An Irish person in Berlin has been hospitalised after being physically assaulted and arrested by German police during a protest against the killing of journalists in Gaza by Israeli air strikes.
The incident has sparked protests in Dublin and Derry City this weekend, with the Irish Ambassador to Germany also raising concerns about the matter with local authorities.
Video footage of the demonstration seen by The Irish Times shows Dubliner Kitty O’Brien (25) being punched twice in the face by a police officer during a jostle at the front line of the demonstration.
Speaking in Kerry today, Taoiseach Michéal Martin said he was “deeply concerned” by what he had seen and that such an assault is “unacceptable”.
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A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said it is aware of the incident and that officials “stand ready to provide consular assistance” to O’Brien upon request.
They said the Irish Ambassador to Germany, Maeve Collins, alongside senior officials in the department “have conveyed our concern about the incident to the German authorities”.
O’Brien attended the pro-Palestinian protest, described as a “civil disobedience demonstration” as it was not registered with Berlin authorities, on Thursday. It was held in Mitte, central Berlin, not far from the city’s major square Alexanderplatz and the Reichstag government building.
O’Brien can be seen first being punched by a police offer at about six seconds in the clip below.
After the assault, O’Brien can be heard telling the police force “you don’t f**king scare us” and later, with blood running down their face and hands, “this is on you, there is blood on your hands”.
They were then detained by police, during which time protest organisers say that O’Brien’s “right arm was pulled and then twisted with great force, snapping the bone”.
They were brought to the nearby Charité university hospital and had to undergo significant surgery to correct the bone. They expect to remain in hospital for some days, sources close to O’Brien told The Irish Times.
Roisín Clarke, a member of the Irish Bloc Berlin who attended the demonstration alongside O’Brien, described the scenes as chaotic and extremely intense.
She said the Berlin police conducted a wide operation in advance of the protest. “It had been advertised online so the police knew about it, the location had to be changed. A lot of police were around the city centre beforehand, checking if people coming out of the train stations were wearing keffiyehs,” she said.
Ms Clarke said demonstrators were split on either side of a main street and that police became aggressive as they began pro-Palestinian chants. “They were telling us to leave and pushing us down the street, but we weren’t actually allowing us to leave because they had sealed off the end of the road with police vans,” she said.
She estimated that fewer than 50 people were on their side of the street and said the crowd became disorientated amid the chaos. She lost sight of O’Brien after they were punched and taken from the crowd by police.
“It’s very rare that there isn’t police violence at these demonstrations,” she said, adding that police on Thursday wore riot gear. “We’re not the ones who start the violence, we don’t stand a chance against them, there’d be no point in even trying.”
She added that violence at similar protests is typically targeted at Arab teenage boys, teenage girls wearing hijabs and older Arab men.
A Berlin Police spokesperson on Saturday confirmed the police offences watchdog “has been instructed to review the matter in order to determine whether any aspects of the police response may be disproportionate or of criminal relevance”.
They said O’Brien “refused to comply and insulted verbally and offended physically several police officers”, alleging that they called police officers “genocide supporters” and “f**king Nazis”.
Investigations into both the alleged offence by O’Brien and the issue of police violence remain ongoing, they said.
They said O’Brien “has been introduced to Berliner Feuerwehr medical service team”.
The police said of the events on Thursday that “criminal, forbidden slogans were chanted … after which around 80 people had to be arrested, locked up and checked”.
“In total, freedom-restricting measures were taken against 94 people”, with 96 criminal investigations being initiated, although “all persons were later released back on the spot after their identities were established”.
