Conference in Berlin | Sexualized police violence: publicity instead of shame

Activists from Turkey, Iran, the Basque Country and the Philippines reported on struggles against sexist police violence in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Photo: nd/ Jule Meier The aim of an international conference that took place in Berlin on Sunday was to break the silence. Around 500 people came to the “Bum” event hall in the capital early on Sunday morning to “strengthen the fight against sexualized police violence,” as it was said several times on the podium. “In recent years,” the organizers thesis, “there have been drastic moments that have shown that the way the German police and politicians deal with protesting women has become more serious.”

Press spokeswoman Anna Liedtke explains in an interview with »nd« which drastic moments are meant: »What is new are the publications by anti-fascists from Mannheim who had to endure naked searches. The Nuremberg publications are also new.« On stage, a woman from the Bavarian city reported on police violence against anti-fascists who once a week oppose right-wing demonstrations, some of which are attended by neo-Nazis. Police officers specifically arrested anti-fascist women, grabbed their breasts, pulled their hair or even choked them. The anti-fascists heard comments like “that was cool” from the officers and had to stay in custody for hours in just their underwear. The women documented the violence they experienced in a video series. The Nuremberg police are therefore taking action against the women with a defamation lawsuit.

Press spokeswoman Liedtke also mentions March 8, 2025 in the capital as another crucial moment: “A participant was severely beaten by the police and her head was pressed into the genital area of ​​a police officer. She lost consciousness. What is this if not sexualized police violence?”

Liedtke also shares her story on stage: As a member of the women's organization Zora, she traveled to Gaza on a boat with the “Flotilla” in 2025. The boat, along with dozens of others, was hijacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and the entire crew, including Liedtke, was kidnapped to Israel and taken to a prison in the Negev Desert. Liedtke is said to have been raped there. There are also reports of physical and sexual violence in connection with the “People’s Caravan,” which planned to set off for Kobanê in Kurdistan at the beginning of 2026. Paula Maier from the Federation of Class Struggle Organizations (FKO) reports on stage that she was arrested during a delegation trip to Bakur at the beginning of 2026 and raped in a solitary cell by a Turkish official.

Is sexual violence against women by state institutions such as the police and military actually increasing, or are more women simply making the violence they experience public?

For Liedtke it is both, she says in an interview. "Of course you can't know for sure, because there are no statistics on sexualized police violence." The organizers of the congress want to change that - including the women's organization Zora, the Palestine solidarity anti-repression organization 3EZWA and the FKO. The congress not only wants to create publicity for the issue and network those affected, but also document sexist police violence.

"Everyone in this room has experienced sexual violence."

Several international women on the panel reported that this specific form of police violence is nothing new. An activist from the Turkish women's organization Sosyalist Kadın draws attention to the Asiye Güzel case. The communist was in custody in various Turkish prisons for over five years in the 1990s. In 1997, she was arrested after taking part in a left-wing demonstration and raped by Turkish police officers. "Many revolutionary women revealed all types of torture, but kept quiet about the sexual violence they had experienced," says the Turkish activist on stage. Shortly after Güzel made her rape public in the early noughties, the international congress on sexist police violence was launched.

The fact that the congress on Sunday in Berlin-Kreuzberg was inspired by the first congress can be seen, among other things, in the numerous copies of the biography about Güzel that women carry under their arms. »Everyone in this room has experienced sexual violence. We have stored up the fact that this is our mistake and have internalized guilt and shame," says a Filipino activist on stage. Instead of shame, she wants to cultivate collective anger with her comrades.

The goal of sexualized police violence is to “break the will of the people,” says Anna Liedtke on stage. Paula Maier advocates using the public as a weapon against shame. "It's about giving others a very deep insight into themselves," says the activist. That's not easy. But state repression ultimately serves to “keep down revolutionary forces.” And state violence, especially against women, serves to push them back into their “social role in the private sphere.”

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