Germany: Amnesty - police of brutality
01 May 1995
A clear and worrying pattern of police ill-treatment of foreigners and ethnic minorities is emerging in Germany Amnesty said in a report issued in May.
"At a time when foreign nationals and ethnic minorities in Germany need to feel the police are there to protect them, many have felt instead a police officer's fist, boot or baton".
The report says from January 1992 to March 1995 Amnesty had received information of over 70 separate incidents in which German police allegedly used excessive or unwarranted force in restraining or arresting people, or deliberately subjected detainees to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Medical evidence showed that victims have suffered broken teeth, sprains and bruises, and in several cases broken bones - injuries consistent with complaints that they were punched, kicked, beaten with batons or subjected to excessive force during arrest. In at least two cases the injuries were so severe that Amnesty referred to them as cases of ill-treatment amounting to torture.
Most of the victims of this treatment were foreign nationals, including asylum-seekers and refugees, or members of ethnic minorities. "This is a particularly alarming fact when viewed against the backdrop of anti-foreigner sentiment and racist violence which have scarred Germany since unification", says the report. The ill-treatment appeared, in many instances, to have been racially motivated, with victims being subjected to racist abuse by officers. Over half of all cases have involved officers of the Berlin police force.
Although criminal investigations were opened into all the cases many of the officers involved have escaped prosecution and few, if any, have faced disciplinary sanctions.
Whilst Germany's Interior Minister Manfred Kanther (CDU) rejected the claims and the Berlin authorities called them "simply absurd", Jurgen Bugla of the BAG Kritischer Polizistinnen und Polizisten (National Working Group of Critical Police Officers) welcomed the report, saying that there exists "a thoroughly aggressive climate" against "foreigners" amongst police officers and that the report represented just "the tip of the iceberg".
Federal Republic of Germany - Failed By the System: Police Ill-Treatment Of Foreigners", AI index: EUR 23/06/95, Amnesty International, May, 1995; see Review in New Material section.