Alleged attack at demo
Chief of police meets members of parliament after their arrest
6/2/2023 3:31 p.m
At a demonstration in Leipzig, the Left MP Juliane Nagel was arrested by the police. Both sides blame each other. Shortly thereafter, she meets the police chief – who tries to de-escalate the situation. Not least because of the tricky weekend that is coming up.
After a police action against the Saxon left-wing member of the state parliament Juliane Nagel at a demonstration, there was a conversation with the Leipzig police chief and the Saxon interior minister. The round came together on the initiative of police chief René Demmler, said a police spokesman. “There followed a factual and at the same time critical examination of the police operation and the events at the meeting, for which she was responsible as leader.”
Nagel was the applicant for a demonstration on Children’s Day on June 1st, which was mobilized as “Youth Day” or “Youth Struggle Day”. The elevator with around 170 participants was accompanied by a large police presence. Nagel was briefly detained by emergency services because, according to the police, “there was a disruption to an official act”. The politician was unknown to the acting officials. After their identity had been established, Nagel was released.
Video images of the procedure triggered a wave of criticism. Possible allegations would be clarified in a constitutional procedure, the police said. Due to the immunity of MPs, this must have a certain formal procedure. If an official, as described by Nagel, actually said that he “didn’t care” that she was a member of the state parliament, then this type of communication was “neither professional nor appropriate to the matter”. Demmler apologized for this.
The 44-year-old Nagel commented on the video distributed after the incident on Twitter. She observed a measure in which the police established the identities of two people, one person was handcuffed for this. “I was standing there, a police officer first insulted or verbally abused me. Then he pushed me out of the way. Then he remembered that I had allegedly assaulted him.”
“De-escalation is the order of the day”
It is clear to everyone involved that, given the “Day X” announced for Saturday in the left-wing autonomous scene after the verdict against the student Lina E. “There is uncertainty and fear of riots” and therefore “an important means of de-escalation is the order of the day”. must. However, the chief of police also emphasized that the officers had to act in the event of “norm violations”.
According to the police spokesman, numerous anti-police slogans were shouted at the “Youth Day” demo. From the point of view of the police, the demonstration no longer took the course of a meeting in the sense of the youth and children’s day.