RIOT police lined the walls of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt’s Berlin HQ on Tuesday as it hosted a talk by UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese.

Police vans queued outside and officers muscled in against the wishes of the paper’s management, saying they were there to “prevent danger” as the Italian lawyer spoke on “legal perspectives on the genocide in Gaza.”

Ms Albanese’s visit to Germany has exposed the grip anti-Palestine censorship has on the country, with both the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin cancelling lectures she was due to give about Israeli violations of international law in the occupied territories.

Her Tuesday talk had been due to take place in the Kuhlhaus, a prominent Berlin events venue, but it cancelled her that very morning after pressure from authorities.

Graffiti reading “Albanese, you are an anti-semite” and [UN refugee agency for Palestinians] “UNRWA supports terror” had been scrawled on the Kuhlhaus walls. Junge Welt stepped in to provide a venue at the last minute.

Ms Albanese said she found Germany’s repression of debate on Palestine “shocking.” In her address she said Germany had a historical responsibility to uphold international law because it had partly developed in response to genocides originating in Germany, most notoriously the Nazi Holocaust that killed six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Roma. 

The event was organised by Eye for Palestine, the Gaza Committee and the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. The latter’s chairman Wieland Hoban said: “We are in Germany. Organising an event like this is, unfortunately, an act of resistance.”