On Sunday, 300 people protested against femicides in Pankow and commemorated Zohra Mohammad Gul, who was killed a month ago. The 31-year-old was brutally killed by her ex-husband at an intersection on April 29 with several stab wounds.
The organizers – mainly left-wing groups – had also announced the elevator as a memorial to the Afghan woman. But the speeches were primarily about calls for a socialist revolution to liberate women, against fascism, capital, the border regime of the EU – and against patriarchal structures.
Several speakers blamed the police for Zohra Mohammed Gul’s death. The police would not have helped the woman enough and not protected her enough. Those responsible in the police force must be held accountable. In the fight against femicide, i.e. the murder of women because of their gender, the police are of no help anyway, because they are permeated by racism and patriarchal structures.
Two women, relatives of those killed, asked the authorities for information and protection for Zohra Mohammed Gul’s six children. They laid flowers at the crime scene.
As Tagesspiegel research has already shown, the accusations made by the organizers are not correct. Zohra Mohammed Gul was attacked by her husband for the first time at the end of February; she had separated from him. Police then registered two more cases – most recently a week before she was killed.
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After the first attack, several authorities were involved and have been dealing with the case ever since, trying to help the woman. The man was banned from the refugee accommodation where the Afghan family with six children aged between three and 13 years had lived since the beginning of 2020.
The attempt to house her in a women’s shelter failed because no boy over the age of 12 was allowed to fill the vacant places. The woman refused a one-room apartment for herself and her six children, as well as moving to another district – because the children in Pankow are rooted in school and daycare.
An application for a contact ban against the man was also submitted to the family court 14 days before the knife attack – but it had questions, which is why it did not decide immediately. Since the previous attacks were not so severe that the man could be taken into custody and the family court had not yet issued the ban on contact, the police could not crack down on the man more severely.
