When Karlsruhe and St. Pauli drew a spectacular 4:4 on match day 17 of the 2nd Bundesliga, the game had to be kicked off 15 minutes later. A Karlsruhe ultra group celebrates its birthday with an extensive pyro show. More than ten people are injured by the thick smoke. The police are investigating. Now three employees of the Karlsruhe fan project are to be summoned as witnesses – an approach that is causing uncertainty in the fan curves nationwide.
According to their own definition, fan projects carry out preventive, outreach and socio-educational work with young and growing football fans. The basis for this: trust.
But with the summons, the employees could now be forced to testify about confidential discussions with the ultras, the sponsor of the fan project fears.
No right to refuse to testify for employees of fan projects
However, the public prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe made it clear when asked by Deutschlandfunk: There is no right to refuse to testify for employees of fan projects: “The public prosecutor’s office is obliged to investigate criminal offenses and to use all possible evidence for this purpose. The public prosecutor’s office is aware that the employees of the fan project are fundamentally dependent on confidentiality as part of their youth social work and will be taken into account in the witness hearings.”
In addition, it is in no way about gaining knowledge about the internal structures and interdependencies of the organized fan scene, according to the Karlsruhe public prosecutor.
The procedure still causes criticism among the fan projects.
“In some places, the employees of the fan projects are currently experiencing that social work is being undermined by the police, is being attacked and, in some cases, is also being made impossible!” says Sophia Gerschel. She is spokeswoman for the federal working group for fan projects, and in an interview with Deutschlandfunk, she says that social work in football is being increasingly targeted by the security authorities: “It ranges from taking personal details in police measures to increasing witnesses being summoned by the public prosecutor’s office or the police. Also physical attacks in the context of match day support and these are just examples of situations that some fan project employees encounter when encountering the police. Which makes communication with the police absolutely difficult, or even impossible in some cases.”
These statements cannot be specifically verified, but there are always individual cases.
Dresden fan project employees also summoned
The Dresden fan project manager, Ronald Beć, also made a similar experience public at an event at the beginning of the year: “There was Dynamo Dresden’s promotion game in Magdeburg and on the return journey from this game there was damage to property on the train. Afterwards, the two colleagues who had traveled there with the Dresden fan project were summoned by the Federal Police to do this damage to property.”
The consequences of this for social work were immense, Beć continued: “Since that moment we have not accompanied any more trains. That is totally stupid for social workers who do outreach work not to do outreach work!”
For this reason, an action alliance from social work is demanding that social workers also be given the right to refuse to give evidence. So far, for example, pastors or doctors have been able to refuse to testify in court, but so can anyone who, for example, provides pregnancy counseling. Employees of fan projects do not have this right.
Legal opinion confirms the need for the right to refuse to give evidence
This has an impact on the relationship of trust with the supporters, which is significantly disturbed, according to Sophia Gerschel from the federal working group of fan projects: “This trust must be protected by politicians and everyone else so that this social work can also work. On the one hand, this must be protected by a right to refuse to give evidence. On the other hand, through an understanding and appreciation of social work and fan social work.”
A first scientific legal opinion, commissioned from social work, states a concrete need for such a right to refuse to give evidence, especially for fan project employees. So far, however, there are no political plans to establish something like this in football, for example.