POLITICS IS AN ART FROM THE DEVIL

Main areas in the port city of Hamburg, which is in northern Germany, have been declared "danger zones". Effectively, this means a state of emergency. There is an all-out check under way, and 200 riot police officers are checking the documents and personal belongings of passers-by without giving any explanations. All residents of the districts of Altona-Altstadt, Sternschanze, Eimsbuttel and St Pauli are "suspects". The "state of emergency", introduced by the federal Ministry of Interior on 3 January, worsens the situation in the city which is tense anyway.

The reason for these kinds of extreme measures were mass protests and clashes between demonstrators and police on 21 December 2013, which were caused by plans to evict the social and cultural centre Rote Flora from one of the oldest buildings and to demolish the building.

The Rote Flora building was erected in 1888 and initially it housed a theatre. From the 1960s, it housed a department store, and in the late 1980s it was occupied by leftist activists and was turned into a culture centre. Disputes between the city authorities and activists about the fate of the building have lasted for 20 years now.

The Rote Flora is some kind of a symbolic centre of the fight against Nazism which has been resurrected in the past few years both in Germany and across Europe. In addition to the far left, intellectuals, refugees and immigrants meet at this centre.

The protests of 21 December were also a response to attempts by the authorities to exile from the country refugees who had arrived in Hamburg from the Italian island of Lampeduza after the sad events.

According to the authorities, the 10,000-strong protest suddenly changed its planned marching route and started to move towards the city centre. In response, police used force. According to the protesters, the law-enforcement officers were most of all concerned about the interests of business people and shopping malls because Christmas fairs were under way at the time.

As result of the clashes between police and protesters, over 500 people were injured and about 200 demonstrators were arrested. Water cannon, rubber bullets, batons and tear gas were used against the demonstrators.

But that was just the beginning. On 28 December, it was reported that 40 people armed with sticks had assaulted a police station in Hamburg - Davidwache ("David's Guard") - and inflicted bodily injuries on three police officers. It was after a statement to this effect that unprecedented security measures were taken. A reward of 10,000 euros was announced for help with the capture of the assailants.

Andreas Beuth, the defence lawyer for the protesters, denied that his clients were involved in the assault on the police station. He described statements about their involvement as "deliberate attempts by the authorities to influence public opinion". Also, Beuth said, through those kinds of provocations, the authorities are trying to justify the introduction of the strict measures against the protesters.

Soon afterwards, a denial came from the law-enforcement agencies. Mirko Streiber, the press secretary of the Hamburg police, told Spiegel magazine that there was no assault on the "David's Guard" police station.

According to Streiber, the conflict took place in the street, and the injured police officers have nothing to do with that police station. In spite of this, the measures described above have already been put in place and are apparently not going to be lifted in the near future.

Very noteworthy is the reaction of the authorities and the media to the happenings. Thus, Michael Neumann, Hamburg senator for interior affairs, defended the actions of the police. He said that violence will never take place in German society. He had the backing of members of parliament from the governing party who said that police should apply stricter measures when dispersing mass riots and reveal participants in those protests, while secondary school and university students should be expelled from their educational institutions.

However, the deputy chair of the Trade Union of the Police, Biern Werminghaus, perhaps went even further than everyone else. On his Twitter page he found it possible to call the protesters the derogatory word "аbschaum" (dregs), which was widely used in Nazi Germany about Jews, homeless people and loose women. Werminghaus's words caused discontent among users of social networking websites who believe that following the latest measures the country is turning into "a police state".

However, the developments in Hamburg, which violated elementary human rights, were actually only covered on social networking websites. The heralds of democracy, human rights and liberal values - the role that German media claim to perform - are either silent or are with increasing frequency calling the riots that broke out in Hamburg the work of "gangs of terrorists" and call on the police to step up the fight against the protesters. Here, the only name that the position of politicians and media can be called is slyness or hypocrisy. Why?

Let us recall headlines in reports in German media about the dispersal of protests in Ukraine, Turkey and Russia and compare them to their current position on the protests in Hamburg.

Thus, for example, German media dubbed as the Joan of Arc of modern time the members of the Pussy Riot punk band who defiled the Christ the Saviour temple in Moscow and only got two years in prison for their hooliganism. The events in Bolotnaya Square also occupied their first pages for a long time. German channels aired last year's riots in Istanbul's Gezi park online, while German Chancellor Merkel threatened to stop talks with Turkey about the latter's accession to the EU.

But, perhaps, the freshest and the main confirmation that there are double standards is the sometimes absurd position of German politicians and media towards Ukraine. Former Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, who is charged with serious crimes, has long been declared by German media "a political martyr". Cultivating Tymoshenko's personality, German politicians demanded that the Ukrainian authorities release her and make it possible for her to receive medical treatment in Germany. Without particular embarrassment, "rights activists" argued that should the Ukrainian authorities allow Yuliya Tymoshenko to receive treatment in Germany, Angela Merkel's government will not agree with the former prime minister's return home, after giving her medical assistance, unless she is pardoned. Let us imagine this situation the other way round: politicians and journalists in Ukraine announce a person accused of abuse of office and corruption in Germany (here, we should recall the accusations against German President Christian Wulff? which resulted in his resignation) a martyr, demand that he be handed over to them for "medical treatment" in Kiev clinics and later do not give him back. That is right. It is hard to imagine something like this. Nevertheless, politicians in Germany do allow themselves to act like that. 

For example, back when he was Germany's foreign minister, Westerwelle spoke to protesters in Kiev's Euromaidan, openly baking their anti-government slogans. And when Kiev police tried to disperse the protests, acting in a much more moderate manner than their German counterparts in Hamburg, German politicians started talking about the possibility of introducing sanctions against Ukraine. But let us go back to Westerwelle's visit. In Kiev, the German foreign minister met opposition leaders Arseniy Yatsenyuk, boxing champion Vitaliy Klitschko (it is not a secret that Klitschko is a protege of Germany), and also the Freedom party leader, ultra-nationalist Oleh Tyahnybok, whom his retinue call nothing other than... "fuhrer". And no matter what efforts were made to conceal the meeting with the latter, a statement by the press service of the German embassy in Kiev mentions the meeting between the German foreign minister and the leader of the far right.

In conclusion, it is worth recalling that less than a month after the completion of Westerwelle's voyage, on the night leading to the first day of the new year, representatives of the Freedom party staged a torchlight procession in Kiev. The official reason was Stepan Bandera's 105th birthday anniversary, but this demonstration very much resembled Germany of the 1930s.

"Politics is a dirty thing," many argue. Is this really so and who is to blame for this? Maybe politicians who make very snide remarks about others but forget that their own "crystal castles" are frail.