Berlin’s state government has defended its planned expulsion of two Irish pro-Palestinian campaigners living in the German capital, saying they posed a threat to public order.
As the interior committee of Berlin’s state parliament debated the plan on Monday morning, about 400 people gathered outside for a solidarity gathering for a Polish and US citizen as well as Irish citizens Bert Murray and Shane O’Brien.
Speaking to the crowd, O’Brien described the order as “not worth the paper it is written on” and a “pathetic and feeble attempt to intimidate those who stand up against the genocide”.
O’Brien and Murray have been attending protests in support of Palestinians since the Israel-Hamas conflict began in October 2023.
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Inside the committee hearing, Berlin interior affairs state secretary Christian Hochgrebe said the “completely constitutional procedure” had been initiated after “careful consideration” of the facts.
The four people were known to police for a series of offences, he added, in particular a protest at Berlin’s Free University last October.
Police were called after a group of 40 masked individuals forced their way into a university “ready for violence, masked and armed with axes and crowbars”, he said, smashing doors and computer servers and causing more than €100,000 worth of damage.
“Here we are not dealing with freedom of expression,” said Hochgrebe. “When hatred, incitement and especially anti-Semitism take place then a red line has been crossed and action is required under the rule of law.”
He was challenged by opposition politicians who pointed out that the role - if any - of the four in last October’s events is the subject of an ongoing police investigation.
Hochgrebe said this was irrelevant as these were migration law cases where questions of public security and order take precedence and “where the presumption of innocence does not apply”.
Why are two Irish citizens being deported from Germany despite no convictions?
Two people were expelled from the sitting for causing a disturbance, while opposition politicians from the Left and Green politicians warned that Berlin’s state government was setting a dangerous precedent.
“This is reminiscent of autocratic systems,” said Vasili Franco, the Greens’ interior policy spokesman. “People get scared, people draw these comparisons.”
A short distance from the state parliament demonstrators cheered the so-called “Berlin Four” along with speakers from a broad coalition of pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist groups.
O’Brien criticised the move against him and the three others as a “disgusting and insidious attempts to discredit us and to vilify Palestinian solidarity”.
He added: “All it achieves is to expose the absurdity of this country and the disgusting racism and white supremacy rooted at the core of German politics.”
To demonstrators and passersby, he added: “It is time for every person of conscience to escalate. If you are not actively resisting the genocide, you are complicit.”
His speech was greeted with enthusiastic applause by German and Irish listeners.
O’Brien, who is originally from Clondalkin in Dublin but has been living in Berlin for 10 years, said the removal orders were a “shocking, brutal response” to pro-Palestinian solidarity demonstrations in the last 17 months in the German capital.
“It makes you question everything: how you’re living here, paying taxes here,” he added.
A spokeswoman for Berlin’s administrative court said on Monday it was too soon to say when emergency hearings would take place for the four, ordered to leave Germany by April 21st.
A police spokesman said two men and one woman were detained after Monday’s gathering, while another person was detained on Sunday evening at a pro-Palestinian gathering.
