Ban on demonstrations at the G20 in Hamburg: Attac fights for freedom of assembly

Attac and the Society for Freedom Rights (GFF) continue to take action against the blanket ban on gatherings during the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. They are seeking a fundamental decision from the Federal Administrative Court, which sets limits on this official practice.

“Banning a gathering should only be a last resort and needs a concrete justification,” says Joschka Selinger, procedure coordinator at the GFF. Most recently, the Bremen interior authorities banned spontaneous demonstrations in the city center on the occasion of the celebration of German Unity Day.

Because of the feared riots at the G20 summit, the Hamburg Senate issued a 36 square kilometer demo ban zone in 2017 - from the airport up to and including the city center. Hanni Gramann from the anti-capitalism organization Attac registered two small campaigns with around 50 participants in the zone, each of which was intended to use an inflatable boat to draw attention to the connection between free trade and the causes of flight.

With reference to its general decree, i.e. the nationwide ban on gatherings, the city banned the rubber dinghy protests at the time. She also pointed out that these could take place outside the prohibited zone - which, however, would have devalued the actions: Gramann had deliberately planned them in front of the Africa House - an office building dedicated to African trade - and the office of the African Association of German Business.

The Hamburg courts rejected an objection and a complaint from Gramann before the end of the summit meeting of heads of state and government.

Gramann wanted to have the case clarified in principle and, with the support of the GFF, achieved that the Hamburg administrative court declared the ban on gatherings in 2022 illegal - as far as Gramann's action under the motto “Free trade makes escape” was concerned. The Higher Administrative Court saw things differently and ruled in favor of the city in the appeal proceedings on August 20th of this year. Attac and the GFF now want to revise this judgment.

The administrative court had argued that Section 15 of the Assembly Act only allows a ban on gatherings in the event of an “immediate – concrete – danger”. The fact that an action is part of a dangerous overall event and that individual gatherings covered by the general order pose such a danger is not enough to ban all of them - even those that are foreseeably harmless.

The Higher Administrative Court sees it the other way around: “Public safety would most likely have been endangered if the meetings were held through targeted or actual blockages of the transport and travel routes required for the G20 summit,” says a press release on the ruling.

The plaintiff's inflatable boat protests would not have posed an immediate threat “alone and in and of themselves”. However, the danger would have arisen from the fact that the planned actions “would have been part of an extraordinarily extensive overall protest event”.

The Federal Administrative Court must now deal with these conflicting views during the course of the appeal.

“The assembly authority resorted to the sledgehammer because of a suspected confusing situation,” criticizes Selinger from the GFF. By agreeing with the authority, the Higher Administrative Court misjudged the importance of freedom of assembly as a means of social debate. Protests must be able to take place near the event in question; he should not be banished to the periphery or banned.

Lawyers have also announced lawsuits against the general order with which the Bremen interior authority restricted the right to demonstrate on October 3rd. Because they had allegedly violated a nationwide ban on gatherings, the police surrounded dozens of people to record their personal details. The violation is considered an administrative offense.

Spicy: It wasn't widely known that there was a ban on gatherings. Three days before it came into force on October 2nd, it was properly hung in the glass case of the public order office east of the city center, a spokesman for Bremen's Interior Senator Eva Högl told the taz. A day later, the official gazette was also published on the Internet on the official announcements website.