Germany"s Interior Ministry on Friday banned and ordered raids on a portal popular with leftist readers and activists. Possibly the last posts from linksunten.indymedia.org - commemorations of a 1992 far-right mob attack on apartments where foreigners lived in Rostock-Lichtenberg and reports of racist graffiti on a memorial to a young woman killed by neo-Nazis in the United States - went live the previous night.
The site was closed for "sowing hate against different opinions and representatives of the country," saidInterior Minister Thomas de Maizière, adding that the operation of the site was now "a criminal offence."
He said authorities were treating linksunten.indymedia.org as an "association" rather than a news outlet, which would help officials get around constitutional protections on freedom of expression. De Maizière said at least two people constituted an association - the site has up to seven administrators - and the ban would not affect the international award-winning Indymedia network.
"We are currently searching multiple facilities," said Baden-Württemberg state Interior Minister Thomas Strobl, a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel"s Christian Democrats, which is also de Maizière"s party. Though the authorities planned to confiscate computers and other goods, arrests were not in the immediate offing, he said. Knives and clubs were apparently found at some of the properties.
The ban comes seven weeks after demonstrations around the G20 meeting in Hamburg, during which TV viewers were treated to images of what appeared to be pitched battles between police and protesters. Though fact-checks and follow-up reports debunked much of the more sensational coverage, and only one person has been charged with anything so far, Germany"s main political parties promised a crackdown on dangerous dissenters.Read More...
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