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4.2.4 Reaching and Supporting Victims of Hate Crime
The following sub-chapter provides short »case studies« of selected NGOs providing legal advice and various other services to victims of hate crimes. We start by presenting NGO activities in the field of victim support with a brief account of the general concept of the CIVITAS projects, since this can be considered the most advanced and comprehensive approach in the respective field in Germany. In order to capture the different local settings and circumstances, we will concentrate on two organizations that operate in these contexts: ReachOut, an NGO in the urban environment of Berlin, and Statewide Victim Counseling, Support and Information for Those Affected by Right-wing Violence (Landesweite Opferberatung, Beistand und Information für Betroffene rechter Gewalt, LOBBI e.V.) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an NGO active in smaller cities and a mostly rural environment.
In a second section, we will look at the provisions for victim assistance in various federal states under the new national program Consultation Networks and Mobile Intervention Against Right-wing Extremism, followed by an account of the work of NGOs providing services to victims of homophobic assaults, with a focus on Berlinbased projects and some information on similar organizations in different parts of Germany. In the fourth part, we briefly present the work of anti-discrimination offices, with a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia, where state government funding in the 1990s (under the auspices of a Green/SPD government coalition) allowed the establishment of a network of pilot projects earlier than in other regions. We will conclude our sample of case studies with a brief account and discussion of the services offered by general victim support organizations.
1.Interviews with Regional Confederation of German Sinti and Roma Berlin-Brandenburg.
2.Open Society Institute 2002. The Situation of Roma in Germany, Brussels, p. 198.
3.Interview with Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum (Gideon Botsch). Anetta Kahane of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation expressed a similar opinion.
4.One example is an attack on 30 July 2001 on a campsite in Wildau (Brandenburg), where 40 Roma were camping. The site was bombed with at least three Molotow-cocktails. Berliner Zeitung, 31 Nov 2001.
5.Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma 2006. Ergebnisse der Repräsentativumfrage des Zentralrates Deutscher Sinti und Roma über den Rassismus gegen Sinti und Roma in Deutschland, Heidelberg.
6.MANEO 2007. MANEO Bericht 2006, Berlin, p. 13.
7.MANEO 2007. Gewalterfahrungen von schwulen und bisexuellen Jugendlichen und Männern in Deutschland: Ergebnisse der MANEO-Umfrage 2006/2007, Berlin, p. 6.
8.Broken Rainbow 2006. Gewalt gegen Lesben und häusliche Gewalt in lesbischen Zusammenhängen: Auswertung der Erhebungsbögen der Lesbenberatungsstellen und Lesbentelefone, Berlin.
9.Bosch; Peucker 2007. Ethnic Discrimination and Xenophobia in Gemany, p. 6.
10.Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) 2006. Challenges and Reponses to Hate-Motivated Incidents, p. 31
11.Hiram7 Review 2007. Koordinierungskonferenz deutscher Nicht-Regierungsorganisationen gegen Antisemitismus, press release, 18 Jul 2007, Hamburg.
12.Aviva-Berlin Online Magazin für Frauen, 30 Apr 2008.
13.Der Tagesspiegel, 6 Mar 2003.
14.Bleich 2008. Quantifying Hate, p. 70.
15.Antifaschistisches Pressearchiv und Bildungszentrum Berlin, http://www.apabiz.de.
16.Antifaschistisches Pressearchiv und Bildungszentrum Berlin 2008. Chronologie antisemitischer Vorfälle 2007, Berlin.
17.Mut gegen rechte Gewalt, http://www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/.
18.Mut gegen rechte Gewalt (n.d.). Chronik der Gewalt.
19.Linde, Christian 2002. Tote Dritter Klasse: Eine unvollständige Chronik der Gewalt gegen Obdachlose (CD-Rom), Berlin.
20.In 2005 Mosquito published its first chronlogy of 53 right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents, which occurred in the district of Pankow in the eastern part of Berlin. Besides physical attacks, the group also registered cases of hate speech, acts of vandalism and right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic posters and graffiti. The information on incidents is also passed on to other local NGOs such as Apabiz and ReachOut. The local monitoring activities in Berlin-Pankow were part of a local action plan, which provided for some funding and facilitated the cooperation between various local non-governmental and governmental actors, including the district council. See: Stiftung Pfefferwerk (n.d.). [mosquito] – Netzwerkstelle gegen Rechtsextremismus, für Demokratie und Vielfalt, Berlin. The Research Group on Right-wing Extremism presents an overview of extreme right-wing activities, including violent crimes and propaganda offenses on their website, researched and compiled by a students’ group. Forschungsgruppe Rechtsextremismus an der Universität Potsdam 2006. Rechtsextremismus in Potsdam 1992 bis 2005: Eine Chronologie, Potsdam. The Anti-Fascist Groups’ chronology can also be found online: Antifa Westhavelland (n.d.). Chronologie, Hemiksem.
21.Arbeitsstelle Rechtsextremismus und Gewalt, http://www.arug.de; Antifaschistische Informations-, Dokumentations- und Archivstelle München, http://www.aida-archiv.de.
22.AMAL in Saxony was the only CIVITAS project that had to halt its work at the end of March 2008 because it was not covered in the new funding program. Some of the other listed NGOs also had to cut down on staff due to reduced financial support from the government.
23.We conducted longer interviews with staff of Opferperspektive (Brandenburg), ReachOut (Berlin), AMAL (Saxony), LOBBI Ost (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and Mobile Counseling for Victims of Right-Extremist Violence/Together (Saxony-Anhalt).
(OPP)
