Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 08/05/2023
A video of children being taken away from a family in Germany has gone viral on social networks, with false claims that the children were taken away because their parents taught them that homosexuality and transgenderism are not acceptable to Islam.
On April 28, 2023, a video was published on Facebook in which several people wearing police uniforms seemed to be taking away two children from one family. One of the children resists, while several women argue with the police in German. The video was published with a description stating the following:
The German police forcefully took a Muslim child from the family after reporting to the school that the parents were not teaching the child the way Germany’s official stance on LGBT people is.
The same Germany who stood up for human rights at the football championship in Qatar.
This post recorded over 800 shares on Facebook.
Similar claims appeared on Twitter earlier in the day. The user shared a tweet in English containing the mentioned video. The English tweet has since been deleted but can be found on the online content archiving platform Wayback Machine.
A slightly longer video of the same event with similar descriptions was published by several other users on social networks (1, 2, 3, 4). Other segments of this longer video were also shared on social networks (1, 2). Some posts claim that the video originates from the city of Bremerhaven (link).
What are the facts?
The viral video was previously shared in other languages, also containing claims that the German police took a child from a Muslim family because they “taught” him that homosexuality and transgenderism are not acceptable in Islam (1, 2, 3).
The footage is authentic, it was taken in Bremerhaven and shows the children being taken from the family. However, the reasons for such a thing provided on social networks are not correct.
After the footage went viral, the local Bremerhaven Police Department released a statement on April 28 saying they are aware of the footage and that details were being verified. The next day, they released a second statement saying that the footage shows a joint action by the Youth Protection Office and the Bremerhaven police. They also noted that the video is being shared on social networks with false claims about the reasons for the measure being implemented.
The video shows a small clip of the execution of the court decision on the adoption of two children. The police supported the Youth Protection Office in this action. Taking children into care is always a last resort and only happens if there are serious reasons.
Please understand that in order to protect the family and children, we cannot give any further explanations about the reasons for this decision. We are aware that the mentioned footage is emotionally disturbing.
The German news agency dpa also wrote about the video. The agency contacted the police, who additionally confirmed that the claims were false.
When asked if the allegations from social networks are true, the spokesman for the German news agency said: “We can deny that, of course, it’s not true”. Neither the police nor the Youth Protection Office gave any information about the real reasons for taking away children, to protect the family and children.
The dpa agency also contacted Jörg Maywald, an expert on children’s rights. He told this agency that taking away a child because of the parents’ political and religious views would not be legally viable.
According to Jörg Maywald, taking a child into custody because of the parents’ political-religious stance would not be legally viable. Because in such a case, there would be no “urgent danger” in the sense of paragraph 42 of the Act on Social Protection, according to the child’s rights expert.
The fact-checking platform Myth Detector also wrote about the groundlessness of the claim that the children from the video were taken away because their parents “taught” them that homosexuality and transgenderism are not acceptable in Islam.
Accordingly, the claim that German police took away children because their parents taught them that homosexuality and transgenderism are unacceptable to Islam, published on Twitter, is rated as fake news. We evaluate other occurrences of this claim as the distribution of fake news.