The enormous German unity flag commemorating the 1990 reunification of the East and West parts of the country at the Reichstag was cut down and replaced with the Palestinian colours by “left-wing troublemakers”.
Three men were detained outside the home of the German parliament, the Reichstag, on Sunday morning after a man scaled the 30 meter (100 foot) steel flagpole outside the building to cut down the oversize 60-square-meter (650ft²) national flag — dropping it to the ground — to lash on an equally large Palestinian flag in its place.
A 22-year-old male used what appeared to be a pair of home made pole climbing straps to shimmy his way up to great height around 1115 local time on Sunday morning. The flag cut down was not any normal German flag: the flagpole and the German national colours there at the Reichstag are a memorial to the reunification of the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, and the flag has flown there permanently since.
The protester remained up the pole a little more than an hour. Watched by police and the fire brigade, he eventually climbed down himself and was arrested.
The incident is being investigated by the State Security Police of the State Criminal Police Office. The man is being held on suspicion of defamation of the state and its symbols, malicious damage, violation of the Berlin Assembly Freedom Act, and trespass.
Two men supporting the activist on the ground, which Tageschau reports were 20 and 32-years-old, were detained at the scene but later released.
Because the hoist system was damaged by the activist when he cut down the German flag, the fire brigade were not able to immediately put it back in place after they’d removed the protester’s colours. Indeed, the unity flagpole remained bare on Monday, suggesting more involved repairs are necessary.
Authorities at the Reichstag have expressed alarm at the ease with which a protester was able to cross the security fences in the front of the building and scale the 100 foot memorial. German broadsheet Die Welt states the German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt spoke of an act of “planned action by left-wing troublemakers” while German conservative leader Martin Huber decreid the replacement of a symbol of national unity with “a symbol of division and hatred of Israel”.
Parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei expressed concern about the state of Reichstag security and said: “n light of the increasingly aggressive forms of protest, the question arises whether the current protection is still sufficient… Wouldn’t it be time, given these escalating tensions, to consider reintroducing the restricted zone?”.
Publisher Focus states the three men involved in the flag protest are from campaign group ‘Peacefully Against Genocide’, a pro-Palestine activist front. The group has hitherto been known best for its protests against and sabotage of German defence giant Rheinmetall, which they accuse of selling equipment to the Israeli Armed Forces.
In September, another anti-Rheinmetall group blocked railway lines in Hamburg, Germany to slow the company’s export of equipment by ship through the city’s docks. The company suffered a further misfortune last month when a series of fires broke out at a new tank exporting and drone research facility it is building at Kassel Airport in North Hesse.