May 15th, 2025 

 National Lawyers Guild International stands with Movement Lawyers across the UK and Europe in Defending the Right to Protest in Berlin, Germany on May 15, 2025 – Nakba Day

Contacts:

Suzanne Adely, National Lawyers Guild, US: suzanne.adely@gmail.com 

Oscar Leyens, Attorney, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, UK: oleyens@me.com 

Berlin Organizers Email: nakba77_berlin@systemli.org 

⁨Pavel Čižinský⁩, Attorney, ISM Czech Republic, pavel.cizinsky@post.cz 

The International Committee and Free Palestine Sub-Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, in partnership with lawyers and legal workers from across Germany, Britain, Czechia and Spain, express our unwavering defense of the Right to Protest in Germany and across our own countries.

On 15 May Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement commemorate the 77th year of the Nakba by protesting and mourning the ongoing Genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. In Germany, Nakba demonstrations, as well as other demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, are routinely banned, restricted, criminalized and subjected to extreme police violence. Yesterday was no exception. 

Early today in Berlin, despite a successful legal appeal protecting their right to protest, marchers were prevented from proceeding on their pre-planned march by German police. Police violently cracked down on demonstrators on Nakba Day. Many were hospitalized due to excessive force during arrests. Journalists were attacked and prevented from doing their jobs, while the police blocked the crowd from marching — despite a court decision allowing the protest to proceed.

After today’s events,  we reiterate our support for the statement issued by Gina Romero, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, in her condemnation of the same: “I call specially to the German government to stop meeting this movement with further restriction of fundamental rates, state violence and censorship, and to respect and uphold the fundamental rights to freedom of assembly, expression, and political participation.”

Repressive measures by the German government in response to mass protest over its complicity in the past 19 months of the genocide in Gaza include, but are not limited to:

• Bans on demonstrations and severe restrictions on freedom of assembly, including the limitation of all Palestine solidarity demonstrations to static rallies
• Severe police brutality against demonstrators, in many cases rendering them unconscious through beatings and blocking of medical attention
• Repeated and racialized targeting, home raids, legal persecution and media smear campaigns against specificactivists, families, and underage demonstrators
• Discrimination, silencing and intimidation tactics in the workplace, academia, cultural institutions and elsewhere
• Unconstitutional and unlawful deportation policies weaponizing accusations of “antisemitism” and “incitement to hatred” to silence and expel Palestinians and their allies.

The repression in Berlin is not an isolated phenomenon but is part and parcel of the repression inflicted by countries whose governments support the genocide, while their civil society rejects it (as we also see in the United States, Britain and France). It is an extension of the violent repression of the Palestinian people’s resistance to the ongoing siege in Gaza and expansion of the colonization of their homeland. It is another example of the permission of police and governments to  violate their own laws, protecting fundamental rights.

We stand with all people of conscience in their protest of the genocide and siege against the people of Palestine and the occupation and colonization of their homeland, as well as with all those resisting genocide, military occupation and colonization.

This statement is coordinated with lawyers and legal activists from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Czechia and Spain who are committed to defending protestors attending the May 15, 2025 Nakba Day rally and all those people of conscience who speak out and take action in solidarity with Palestine.