The critically injured cyclist died three days after the accident with a concrete mixer in Berlin.
Image: dpa
Were Nancy Faeser and Marco Buschmann well advised to comment on the possible complicity of climate activists in the death of a cyclist when the facts were unclear? The state reaction to actionism is also exposed to the danger of escalation.
An Thursday at 7:10 p.m., Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser published a Tweet: “Anyone who blocks escape routes puts lives at risk. We saw that in a terrible way this week in Berlin. The police have my full support for a tough crackdown.” The minister referred to an accident report that caused horror on Monday. A cyclist was run over and crushed by a heavy goods vehicle; according to a message from the fire brigade, the rescue of the injured was delayed because a special vehicle got stuck in a traffic jam on the city motorway, the cause of which is said to have been a blockade by climate activists. Before Faeser tweeted on Thursday evening, the police had announced that the doctors had declared the cyclist brain dead; later she died.
It is still uncertain whether we in Berlin really saw the terrible thing described in the tweet. Nothing more has been said about the actual side of what happened since the first notification from the fire brigade about a “relevant” delay from official authorities. The police filed a complaint against two demonstrators on Tuesday; whether there was a relevant causal connection (between the fire engine and the blockade and between the blockade and the scene of the accident were each 5 kilometers of morning rush hour traffic) is now being investigated. Nevertheless, the assumed connection was widely treated as fact in media reporting, for example by the interviewer of Deutschlandfunk, who heard a spokesman for the “Last Generation” on Wednesday morning.