From BZ/dpa
A constituency office of a party in Berlin was damaged again. This time it hit the FDP in Marzahn on Wednesday afternoon, where one or more perpetrators destroyed two window panes in the office on Marzahner Promenade, the police announced on Thursday.
A day earlier, on Tuesday, an office of the Greens in Kreuzberg’s Großbeerenstrasse was affected. Here, too, the window facing the street was damaged by being hit with an object.
That’s a total of six attacks or graffiti in the first nine days of November alone. Three times met offices of Greens deputies in Kreuzberg, Schöneberg and Pankow. There was also the office of the FDP with the current incident, an SPD office in Wilmersdorf, at which glasses with paint were thrown, and one of the left in Lichtenberg, where twelve windows were damaged with a blunt object.
According to the most recently published police findings, the alleged perpetrators of such damage often come from the left and radical left spectrum, as shown by slogans on house walls or window panes. But there were also insults by opponents of vaccination in the corona pandemic.
Last year, 2021, the Berlin police counted at least 49 damage and graffiti to party offices. A further 14 cases were added for the first half of 2022, as the Senate announced in September. Office buildings of the SPD or constituency offices of SPD politicians were most frequently affected. Offices of the Greens and the CDU followed, then the AfD, NPD, Linken and FDP.
Parliament President Dennis Buchner (SPD) condemned the current damage on Wednesday and emphasized: “These are not only attacks on important institutions of political exchange in our city, but also on our free democracy.” Society should not accept such incidents. Freedom of expression and a controversial political debate are “essential for a functioning political system, especially in these challenging times”.
Because of the slogans on climate policy, rising rents, transport policy, Rigaer Strasse and right-wing populists, the police attributed many crimes in recent years to the radical left scene. Some damage was not attributed to any political spectrum, although here too slogans against capitalism, climate change or the city motorway tended to point in the left direction.
Repeated attacks on the office of left-wing MP Sebastian Schlüsselburg in Lichtenberg have resulted in several letters claiming responsibility with radical left-wing content.
The police identified a total of 25 suspects, 12 men and 13 women, for 2021 and the first half of 2022. 18 of them were already known to the police as political perpetrators.