Kitty O’Brien, a 25-year-old Irish pro-Palestine protester who was recently punched and assaulted by German police in Berlin, fears their injuries may be life-altering.

On August 28, they joined a rally in what they thought was “really a normal Thursday for people protesting in Berlin”, said O’Brien, who uses they/them pronouns.

But as footage of the incident shows, the demonstration got heated.

O’Brien belongs to the Irish Bloc Berlin, a group of Irish expatriates who regularly attend rallies in support of Palestine in the German capital.

“As I arrived, it was just basically twice as many police officers as protesters,” they told Al Jazeera. That was usual, O’Brien said. “There was really not a lot of us.”

During a shouting match in which O’Brien participated, an officer punched them

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