Conference against sexualized police violence: Breaking the silence and living women's solidarity

Whether at the Rheinmetall disarm camp, at anti-fascist blockades or on Women's Day: reports of sexualized police violence are becoming more and more common. Resistance to this is forming, as was the case at the “Breaking the Silence” conference in Berlin. – A comment by Nadia Schuhmann and Aziza Mounir.

Repression against political activists should send a signal to them: this far and no further. In addition to legal repression, targeted violence on the streets by the police is intended to convey this message. Violence is intended to trigger fear and helplessness.

Fear of continuing to demonstrate. Powerlessness of not being able to deal with individual experiences. The police take on a particularly violent role. Women and trans people also experience gender-specific repression more often in the form of sexualized police violence. This is intended to trigger an additional feeling of shame.

In Germany, reports on sexualized police violence have been published with increasing frequency in recent years, mostly independently of the established media. With the practical experience gained, the organizations manage to find a collective approach and to lead a more offensive fight against sexualized police violence.

Reports from antimilitarists and antifascists

Two years in a row there have been reports from Cologne about sexualized police violence as part of the Rheinmetall Disarmen protest camp. Demonstrators at the 2025 final demonstration report condescending comments, threats and sexual assaults.

Patriarchal police violence in Cologne: “This state doesn’t protect me – my sisters protect me!”

There was also transphobic harassment. After the final demonstration was broken up, a demo participant was taken to a police station for an identification measure. There the police officers discussed loudly whether it was “a boy or a girl”. The authorities and officials knew the name and gender.

Exactly one year later, sexual violence by police officers occurred again. During a blockade of the Liège barracks, the activists were surrounded by the police and taken away using brutal physical force and processed for identification purposes.

Several activists report being strangled while being led away, and one even lost consciousness. Another activist reports how she called for paramedics because of injured ribs. However, the police refused them entry.

Instead, the activist was “examined” by a fully uniformed police officer despite repeated denials. He exposed the activist's upper body in the middle of the ED treatment street while male officers stood by and watched.

After rape by Turkish officials: women take to the streets under the motto “Our bodies – our fight”.

Repressions on Women's Fight Day

In Nuremberg, anti-fascist activists report sexual violence during weekly counter-protests against the marches of the right-wing group Team Human Rights. Women and people reading female were deliberately strangled by police officers. One person was choked three times during the protests, each time by the same male officer.

She describes how the police officer grinned. Another victim tells how, after the police officer choked her and another person, she demanded the officer's number. She didn't get this.

There were numerous reports from Berlin of demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine that experienced massive police violence. Here too, scenes can be observed again and again of police officers encountering gender-specific repression against women. The Berlin police also show their patriarchal repression during the demonstration on International Women's Struggle Day 2025.

Sexual torture has a long history – and so does resistance to it

One protester was intentionally exposed during arrest. Her skirt was pulled up and she was aggressively groped. In one video, an officer can clearly be seen pushing a protester's face into his crotch while she was unconscious.

Organized resistance

However, the gender-specific repression does not petrify the activists. On the contrary: the revolutionary movement finds various answers that definitely counteract the repression.

With the publication “Choking as a Weapon: Sexist Police Violence in Nuremberg,” the activists share their experiences with police violence. They show how they came together as individual sufferers and collectivized their experiences.

Choking as a weapon – patriarchal violence in the fight against left-wing activism

After the publication, house searches were carried out to further intimidate them. But the activists are not deterred by this either. They will report on their experiences at the “110 Reasons to Break the Silence” conference.

“There are different goals that are being pursued with this conference,” say the organizers. “On the one hand, we want to come together as a movement, share experiences, exchange ideas and thus uncover the true character of these states.

We would like to learn from the experiences of those movements that have been fighting against sexualized police violence and torture in custody for years. But we would also like to discuss together how we can take action against this violence and develop practical steps. It’s not just about scandalizing the experiences, but about laying the foundations to practically beat them back.”

Activist Paula Maier will also be represented on a panel. In January, she was part of a delegation that wanted to show solidarity and report on site when the Kurdish self-government was attacked.

Paula Maier in an interview: “Sexualized violence aims to humiliate us women and silence us”

The delegation was arrested and in deportation detention in Turkey, Paula was raped by a security officer. She published her experiences. The publications led to protests in both Germany and Turkey.

The repression shows that women who consciously question the capitalist patriarchal system, which is responsible for systematic violence, become targets. But actually this only further confirms the legitimacy of the fight against exactly these conditions, against patriarchy and for the liberation of women.

Women's solidarity and the will to resist are stronger than state violence. Women are leading an offensive fight against sexualized police violence.

This text appeared in the October 2026 print edition no. 115 of our newspaper. The edition is in its entiretyhereto find.

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