After years of discussions, the Berlin district of Lichtenberg gets one Eugeniu Botnari Square. A corresponding application by the Greens was decided on Thursday in the district assembly (BVV). Only the CDU, AfD and FDP voted against, but the votes of the Left, Greens, SPD and Animal Welfare Party were more.
The homeless Moldovan Eugeniu Botnari was the victim of a racist act of violence in a discount store near the Lichtenberg S-Bahn station in 2016. For several years there has been a debate in district politics about naming the nameless forecourt of the train station after Botnari.
A commemorative plaque will be put up. Many in the district see the fact that it takes so long for district politicians to show the victim this dignity as a sign of poverty. Applications for nomination were repeatedly discussed, moved to committees, discussed again, but never finally decided.
The district office is now being asked to advocate for the nomination. So the matter is still not decided, but at least district mayor Michael Grunst (left) has been uncompromisingly in favor of the naming for years.
The FDP does not see Botnari as a victim of right-wing violence – the courts do
However, the FDP in particular repeatedly argued that Botnari was not a victim of right-wing violence, but was killed arbitrarily. He also wanted to steal a bottle of schnapps – and is therefore unsuitable for an appreciation. A speech by the FDP deputy Rico Apitz was interrupted on Thursday after numerous heckling from the audience. A court had already confirmed the right motives of the perpetrator.
Botnari died on September 20, 2016 as a result of an attack that was both racially motivated and aimed at socio-economically weak people. The perpetrator was the branch manager of the Edeka supermarket in the station building. He had accused Botnari of theft and then severely injured his head and body.
In January 2017, investigations were launched against the branch manager André S. and court proceedings were opened against him. The verdict was three years and three months in prison. According to witness statements, he regularly used quartz sand gloves against those he recognized as supposed “foreigners”. These were mostly homeless.
The rule was to take her to a storage room, beat her there and film it, investigators found. S. put the recordings in a WhatsApp chat with the words “Moldova visiting friends”. On March 27, 2017, the court found the accused guilty of assault causing death and sentenced him to three years and three months in prison.
In the verbal justification of the verdict, the presiding judge referred to the contempt for human beings, the racism and cynicism that the accused had shown in committing the offence. In subsequent court proceedings in 2019, three other supermarket employees from the Lichtenberg and Südkreuz branches were sentenced to 12 to 22 months of imprisonment on probation. These had confessed to acts of violence against victims from the “drinkers and homeless milieu”.
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