“Love Palestine.” 3 activists face “deportation” in Germany | policy

Berlin- Cooper, Shane, and Lewis are foreign activists separated by countries and united by their love for Palestine and its cause. They are facing a legal battle in Germany, where they came to study or work, and their future and presence there are now threatened by the deportation measures that Berlin is taking against them.

After October 7, the three activists found themselves facing criminal investigations and the suspension of their residency status due to their participation in protests in support of Palestine, stressing that the German authorities are using immigration and residency laws – according to their account – to silence voices opposed to the war on Gaza.

Silence any opposition

The American activist, Cooper, saw this case as an attempt by Germany to use the laws it possesses “to suppress any form of political opposition.”

She told Al Jazeera: “They are using immigration law, but the issue is really not related to the law itself but to protecting their right to support war, support genocide, and silence any voice that opposes that.”

While the Irish activist, Shane O’Brien, considered that the case clearly violated the law, and he told Al Jazeera that the director of the German Immigration Authority had initially stated – and we saw this in internal documents – that the situation did not justify issuing a deportation order, but he received instructions from the Ministry of the Interior to continue the deportation procedures, and they themselves knew that there was no legal basis for this procedure.

He added to Al Jazeera: “Almost from my childhood, I was aware of the Palestinian issue. I heard about the beginnings of the occupation and saw maps comparing the situation in occupied Palestine with what happened in Ireland, showing the expansion of the first Zionist settlements, and how they gradually seized increasing areas of land, and what is known as the 1967 borders, etc. Therefore, it was clear to me that there was a grave error.”

He was moved by extermination

Sheen explained that in 2014, when Israel launched a war on Gaza called “Operation Protective Edge,” he became more aware of what was happening, due to the massacres that occurred during that war, adding: “Since then, the Palestinian issue has occupied a greater place in my interest.”

However, unfortunately, Shin says, “I was not active enough during the following years, except during periods of escalation.” His real involvement was not until after the beginning of the “genocide,” in reference to the recent war on Gaza, when he participated at the level that he considers today the minimum duty, which is to try to stop that genocide, “before we move on to talk about ending the occupation, the apartheid system, and so on.”

He pointed out that he had changed his experience since the beginning of the “genocide,” and that his view had completely changed toward Europe and its so-called values, even when “I try to think well, it is difficult for me not to be sarcastic whenever I hear words like human rights, democracy, or other of these so-called values,” as they have all become meaningless to him.

He can no longer look at any institution that claims to respect these principles, while at the same time continuing to support the mass killing of civilians.

Visa suspension

As for Chilean activist Luis Cortez, he confirmed that he was detained during the first sit-in at the Free University of Berlin in November 2023, that is, one month after the war on Gaza, stressing that this resulted in many legal consequences.

He told Al Jazeera: “I may have expected that I would be charged in a criminal case, but I did not imagine that it would lead to this ripple effect that ended up damaging my residency status.”

He revealed that his visa had been suspended for about a year and a half, and that when he began the procedures to renew it after completing his master’s degree, the Foreign Affairs Department told him that it could not renew it due to the presence of a criminal case still pending against him, “even though I won that case in July of last year.”

Lewis pointed out that he thought his situation was better than people coming from other countries, or refugees, as he is from Chile and the Chilean government in the last period – led by the former president – was supportive of Palestine, but now the president has changed and become a supporter of Israel, so “I believe that my chances of obtaining protection from the country whose nationality I hold have become dependent on political transformations.”