Press release of 16, April 2025
Death threats against journalist Nicholas Potter
Threats against taz journalist Nicholas Potter have reached a new level of escalation: posters in the style of an arrest warrant, which appeared in Berlin on Tuesday 15 April, read: »Let us not allow those who ideologically enable genocide in Palestine a second of safety. They come to our city and think no one will hold them accountable. They are normal people who bleed like everyone else and can be humiliated and eliminated«. [Error in original]
»For months, Nicholas Potter has been subjected to hostility and threats on social media platforms and with stickers in public places«, reads a statement from the taz editorial board. The stickers appeared in greater numbers after a colleague’s research on a platform of the Russian propaganda complex and are written in the aggressive, anti-Israeli tone of the camp. His reporting is apparently to be stopped by intimidation’. »This is nothing less than an incitement to murder«, said PEN Berlin spokesperson Deniz Yücel.
This campaign against Nicholas Potter is the most blatant, but not the only, case of attacks on journalists linked to the Middle East conflict. Reporters Without Borders recently published the figure of 89 attacks on journalists around pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2002, 38 of them in Berlin alone (by comparison, there were a further 21 attacks from conspiracy theorists and the far right across Germany).
At the same time, Reporters Without Borders notes a »sharply narrowing corridor of opinion in work on Israel and Palestine«. PEN Berlin shares this view. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, PEN Berlin has repeatedly spoken out against the exclusion of voices critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, most recently on the occasion of the disinvitation of Omri Boehm from the Buchenwald commemoration. PEN Berlin’s General Assembly also called on the Israeli government »to uphold the principles of press freedom even during war and to protect the lives of independent reporters«.
»There are many things that can and must be discussed, and we are always in favour of interpreting the limits of freedom of expression as broadly as possible«, said Deniz Yücel. »But when it comes to death threats, there is nothing to discuss. Criticism is not a crime, but incitement to murder is. We expect pro-Palestinian voices to draw the same line and condemn the vicious campaign against Nicholas Potter. And we expect the Berlin security authorities to continue to do everything in their power to ensure Nicholas Potter’s safety and to investigate the perpetrators. Our solidarity goes out to our colleague who has been the target of hostility. Nicholas, you are not alone.«
PEN Berlin. We stand by our word.