Cologne University Hospital cancels Gaza aid event, organizers call it 'scandal'

An event at the University Hospital Cologne was canceled for neutrality reasons. Now it took place at the neighboring university. How neutral was it?

Published: July 24, 2026, 6:49 PM

Destruction in the Gaza Strip after Israeli attacks and catastrophic humanitarian conditions. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/ap

By Adrian Breitling

That security personnel would be present at one of her events had never happened to Anica Heinlein before. But here, in front of Lecture Hall C at the University of Cologne, three people are standing in vests with the word "Security" on them. In a few minutes, Heinlein, who is the chairwoman of the Association for Development Policy and Humanitarian Aid (Venro), will speak in the hall about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. And the three security guards outside will make sure nothing happens.

Let's get this out of the way: At the event this Thursday evening at the Cologne University titled "Gaza – Humanitarian Situation and Possibilities of Medical Assistance," the security service did not have to intervene. That the university nevertheless deployed them had a backstory.

Background of the Cancellation

Originally, the event was supposed to take place on July 2, just a few meters away at the university hospital. The organizer, the Cologne regional group of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), had often met there, and the group's chairman, Uwe Trieschmann, was a senior physician there. But the university hospital canceled the event.

Trieschmann finds this a scandal, he says. Not only the cancellation bothers him, but also the justification given by the university hospital. In response to a taz inquiry, it explains: "The University Hospital Cologne is obliged to political neutrality." Therefore, IPPNW was not granted permission for the event, and the reservation of the designated room was canceled. What exactly neutrality means, the university hospital did not explain upon request.

Helpers Report: Hardly Any Aid Supplies for Gaza

Humanitarian aid in the sense of the Hippocratic Oath is a central task of all physicians, Trieschmann believes. When the approximately 150 listeners have taken their seats in the lecture hall, he only addresses this and the backstory with "a brief word." What is much more important to him, he says, is what his subsequent speakers have to say.

Thus, Venro chairwoman Heinlein reports on her experiences with NGOs that want to bring aid supplies, including medical material, to Gaza but can hardly do so. The situation in the Gaza Strip is "the deadliest conflict worldwide for humanitarian personnel," she says. Not to mention the people living there.

Middle East Debates

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On-the-Ground Reality

After Heinlein, Abed Schokry speaks. He is an engineer, comes from Gaza, and knows the situation of humanitarian supply on the ground exactly. He also emphasizes that hardly any aid supplies reach the region – because the Israeli military places almost insurmountable hurdles for aid organizations at the border to Gaza, both physically and administratively.

According to Schokry, this means, for example, that hospitals in Gaza – if they are operational at all – are not sterile places of healing, but overcrowded buildings that smell of wounds and infections, and untreated ones at that, because medical supplies are lacking. Yet visible wounds are not the only problem. There are also "those injuries that no X-ray can capture," says Schokry, those of the soul.

Preventable Deaths

All the more important it is for him to emphasize the significance of humanitarian aid. "It must not be a political pawn," he said. Because the only thing that would currently help in the Gaza Strip is an unrestricted supply of aid goods.

That this aid would actually be possible is emphasized by the third and final speaker of the evening, Aladin Atalla. He is an app and AI developer. About 70 of his relatives are in Gaza.