#514: CSD tragedy
By now you’ve heard about the horrendous attack on the CSD pride march on Saturday night. A van drove into Tiergarten a few hundred metres away from the event’s locus at the Brandenburg Gate. A 65-year-old Polish woman was killed, 29 people were injured, including the deceased woman’s daughter.
An enormous manhunt ensued for the prime suspect, 21-year-old Lebanese-German Abdul Ballout. He appears to have shared Islamic State propaganda and even attempted to join the organisation in Syria, after which he was imprisoned in Lebanon for three months.
Back in Germany, he was given a suspended sentence of 22 months for “preparing a serious violent offence endangering the state”. He pretended to renounce his Islamist beliefs; he even took part in a de-radicalisation programme.
Police traced him to an allotment garden in Spandau, where they shot him dead after he apparently came at officers with a knife.
First and foremost, we must show our solidarity with the victims. That goes without saying.
Beyond that, I am saddened and disgusted by how this deliberate attack at Berlin’s large, strong queer community and its allies is also an attack on everything Berlin stands for: personal freedom, tolerance, political expression without fear, and just partying. One sick young man drunk on a radical Islamist ideology extinguished an innocent life, traumatised many others, and spread fear and insecurity throughout the community and throughout the city.
This crime is the culmination of a massive failure on different levels: the education system, the justice system, the law enforcement system.
This guy isn’t alone. The BKA, a federal law enforcement agency, estimates there are 28,000 people in with Islamist views in Germany; 9,000 are considered “prone to violence”. They believe about 450 people are capable of committing or supporting a terrorist act. The authorities are overwelmed by the number of “potential threats” including potential extreme-rightwing terrorists.
The insane thing is that Ballout himself was classified as a “high-risk threat” and yet was allowed to walk free with a suspended sentence.
This act will lead to a more repressive state. Politicians are, unsurprisingly, talking of expanding AI surveillance programmes, which will prove tricky in this data-protection obsessed country.
This act comes at a time of growing hostility and violence directed at queer people. Gay men have been assaulted at cruising spots by groups of young men; queer people have been harrassed and robbed on fake Grindr dates.
Meanwhile, Neukölln’s Commissioner for Integration Güner Balci said in an interview that homophobia is openly preached in some reactionary mosques and a massive problem among children and young people in her district. Balci said she wouldn’t be surprised if Ballout had grown up in such an environment. She called for the state to take much more drastic action against homophobia while warning against placing Muslims under general suspicion.
Solving this problem is a Herculean task. Berlin and Germany need to devote massive resources and get real about combatting the extremism infecting young people — whether it’s coming from Islamists or neo-Nazis, birds of a feather, it would seem.
Maurice
Events this week, curated by The Next Day Berlin
Internet Cinema selected by Dana Dawud
30.07 · 8–10pm · Julia Stoschek Foundation, Leipziger Straße 60 · free admission
Palestinian artist Dana Dawud built Open Secret, her touring internet cinema series, out of screenings with online collaborators in nine cities. She treats CoreCore, deep fakes and phone footage as cinema worth watching together.
Bwa Kayiman: Crossing the Mangrove
01–02.08 · from midday · HKW, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 · free entry, Garifuna Collective concert €20-24
Fourth chapter of HKW's study of the Haitian Revolution's legacy, this year turning to mangroves as sites of ecological knowledge. Ritual, dance and talks run from Camilo Mejía Cortés's salsa rooted VAIVÉN to a rare Berlin set from Garifuna Collective, closing with Three Thousand Songs Records.
Book Presentation and Performance
30.07 · 7pm · Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kottbusser Straße 10 · free entry
Closing weekend for the six artist residency show at Bethanien. Ruti de Vries and Tracey Snelling present new books at 7pm, followed by a performance from Noé Duboutay and Caroline Beach. Snelling builds miniature rooms from sociology and voyeurism, part stage set, part crime scene.
Festival Entre Trópicos
01.08 · 1pm–12am · Neue Zukunft, Alt-Stralau 68 · €15-35
Two stages of sound. Desenfreno Tropical runs cumbia through avant-garde jazz and psych rock, closer to ritual than party band. Mercedes & Marxx bring fuzzed post-punk built on Latin American post-pop. Los Baby Jaguars swing cumbia into boogaloo and Afrobeat. Las Migrañas play hypnotic, ritual synth.
Mille et Une Nuits
31.07 · 7pm · Radialsystem, Holzmarktstraße 33 · €18, reduced €14
Iranian choreographer Sorour Darabi's first opera reimagines One Thousand and One Nights from Scheherazade's own point of view, freeing her from the storytelling device the original male author reduced her to. Eight performers build a queer, immersive night through live music and song.
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Thanks Maurice for the heartfelt and informative reporting. Thanks also for both hiding but allow ing us to see if we want a moderated comment. Although I agree angry enough not to want it to be casually observable, I also am very glad to have read the perspective. I too was shocked by the police failures both in letting this young man go and also in killing him rather than shooting a knife-wielder in the legs like they usually do. I appreciate that your post went into that, but also into the other unaddressed causes, and gave more detail on the victims and the perpetrator's situation than I've seen anywhere else – I'm reading the Guardian, La Monde, the Washington Post as well as DW on this. I do think we need to be honest about the problems in our religious communities too – apparently Syrians were shocked when they got here in 2015 by how extremist many mosques were, I hope they are helping moderate the mosques, or helping their communities by providing alternatives.
I just want to say how unfathomably disappointed I am in your focus on the Muslim community in your coverage of the CSD attack.
As a queer person, I am beyond angry at your choice to scapegoat an entire religious community in our name. There are extremists from every conservative background and the overwhelming majority of attacks on Pride marches around the country come from Neo-Nazi and fascist organisations.
You do not mention once the reactionary actions of this government, the defunding of queer institutions, the demonization and ridicule of the queer community by the chancellor himself (refusing to fly a pride flag, saying that the Bundestag “ist kein Zirkuszelt”).
This government and regime tacitly condones violence and discrimination against queer people and the AFD openly voices hateful homophobic messaging - and these people are paid by our taxes to do so. This is the environment this man grew up in; a Germany where AFD voters and politicians currently sitting in our government loudly call for violence against queers and no one lifts a finger.Muslims and Arabs are a marginalized and demonized minority themselves. Laying blame at the feet of the Muslim community when the government does NOTHING to deradicalize the increasingly right wing and hateful German population at large - or even themselves - is appalling.
What’s more - the police had this man on a watch list and even flagged him as at high risk of committing a violent crime. Where’s the condemnation for the police? Those same police who arrested 9 queers at IQP?I’m so disappointed that you’ve decided to toe the CDU line and perpetuate their garbage line. You have to know the German government will use this an excuse to further strip residents and citizens of their rights. I can’t believe you’d be so naive to regurgitate their Islamophobic garbage. “Christians” preach homophobic nonsense every day and there’s not a peep about that. The AFD runs entire election campaigns on a similar platform and it’s considered all in a day’s work.
This is not a problem of a religious minority. This is a German problem. Shame on you for singling out an already targeted and excluded minority. Do not do this in our name.