German government raids and shuts down left-wing Indymedia site
By
Johannes Stern
26 August 2017
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière ordered the shutdown Friday morning of the left-wing website linksunten.indymedia.org. The website, one of the two German subsidiaries of the global media site Indymedia, was removed from the internet shortly afterwards and will not be accessible until further notice.
In the early hours of the morning, units of the Baden-Württemberg police and the federal police reportedly raided the homes of the alleged administrators of the site in Freiburg, and confiscated computers and other objects. Later, the Baden-Württemberg state police office presented knives, batons, pipes and slingshots to prove the alleged “left-wing extremist” background of linksunten.indymedia.org.
In a press statement, de Maizière thanked “all police forces involved in the operation” and the “intensive preparatory work by the Federal Office for Domestic Intelligence,” without which “today’s measures would not have been possible.”
De Maizière formally justified the ban by asserting that the website was directed against “the constitutional order” and was “in its intent and activity acting contrary to criminal law.” The site had been used for years “to sow hate against those who think differently and the country’s representatives.” Ultimately, “the events at the G20 summit in Hamburg showed the consequences that such agitation can have.”
The reference to Hamburg is sufficient to make clear that the banning of linksunten.indymedia is part of a right-wing political campaign. For weeks, the so-called “events in Hamburg” have been vastly exaggerated by politicians and in the media to spread the fairytale of violence by “left-wing…