The German Government Prevented Me From Speaking About Press Freedom at the European Parliament.

Read the full speech and learn how it is connected to Palestine, German foreign policy, militarism, and the EU’s authoritarian restructuring.

Ladies and gentlemen, Members of the European Parliament, colleagues, friends, comrades — especially those who organised this important event — thank you for inviting me and for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

Unfortunately I cannot be with you today in person, because the German government did not give me permission to attend this event about freedom of speech as a journalist.

Today I stand before you not because I was acquitted. I stand before you because I was never charged. And that should concern you all.

As some of you might already know, my name is Hüseyin Doğru. I am a German citizen, a father of three, a journalist, and the founder of red., a now defunct English-language media outlet.

On 20 May 2025, I was placed on an EU sanctions list.

Not after a criminal conviction. Not after a trial. Not after a court had examined evidence against me.

I was placed on a list.

The reason given was not violence. It was not incitement. It was not a finding by any court. The reason was political: my journalism, my reporting on Gaza, and my coverage of Palestine solidarity protests in Germany were folded into the language of Russia, destabilisation, information manipulation and hybrid threats.

Germany has spent years trying to criminalise Palestine solidarity — through bans, police violence, smear campaigns and allegations that often collapse when they meet a court. Where there are no grounds to bring criminal charges, another route becomes attractive: not the court, but the list.

I cannot prove in this room which government pushed hardest for my listing. But the available facts point strongly toward Germany: before Brussels listed me, German intelligence was already monitoring red. because of our pro-Palestine coverage. At the same time came the smear campaign in German media. Then came the European listing.

The EU listing describes me as a Turkish citizen. I am not. I am a German citizen. I do not have dual nationality. My lawyers informed the Council of this error after the listing was published. It has still not been corrected.

This is not a small clerical mistake. It is far easier to digest if the public is told that the EU has sanctioned a Turkish citizen. It is much more difficult to admit the truth: that the European Union has sanctioned one of its own citizens, living in Europe, for journalism.

Since then, my bank accounts have been frozen. I am banned from working. I am effectively living as an exile within my own country. I am not even permitted to attend this event at the European Parliament to speak about freedom of the press. And later, even my wife — who is not sanctioned — had her accounts temporarily frozen: a move that can only be described as collective punishment.

I cannot buy nappies or medication for my children. And if you buy them for me, you risk prosecution for sanctions circumvention — up to ten years in prison. That is why these sanctions do not only target me. In practice, they punish my twin babies and my seven-year-old son.

But this speech is not about my hardship.

It is about what my case reveals about the state of democracy in Europe — or rather, its erosion.

A sanctions regime that decides guilt without a court is not a shield for democracy, but its graveyard.

What the “Evidence” Shows

Before I explain how the sanctions system works, I want to be concrete about the evidence used against me. Or rather, the absence of evidence — which is itself the most damning evidence of all.

After my lawyers asked the Council to reconsider the sanctions, the application was rejected. The evidence used to apply the sanctions was described as confidential. I am effectively forbidden from publishing the full evidence dossier used against me.

The sanctions listing frames my reporting as “undermining” and “threatening” EU stability, and places it inside Russian disinformation efforts. But the evidence pack does not prove that. It does not show Russian control. It does not show criminal conduct. It does not show that my journalism was directed by any foreign state. On none of the 38 pages of the evidence pack is there even the word Russia.

Instead, it cites journalistic posts and political opinions as disinformation.

Video Source: Florian Warweg

It cites my criticism of Chancellor Merz and European weapons policy — where I described the war in Ukraine as an inter-imperialist war, the same Marxist concept Lenin used in 1914 to describe the First World War. That is not a pro-Russian position. It treats Russia as an imperialist power, not as a force to be celebrated.

The evidence pack cites factual reporting that German intelligence was monitoring red. because of our pro-Palestine coverage. Again, this is classified as disinformation.

And it relies on guilt-by-association smears published in German media: that some of our team had worked for an outlet funded by Russia.

There is no proof here of a crime, no mention in the evidence pack of financial ties to a Russian state propaganda apparatus, and no mention that my journalism was directed by any foreign state.

If this can be called evidence for sanctions, then ordinary journalistic work — reporting, criticism, opinion, and political analysis — can be turned into evidence against a journalist.

If this can be called disinformation, then dissent has become disinformation.

If this can be called a hybrid threat, then political opposition has become a security problem.

From Embargoes to Journalists

EU sanctions were not originally designed for cases like mine.

They emerged from a history of embargoes and foreign-policy coercion. And embargoes had already shown their brutality: Iraq, Cuba, Iran. Entire populations were made to suffer in the name of changing the behaviour of governments. An estimated half a million children in Iraq died. Medicines disappeared. Economies were strangled. And still the promised political results never came.

So “smart sanctions” were presented as a humane alternative. Not whole societies, we were told. Not ordinary people. Only individuals. Only decision-makers. Only those responsible.

But the same underlying problem remained: extrajudicial punishment, imposed politically, with disproportionate consequences and weak legal protection.

They were not designed as a mechanism for disciplining journalists or domestic dissent.

But step by step, they expanded.

First, they targeted those labelled terrorists. And too few people spoke up, because the word “terrorism” was enough to suspend scrutiny.

Then they targeted enemy states. And too few people spoke up, because the language of security was enough to suspend doubt.

Then they targeted oligarchs, companies, broadcasters, families, associates, facilitators, alleged networks. And still too few people spoke up, because each expansion was presented as exceptional, temporary, necessary.

Pastor Martin Niemöller warned us how repression expands: first against those we are told not to defend, then against those we think are too far from us, and finally against those who thought silence would protect them.

But exceptional powers rarely remain exceptional.

And each silence becomes permission. Each precedent becomes a platform. Each emergency becomes a method.

Then came the conceptual leap: sanctions expanded into the field of “information manipulation” and “hybrid threats.” The target could now be a journalist. A media platform. A publisher. A person involved in the production or circulation of information.

The foreign-policy tool had entered the domestic public sphere.

How the Sanctions Machine Works

So how does this regime work? In my case, it worked like this.

Formally, the process is administrative and political. The Council adopted a decision under the Common Foreign and Security Policy. It then adopted a regulation. My name was added to an annex. Once published in the Official Journal, the measure took immediate effect — before I had even been notified.

I had no prior hearing. I had no criminal trial. No court was required to find me guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

The standard was lower. The language was “sufficient grounds.” I received the reasons after the fact, and only then could I submit observations. But by then, the punishment had already begun.

My accounts frozen, my work blocked, the stigma attached.

I was isolated first. What came later was not a meaningful defence. It was a fight against a punishment that had already begun.

So in reality, my listing is an administrative act with consequences even more severe than a criminal conviction.

That sentence matters.

Because the EU insists that sanctions are preventive, not punitive. They are not, we are told, punishment. They are instruments to influence behaviour. They are foreign-policy measures.

But what does that mean when the target is a journalist here at home in Europe?

Does it mean I am being sanctioned until I report differently? Until I stop questioning German policy? Until I stop documenting Palestine solidarity? Until I stop speaking of the crimes we in Europe commit and are complicit in?

If the purpose is behavioural change, then let us say clearly what the goal is here: I am being pressured to change my political speech. I am being punished until my reporting becomes compatible with EU foreign policy. I am being made into a warning to others.

These are not merely financial measures. They are disciplinary measures — a warning to every journalist, publisher and dissenter that political non-conformity will not be tolerated.

The Rule-of-Law Contradiction

And because sanctions are formally not punishment, the guarantees of criminal law do not fully apply.

That is the legal contradiction at the heart of this system.

Due process. The presumption of innocence. The right to know the case against you. The right to challenge evidence before punishment takes effect.

These are not technicalities. They are the minimum protections that stand between the individual and the power of the state.

In dubio pro reo means: when in doubt, protect the accused. Sanctions reverse that. I was listed without trial, without a prior hearing, and without full access to the evidence. Doubt did not protect me. It punished me. So the principle becomes: when in doubt, not protect, but restrict the individual.

Time itself also becomes punishment. A case before the General Court can take years. In the meantime, my work, finances, reputation, and family life are being destroyed. The court may later say: there was an error. But the consequences have already happened.

When guilt is decided without a court, sanctions cease to defend democracy. They begin to dismantle it.

Political Context: Germany and EU Militarisation

There is also a broader political context.

Russia is the central justification. China is increasingly folded into the same strategic vocabulary, along with a growing list of other countries. The language is de-risking, hybrid threats, foreign interference, information manipulation.

Let me be clear. This is not a defence of any government.

It is a warning that Europe is beginning to reproduce the very methods it claims to oppose. We accuse others of silencing dissent, of treating journalism as a security threat, of using administrative power to discipline political speech, of replacing public debate with loyalty tests.

But what is this, if not the same logic translated into European language?

And in Germany, this legal shift is connected to a wider political and economic shift.

Germany is militarising — not only rhetorically, but industrially. Its economy is stagnant. Its old industrial model is under pressure. Its car manufacturers face competition they can no longer easily dominate, especially from China. And now parts of that industrial base are being redirected toward defence production — a pattern whose consequences we know from the darkest period of recent German history.

Lenin analysed this dynamic over a century ago. In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he described how monopoly capital, when it encounters limits to profit at home, turns to military expenditure, to armaments production, to the export of capital backed by the export of force. War is not an accident of imperialism. War is its logic.

Because Germany is one of the EU’s dominant powers, this militarisation becomes Europeanised. A permanent atmosphere of threat is needed to justify it: Russia, China, migrants, protest, journalism, Palestine solidarity.

War becomes the answer to economic decline. Rearmament becomes an industrial programme. Dissent must be managed, because a society being prepared for war cannot tolerate too much public doubt.

The Militarisation of Information: DSA and FIMI

This brings me to the central arc of this speech: the militarisation of information.

Marx described ideology as the superstructure that corresponds to the economic base. When the economic base reorganises around war, the ideological superstructure must also reorganise around war. Public debate must be made safe for rearmament. Dissent must be managed. Journalism must be made compliant or made impossible.

If Europe is to be reorganised around war, then public debate must also be reorganised around war.

Sanctions against individuals, and content regulation through the Digital Services Act, may appear to be separate fields. They are not. They work toward the same goal: the management of the public sphere through the language of risks and threats.

Under the DSA, platforms must assess and mitigate systemic risks, including disinformation. At the same time, the EU’s foreign-policy language has shifted from “disinformation” to FIMI — Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference.

Disinformation at least appears to ask a question about content: is this true or false? Even though there is no legal definition of disinformation.

FIMI asks a different question: who is speaking, and in what tone? Are they hostile or friendly?

And the EU’s own definition is revealing. FIMI does not only concern illegal conduct. It describes a “mostly non-illegal pattern of behaviour” that is said to threaten or potentially negatively affect values, procedures and political processes.

Mostly non-illegal.

That phrase should alarm every democrat in this room. Because if the behaviour is mostly non-illegal, then the issue is not crime. It is interpretation. It is political labelling. It is the power to decide who is treated as a threat.

The question shifts from what was said to who said it. From truth to alignment. From evidence to suspicion. From journalism to threat assessment.

That is where sanctions and the DSA meet. One acts on the person. The other acts on the space in which that person can speak.

Together, they create a system in which the state does not need to ban a newspaper. It is enough to list its founder, freeze its accounts, frighten its bank, frighten its platforms, and call the whole process democratic resilience.

But it is not resilience.

It is censorship by infrastructure, without the censor’s signature — censorship carried out through banks, platforms, payment providers, compliance departments and risk managers, so that the state can say: we did not silence you. The system did.

This is how power is privatised. Or, in my case, exported from Germany to the European Union.

And let us be honest about Palestine. A long list of genocide scholars, legal experts and human rights organisations have confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. There are proceedings at the International Court of Justice. There are mass graves, starvation, the destruction of hospitals, schools, universities and entire neighbourhoods. Europe is not a neutral observer. Europe is politically, diplomatically and materially implicated.

So when journalism documents protest against that complicity, it is not “destabilisation.” It is a journalistic duty and the minimum moral response to mass slaughter.

When reporting on protest becomes evidence of destabilisation, the state has stopped treating journalism as a democratic function and started treating it as enemy activity.

The question is no longer: did this person commit a crime? The question becomes: does this weaken our narrative?

When the field of public debate adopts military vocabulary — risk, threat, manipulation — freedom of the press is no longer a right. It becomes a security question.

That is why I am not here to ask for sympathy.

I am here to say something simple: sanctions must never be used as a tool to suppress speech. Journalism should never be sanctioned.

Not because every journalist is right or every report beyond criticism. But because the answer to journalism is more journalism, public debate, evidence, correction, and — where necessary — a court of law.

Not secret files. Not administrative lists. Not financial exile.

Because democracy is not defended by bypassing its courts.

I want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. I stand before you today not because I was acquitted. I stand before you because I was never charged.

And that, precisely, is the problem.

A sanctions regime that decides guilt without a court is not a shield for democracy. It is its graveyard.

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Hüseyin Doğru delivered this speech at the European Parliament on 07.05.2026 through online participation.