On a sunny Sunday last month, 20 people were enjoying a barbecue in the city of Schwerin in northern Germany. The police promptly intervened, slapping them with a fine for breaking new social distancing rules to limit the spread of COVID-19.
They were alerted to the festivities by a neighbor, “outraged by such behavior,” who also boasted about her efforts on social media, opening up a heated debate about the return of denunciation to Germany and whether it is acceptable.
Telling on your neighbors is a highly sensitive subject in a country still haunted by memories of Nazism and the former communist dictatorship in East Germany, two regimes under which informing on others was practically a national policy.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The term “duninziant” (“snitch”) has been trending on Twitter, fueling ever more reference to the Third Reich and the East German Stasi secret police.
“All of this appears to confirm a deep-seated prejudice that Germans have against themselves: That when in doubt, a part of the population is willing to become an extension of state power,” psychology professor Christian Stoecker told Der Spiegel.
However, Germany is not the only country to have seen a rise in the number of people reporting fellow citizens to the authorities for breaching virus-related social distancing rules.
Similar observations have been made in countries around the world where lockdowns have been imposed.
In New Zealand, a dedicated Web site was deluged with reports; in South Africa, a wedding was interrupted after an anonymous call; and in France, the emergency number 17 has been overrun with calls.
“The phenomenon is universal, but with different regional characteristics. It happens more often in urban areas, where many people depend on each other, than in less populated areas where you have more space,” said Rafael Behr, a professor of criminology and sociology at the Hamburg Police Academy. “Acts of denunciation will increase, as will acts of solidarity.”
“The longer the state of emergency goes on, the more antisocial people will become and the more mistrust and suspicion will develop, for example about whether your neighbor is contagious,” Behr said.
In Germany, police are receiving several hundred complaints a day via telephone calls, e-mails and social media, an Agence France-Presse tally showed.
In Munich alone, “around 100 to 200 citizens are calling every day” with violations to report, said Sven Mueller, a spokesman for the city’s police force.
In the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, police intervened in 2,930 violations of social distancing rules between March 20 and April 7.
“Around two-thirds of these cases were linked to reports from citizens,” police spokeswoman Stefanie Klaus said.
The majority of complaints are about people entering public spaces such as stadiums, parties in private homes or vehicles with licence plates from outside the area.
“Not all of the calls lead to police intervention,” said Heidi Vogt, a spokeswoman for the police in Berlin.
At the end of March, overwhelmed by complaints, police in the German capital appealed to residents on Twitter to stop calling the 110 emergency number, stressing that it was “not designed for lockdown breaches.”
Berlin Minister of the Interior Andreas Geisel called on people to restrain themselves.
“We don’t want any snitching,” he told RBB radio.
“With a soft lockdown like we have in Germany at the moment, people’s continued freedom depends on their ability to contain themselves,” political historian Klaus-Peter Sick said.
“If a group of young people are behaving in an undisciplined way, some people will see that as irresponsible and not thinking about others,” which can lead to frustration and denunciation, Sick said.
However, some informers are motivated less by social responsibility and more by the desire to settle personal scores.
“This is always the case in times of crisis, especially when they give rise to new regulations that make it possible to invoke justice. Anyone who is jealous of their neighbor now has the opportunity to denounce them for the slightest violation of the coronavirus rules,” Behr said. “That poisons social relations.”
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