’t think much of it.
I later found out that three other people active in the Palestine movement in Berlin, Roberta Murray, Shane O’Brien and Cooper Longbottom, received the same letters. Murray and O’Brien are Irish nationals, Longbottom is American. We understood this as yet another intimidation tactic from the state, which has also violently suppressed protests and arrested activists, and expected a long and dreary but not at all urgent process of fighting our deportation orders.
Then, at the beginning of March, each of our lawyers received on our behalf another letter, declaring that we are to be given until 21 April to voluntarily leave the country or we will be forcibly removed. The letters cite charges arising from our involvement in protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of the charges have yet led to a court hearing, yet the deportation letters conclude that we are a threat to public order and national security.
Wait so them being on video committing the offence, for example, wouldn’t be “well documented” to you?
If it was well documented, then there would be no reason not to have things taken to court.
Also risk of reoffending would be a valid reason for keeping them in jail on remand, so there is also no argument to be made for public safety.
The fact that they are walking free shows that the German judiciary does not consider them to be a danger to the public. Which is the entire reason why instead they are threatened with deportation as a replacement punishment while proper court proceedings do not grant the result wished by the government.
This kind of proceeding also isn’t new in Germany in its principle. There is a long history of people who were found with small amounts of cannabis, insufficient for a criminal charge, that then had their driving license revoked and faced other repressions by the executive branch, because the executive branch wanted to punish people for whom there is no evidence for a criminal conviction by a court of law.
These proceedings are fundamentally designed to undermine the rule of law and the principle of division of power.