The Faculty of Applied Social Studies (FB 8) at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts has organized its annual "8 against 88" day of action under the haunting motto "Who sees our pain? The victims' perspective on 35 years of right-wing extremist violence". In attendance: relatives of the victims of the NSU murders and the right-wing extremist attack in Hanau in 2020.
"Social work gets involved where people need support," emphasized Prof. Dr. Katja Nowacki, Dean of the faculty, at the opening. She said that even if "not all injustice can be undone", it is essential to draw attention to it.
The organizers succeeded in doing so, especially with guests Emiş Gürbüz and Gamze Kubaşık. Emiş Gürbüz lost her son in the attack in Hanau on 19 February 2020. In the packed lecture hall at the university, she described her shock after the attack and a painful realization: "I saw xenophobic violence on the TV news, but I didn't think it could affect me. But it can affect everyone."
Together with the "February 19 Hanau" initiative, she has been fighting for years for the memory of her son and the other victims of the attack and for the investigation of a police failure in connection with the crime and in dealing with the relatives. Among other things, they had been classified as "potential threats" and had to endure a police threat assessment.
Gamze Kubaşık also reported that relatives of victims become the focus of the investigating authorities because right-wing extremist acts are not named as such. The daughter of kiosk owner Mehmet Kubaşık, who was murdered in Dortmund in 2006, experienced how her father was criminalized by investigators for seven years and branded a drug dealer until the NSU was exposed in 2011. Her descriptions of the stigmatization were haunting and continue to affect her.
Such failures are sometimes systemic, emphasized Prof. Dr. Dierk Borstel, lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences. He conducts research into right-wing extremism and is accompanying the "8 against 88" day of action for the 15th time. Together with his colleague Prof. Dr. Emra Ilgün-Birhimeoğlu, he discussed their many years of empirical experience with racism, right-wing extremist violence and threats at the start of the events.
Professor Borstel traced an arc from the waves of attacks in the early 1990s to the present day. He took a critical look at the reaction of the political establishment - for example, when Chancellor Helmut Kohl considered a CDU district association meeting more important than attending the funeral after the attack in Solingen in 1993. The late recognition of the political dimension of acts such as the attack in Munich's Olympic Park in 2016 also shows the ongoing failings, continued Dierk Borstel.
Both emphasized how important it was to give more space to the victims' perspective. According to Prof. Dr. Emra Ilgün-Birhimeoğlu, it is those affected by racist and right-wing extremist violence and their families who take on responsibility and educational work, for example on action days such as this day at Fachhochschule Dortmund, in order to provide information and prevention.