I wrote an interview with Ghazal Ramzani about her work for InsideBerlin, hosted by Tanzbüro Berlin. The interview wasn't published in the end because Tanzbüro censored the word "genocide" in my text.

I was aware that this has happened before with a colleague's text on Tanzschreiber.de, also hosted by Tanzbüro Berlin. For the interview, since the word "genocide" was a direct quote from the artist, relevant to her work, I thought to give it a go anyway. The text was accepted initially (January 2025); however, after five months, on 10 June 2025, I got an email from one of the directors, writing: "There’s one thing in your text that we cannot publish. This is about the term genocide, which we would ask you to replace with another term such as war crimes/crimes against humanity." After consulting Ghazal about this, I replied that the artist does not agree with this change, and will only accept the following variation: "(...)this word was requested to be deleted by the editorial Team of Tanzbüro." To this, the director replied that the "proposal is not something we can accept," and pressured further for "an alternative phrasing."

Many futile email exchanges followed. In one of them, I pointed out that "there are no set rules of prohibited words under EU or German law in journalism or at all in general." To this, the directors replied that although I am "absolutely right," they are "trying to engage in a nuanced editorial process." In the end, the text remained unpublished.

Later, I heard from one of the staff members that the directors have claimed that Tanzbüro should "always stay under the radar," and this decision was made solely by the two directors, although the other staff members (who are now all fired) wanted to discuss other options.

Recently, I wrote another text on Tanzschreiber.de with the word "genocide" in it (June 2026). To my surprise, it was published. I later learned that the staff members had published the text without first running it by the directors, as it would most likely have been censored again if they had.