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Nazis using law to gather data on anti-fascists

01 May 2004

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Anti-fascist groups in various parts of Germany have claimed that so-called anti-anti-fascists (neo-nazi groups focusing on fighting anti-fascists) have started using public prosecutions to access the personal data of anti-fascists by informing on them to the police. If the police investigations lead to legal proceedings, lawyers on both sides are given access to files, which provide personal details such as home addresses. Last year, anti-fascists from Aachen reported that shortly after police carried out house searches following neo-nazi complaints, fascists had turned up on the doorstep of one of the victims of the house search and demolished his car.

In Dresden, reports by neo-nazis have also led to preliminary investigations against anti-fascists. The latest case concerns around 40 anti-fascists from around Vlotho, who blockaded a far-right think tank and events organiser Collegium Humanum to prevent the entry of the far-right, anti-Semitic lawyer Horst Mahler. This "educational institution" was set up in 1963 by the Werner Georg Haverbeck, who had been amongst the leaders of the student branch of the NSDAP in 1929 and worked in important ideological positions during the nazi regime. The institution is known for the organisation of lectures denying the Holocaust.

After the sit-in blockade, neo-nazis reported the anti-fascists to the police on grounds of coercion, upon which 28 anti-fascists received an order to be fingerprinted and photographed, because, as the chief of the Bielefeld police, Dirk Butenuth, argues, "we have the obligation to prosecute crimes, we have to identify the people, and with these pictures we will be able to do this by comparing them with the videotapes of the demonstration." The anti-fascists have appealed against the fingerprinting and await a decision. Butenuth is not worried about personal data being made accessible to neo-nazis, because "we don't have anti-anti-fascists here."

http://www.info3.de/ycms/artikel_1170.shtml; Jungle World19.5.04

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