People are often willing to restrict human rights, particularly if violations are seen as necessary to maintain security or to restrain an outgroup. But what happens when the public is prompted to consider that restrictions on an outgroup today might be applied to an ingroup down the line? To answer this, we address three related questions: (1) What arguments can strengthen support for basic human rights of others? (2) How much does the answer to this question depend on people’s attitudes towards the right holders? (3) And can support for human rights be strengthened by pointing to potential long-term risks of limiting human rights? We address these questions with novel survey experiments in Germany. We differentiate between different reasons why people might be willing to sacrifice human rights when they see their way of life under threat. We investigate attitudes towards police violence against peaceful protesters, exploring tensions between government restrictions and protections of basic rights. Our study provides an important extension to research on the trade-off between security and human rights at a time of worrying backlash against human rights in an under-studied European context.