Politics · de.indymedia · · 56m
Lawsuit before the administrative court: Police photographed demonstrators with banners for no reason
Deutsch (original) · Auto-translated to English
Symbolbild · Leonhard Lenz / CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Anyone who takes a banner to a demonstration must expect to come into the attention of the police. This shouldn't be the case, believes the Society for Freedom Rights, because signs and posters are an important part of freedom of assembly. She is now suing the Berlin police.
The Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) filed a lawsuit today with the Berlin Administrative Court. The question is whether the police are allowed to photograph banners and the demo participants behind them without cause and systematically.
The plaintiff is a demonstrator who carried a banner with the inscription “Legalize abortion” during a protest on September 20, 2025 - and was specifically photographed by the police.https://freiheitsrechte.org/ueber-die-gff/presse/pressemitigungen-der-...the GFFWhen asked by a police officer, it emerged that the police officers had been instructed internally to photograph all posters and banners with political messages. According to the GFF, the instruction does not differentiate between whether there is suspicion of a crime or not.
The lawsuit aims to establish that the police are not allowed to take such photos without a reason, such as a suspicion of a crime or a specific danger. In this way, people should be able to exercise their freedom of assembly - without having to fear being recorded in police databases.
Intimidation and restrictions on fundamental rights
According to the GFF, the police actions restrict freedom of assembly. It could intimidate demo participants and deter them from taking part in future protests or bringing posters and banners to them - the so-called chilling effect. According to the fundamental rights organization, the police lack a legal basis for this massive encroachment on fundamental rights. The case must also be seen against the background that the police accompany meetings in an increasingly repressive manner.
"Protesting and showing banners is a permissible exercise of freedom of assembly - and an essential building block of our democracy. Where there is no danger and no suspicion of criminal action, no one should be photographed and thus intimidated by the police," says Luise Bublitz, lawyer and procedure coordinator at the GFF.
https://netzpolitik.org/2026/kritik-der-meinungsfreiheit-die-beleidigten/...offended
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Repression because of posters
Recently in Germany there have been repeated cases of people with banners becoming the focus of the police. For example, in May, young people demonstrated against compulsory military service in Munich. A 20-year-old student carried a poster with the inscription “Friedrich die himself on the Eastern Front!”
Underhttps://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/muenchen-schulstreik-wehrpflicht-de...of violence and with batonsPolice officers made their way to the student to take her personal details. The poster was allegedly an insult to the Chancellor, and the police later announced that they would initiate an investigation against the student.
The Berlin police had already taken action against a harmless poster in March of this yearhttps://berlin.t-online.de/region/berlin/id_101157982/berlin-verleumdung...The “Merz leck Eier” poster was confiscated from an 18-year-oldhad.
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