German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/223,
pp. 28212-28213.
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
I do not imagine to alter with a speech the majority for
this law in this house. And if up to now I had a doubt of it, Herr Brinkhaus’s
speech has made clear to me that those governing are not ready in any way to
reconsider. It is bound to be, Herr Brinkhaus, the will of those governing to
fight the pandemic with useless means, than that objections of the opposition,
which come not only from us, be able to still stop your attack on the rights of
freedom, on federalism, as well as on a healthy human understanding.
When colleague Brinkhaus, as occurred on Friday, designates
the counter-arguments of colleague Lindner as “Political profiling at the cost
of the sick and the dead”, any objective discussion is at an end and
moralization takes the place of politics, Herr Brinkhaus. Please remember yourself.
You are stuck in your trenches and accuse the opposition of
destruction. Yet this destruction proceeds from those who have failed at the
vaccine procurement, who take their multilateral Europa ideology to be more
important than the defense of the life of the many who had trusted in the
Chancellor’s oath to avert harm from this people, Frau Chancellor.
Instead of procuring vaccine, wherever there is some to
procure, regardless of the associated geopolitical condemnations – thereby staff
doctors, house doctors, and whoever is in the position to vaccinate patients –,
for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, you want to restrict
the basic law’s rights of freedom.
No, that is not rubbish! That is fact! – And instead of
making possible as much movement as possible in the fresh air, as
immunologists and aerosol researchers recommend, public life will be halted on
the basis of an incidence which at any time is liable to be manipulated.
What you from the beginning have neglected shall now set up
restrictions at the cost of the people. What that means in collateral damages
for the society, my colleague Weidel has presented at the introduction of this
law. It only remains to me to caution that here an experiment is being tried
out which many hope can be repeated at other opportunities. When the Chancellor
states that the virus is not to be negotiated, so will we soon hear that the
climate is not to be negotiated and today’s restrictions are also of value for
the beautiful, new world of tomorrow.
Ladies and gentlemen, the publicist Heribert Prantl – God knows,
no friend of the AfD – says he fears that the current restrictions of the basic
rights will be made use of as a blueprint for the next virus, for the next case
of catastrophe. Since where there can be no negotiating, there is only one
language of determination. It is always ultimately about the whole; about the
world health, the world climate, even the survival of mankind. Then one can
finally stop discussing social goals and the political ways there in the
parliaments, in public, and instead similarly proceed to an act in which you take part with this law.
Basically, in almost any area of politics are allowed to be
laid down incidences, quotas or target values, the attaining of which make
necessary determined and before all non-negotiable preventive measures. We meet
again the climate policy.
In the place of the tedious formation of political intent on the
small scale, enters the objective necessity of determinative action on the
grand scale. And the outmoded separation of government and opposition
transforms into the sharp conflict of the reasonable and the quarrelsome. You
cannot make out half the people to be the quarrelsome, ladies and gentlemen.
Yet precisely this – the restriction of our basic rights based as
always on lofty political aims – we no longer want to allow after the
experiences of two dictatorships in German history.
Ladies and gentlemen, the basic rights are the citizens’
defense against the state. The state always encroaches; that is its nature. On
that account, basic rights are not – still not! – under proviso of pandemic or
climate.
Barbara Hendricks (SPD): Yet freedom of the press is restricted by the Querdenker, not by the state!
I hope that it remains so. If I perceive your argumentation,
I know that it will not remain so. Therefore this law breaks a taboo when you have
sought to file down the point of the poison fang a little, and to not quite
leave the Bundestag on the outside.
Ladies and gentlemen, the burdening and over-burdening of
the healthcare system would be a more correct standard of political management
than the only ostensibly objective incidence. Nevertheless: As to the question
of in which order we want to live, it is of as little value as the magical
number of 100, 165 or 200 of your law – on that account, we reject that law.
And, Herr Brinkhaus, this is a political statement. With the
word “mug” [„Fratze“], you have uncovered yourself. When such debates are conducted as you
conduct them, it has nothing more to do with politics. It is only moral
frippery.
Alice Weidel (AfD): Right!
I am grateful.
Claudia Roth (Greens-Augsburg): Mask!
[trans: tem]
