In the early 1990s, Bremen politicians ruthlessly persecuted those they suspected of dealing in illegalized drugs. This ranged from interference with freedom of movement – many of those affected were not allowed to enter entire neighborhoods (such as the Ostertor/Steintor) – to violent and violent treatment: house searches, physical violence, dousing with cold water, use of electroteasers, chokeholds. From the beginning, the measures had a racist dimension: Black people and Kurds were particularly affected.
In this brutalized atmosphere, the police doctors Männche and Kondrat began on their own initiative to inject the suspects with apomorphine, an emetic that was toxic even in small doses. Police leaders and the judiciary were clueless. When the – legally inadmissible – activity of the doctors had to be admitted on the part of the state due to the sustained clarification of the public by the AntiRacism Office Bremen (ARAB), this did not result in the immediate termination of the dangerous measure. It is true that the ARAB’s information campaign led to the fact that apomorphine injections were hardly ever used from the mid-1990s onward and that the police doctor Männche withdrew from his activities. Otherwise, however, the administration of emetics was transferred by regulations and decrees into the regulated “everyday life of securing evidence” – as ex-mayor Scherf called it in his tesitmony in court in 2013 – and instead of apomorphine, the emetic syrup ipecacuanha was administered to those affected. The emetic torture was professionalized and institutionalized.
ARAB documented some harrowing testimonies of people who were forced to take emetics in its 1995 booklet ‘Policemen who provoke vomiting’ (‚Polizisten, die zum Brechen reizen‘ ). These, among others, can also be found on this website under People affected report.
At the hearing of the Initiative in Memory of Laye Alama Condé in June 2014, two activists looked back on the embattled first years of the emetic distribution: The beginning of the emetic torture in the 1990s and the prosecution against the critics.
The entire hearing can be found HERE as a brochure HERE as a video recording.
