It is around half past four in the afternoon on Saturday when a group of around 20 people walk down Sonnenallee in Berlin-Neukölln. They are led by an Arabic-speaking man, dressed in a traditional white robe, wearing a red and white keffiyeh on his head.
He leads a person down the street on a rope – he is wearing a black suit, a blonde wig and a mask. It is the face of French President Emmanuel Macron, who has become one of the main enemy images of the Islamic world after the murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist.
A video, recorded by a passerby, shows the action. It is available in the daily mirror. “Yallah, Yallah,” shouts the man in the white robe and pulls the person with the Macron mask through the busy street like a prisoner. In the other hand he wears a black leather belt that serves as a whip. In Arabic he insults the man as “vermin” and “dog”.
A blow hits the disguised person. Another young man is filming what is happening, and many young men – some of them still young – follow them. The scene is reminiscent of the public humiliations and flogging in Islamist autocracies. The incident says nothing to the Berlin police on request, nobody has alerted them about it. It is still unclear whether it is an act with an Islamist background – it could also be an action by an Arabic-speaking Youtuber.
The group comes from the direction of Hermannplatz. Since the beheading of the French teacher Samuel Paty on October 16, groups of Muslim men had met more frequently there for protests. They had not thought of the teacher there, but protested against Emmanuel Macron and the Mohammed cartoons, which helped spark the current unrest in France. The teacher Paty had shown them to his students in class to make them aware of freedom of expression. So he had to die. Since then, more people have been murdered by Islamists in France.
More homophobic and trans-hostile attacks in Neukölln
Thomas Fröhlich from the initiative “Dishonorable instead of defenseless” witnessed the scene on Sonnenallee. His initiative was founded in 2018 in response to homophobic and trans-hostile attacks in Neukölln – they are left and queer people, members of the art and pub scene based in Neukölln.
Fröhlich says: “The fact that Macron is shown here with long blond hair as a fagot who is supposed to symbolize the West as weak,” abnormal “and decadent is part of the Islamist propaganda campaign.
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He and his colleagues have long been concerned about how much more often they think gays, transsexuals, women, androgynous hipsters and also Israelis who have settled in the north of the district are attacked. Figures from the gay anti-violence project Maneo support the thesis: The number of reported LGBT * hostile acts in Neukölln more than doubled between 2017 (32) and 2019 (65).
On Monday at 11.15 a.m., a minute’s silence is to be held in secondary schools in Berlin for the murdered Samuel Paty. According to Tagesspiegel information, Berlin principals and teachers fear disruptive cations. In response to a request from Tagesspiegel, the police said they were not on heightened alert.
