Gifhorn Christopher Street Day: Are there any investigations into hate comments?

Gifhorn. It was a peaceful, colorful festival with around 600 participants – the Christopher Street Day (CSD) in Gifhorn on July 13th. However, things were anything but peaceful on Facebook afterwards. The police viewed around 2,500 comments on the event, many of which contained insults and threats. Given the large number of comments, the evaluation is still ongoing – the investigation is being carried out by the Gifhorn State Security Service.

The State Security Department of the Gifhorn Police works closely with the Central Office for Combating Hate Crime on the Internet in Lower Saxony (ZHIN) at the Göttingen Public Prosecutor’s Office. The investigators are currently busy securing and evaluating the comments in order to initiate appropriate criminal proceedings. “Most of the cases are still being evaluated by the police, which has not yet been completed. It is therefore not yet clear which posts are relevant under criminal law,” says senior public prosecutor Andreas Buick from the Göttingen Public Prosecutor’s Office. Therefore, there are still no answers to the questions about the motivation and origin of the authors.

Constant clashes at the CSD

Dominik Ruder, head of the Queer Network Gifhorn association, which organizes the Gifhorn Christopher Street Day and runs the queer meeting point Spektrum on Torstrasse, gave possible answers in connection with the appearance of the hate comments. I suggest that at least some of the comments come from members of the right-wing Gifhorn scene. In addition, people who are not even from the Gifhorn district are said to be involved.

While hate comments were posted online in connection with Gifhorn’s Christopher Street Day, violent confrontations also occur again and again in such events. The most recent example: on Saturday evening, a “mutual verbal and physical confrontation” broke out on Braunschweiger Strasse in Gifhorn, as the police called it. At the end of the confrontation, four men kicked a woman who suddenly fell to the ground after getting off the bus. The police intervened quickly and are now investigating all those involved. The first witnesses have already been questioned.

Political parties immediately take up the issue

It is currently not possible to say whether the act was politically motivated; this question is part of the police investigation. The four men, aged between 17 and 24, who are said to have been involved in the incident are said to belong to the right-wing scene and were seen in the vicinity of Wolfsburg’s Christopher Street Day on June 14, which took place on Saturday. It is also still being investigated whether the 38-year-old woman who is being investigated took part in Wolfsburg’s Christopher Street Day and whether she belongs to the queer scene. Politicians from the Gifhorn Left and the Greens immediately condemned the act as an attack by the right-wing scene and criticized the work of the police. The SPD also expressed the suspicion that the incident could be politically motivated. However, this party also thanked the emergency services, who “prevented something worse from happening through their intervention.” At the Wolfsburg CSD, there had been attempts by counter-demonstrators to disrupt the event and the conditions in the area.

Similar incidents also occurred in Braunschweig in mid-August during Christopher Street Day. According to the police, a group of 15 people provoked people in the run-up to the parade, which led to arguments with participants. The provocateurs were ordered to leave the area by police officers. There was also a physical altercation between three people during the parade in the Lion City. Criminal proceedings were initiated against two of these people. On the same weekend, the police reported 14 criminal proceedings and seven administrative offence proceedings in Bautzen, Saxony, during Christopher Street Day. One case involved bodily harm, two involved incitement to hatred, and one involved the use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations.

AZ/WAZ