Thursday, April 29, 2021

Michael Espendiller, April 22, 2021, Digital Vaccination Pass

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/224, pp. 28422-28424.

Right honorable Herr President. Dear spectators in the hall and at YouTube.

Basically, Herr Sorge, it is quite simple: Point one: No one should be compelled, directly or indirectly, to vaccinate against the Corona virus.

Point two: No one should be compelled, as a condition for the exercise of his basic rights in the future, to necessarily show a Corona vaccination pass.

When we today debate on the digital vaccination pass, precisely these premises are nevertheless in question. For we have experienced since the beginning of the year how the digital Corona vaccination pass, meanwhile named the “green certificate”, was and will be forced through in heave-ho proceedings at the EU level, and with robust German government participation – except for, once again, that of the German parliament.

Initially, it was apparently only about the restoration of freedom to travel. It did not last long and plans were devised whereby soon the vaccination pass also need be shown for shopping or for a visit to the cinema. And each speech was resonant with, that in the future, concert and cinema visits should only be possible for the vaccinated. Apropos of this, we also experience at that time a most well endowed vaccination campaign which negated the vaccination risks and instead spread the enlightenment of feel-good advertising.

In this connection, I want for once to ask the Federal government: Do you not also hold it to be an outspoken fraud when Gunther Jauch, the face of the vaccination campaign, touts the Corona vaccination on all media channels, a short time later is ill with Corona, and then even needs to admit to not have been vaccinated?

            Karin Maag (CDU/CSU): Have you considered how old Herr Jauch is?

It is really going too far, and for the population’s vaccination readiness it is surely not useful, when the Federal government has recourse to such conjuring tricks.

Also in this connection, we are interested in the sum of honoraria that Uschi Glas has received for her contribution to the vaccination campaign. Yet you do not gladly hear such questions. You here prefer to play the Good Samaritan who wants to do something good for the citizens, while what you actually have in mind is quite otherwise.

The vaccination campaign and the digital vaccination pass will be made palatable and be attractively packaged for the people. It is desired in this way that the citizens surrender as quickly as possible their freedoms – we have just heard it from Herr Sorge. Yet beneath this noble appearing pretense it was planned to install national data banks for the Corona vaccination pass in which vaccination and test data shall be stored; of this,  the “Süddeustsche Zeitung” reported in March.

It also involves a nationwide data bank with the personal health data of millions of citizens, to which a multiplicity of authorities then would have continual access. That would have meant considerable restrictions of basic rights and well corresponds to the wet dream of every surveillance fanatic.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): What then is your alternative to                                   vaccination?

           Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens): So he knows nothing of healthcare!

Yet, dear government: We here as opposition do our job and keep watch. I would say our motion in March and our outcry on these themes in this house were good enough to change your plans so that “would have” becomes no “is”.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): It’s all just a flu, or?

Since, for all that, the installation of national data banks does not now come. The government indeed did not dare. I am glad that we were here. It is good that the AfD sits in the parliament. I would not want to know what all of you here may otherwise wave through.

           Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens): The advertising set is now at an end, or?

Nothing to the contrary: The digital Corona vaccination pass raises additional questions. We of the AfD Bundestag delegation desire, just as all other people in this country, to be able to return as quickly as possible to normality.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): In your view, how does that go?                                   What then is your means of a solution? 

People want to travel again, they want to again drink an afternoon coffee with friends, they want together to barbeque again.  

          Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Say for once what you want!                                          Make a proposal! Man, man, man!

And it is perfidious of this Federal government to selectively condemn this yearning for normality and freedom, and, in the interests of personal power, to denigrate or simply criminalize tobogganers or walkers.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): No solution, just grumbling!

If one matter has become clear to me in the last three and a half years in this parliament, Herr Grosse-Brömer, then it is that this government is not about the people, not about the economy, not about the climate or whatever happens to be in vogue.

            Maik Beermann (CDU/CSU): Article 2! 

It is only and alone about power and control.

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Say for once what you would do!

For you, the mature citizen is only in the way. One literally feels your lust for autocratic rule. That is also seen in how the governing delegations here have whipped through the infection defense law.

           Maik Beermann (CDU/CSU): Now to your motion!

It is however not the duty of the Federal government to rule autocratically here; it is your duty to listen, consider and reach decisions which are for the welfare of this people.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): What, for example?

I think we all here are agreed that vaccinations are an important component of fighting the pandemic and on that account it is the obligation of this Federal government to make ready sufficient vaccine.

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Ach!

           Tino Sorge (CDU/CSU): Hear, hear! Entirely new tones, Herr colleague!

Yet it is also the duty of this government to respect the rights if every citizen who rejects an offer of vaccination,           

           Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): No one is forced!

and in fact on whatever grounds. Since it is simply no concern of us as parliamentarians what the citizens out there may want [Denn es geht uns als Parlamentarier einfach nichts an, was die Bürger da draussen möchten]: Whether they want to allow themselves to be vaccinated, or reject this for some reasons of health, or plain and simple do not want to.  

            Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens): It becomes ever more perfidious,                                        what you are doing here! 

We all here in parliament have no right to judge or to at all defame a so highly personal decision.

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Yet no one does!

And too when so many here do not want to hear it: It is fully legitimate to concern oneself over the risks of vaccination and to reject a vaccination date.

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Who then objects to that?

Now you will equally again say that this is not at all in question; we certainly have heard that many times. That is however nothing other than pretty words, your actions of course speak an entirely different language.

Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): Ach so! Has anyone been carried off for vaccination? Have I not been aware?

“Privileges” for the vaccinated are ever again spoken of. We ask ourselves: How is it actually now then with the non-vaccinated? Are they now outlaws?

We of the AfD Bundestag delegation have inquired of this Federal government, at various opportunities in plenary session as well as in the committees, how it will prevent a discrimination based on vaccination status. We have received no answer.

We therefore demand [Drucksachen 19/27197, 28045] of the Federal government that it prevent the discrimination of the non-vaccinated by statutory means. Briefly stated: If you before Corona without a vaccination pass could go to the cinema, you should now and in the future be able to go to the cinema without a vaccination pass. It cannot be that here the government tersely declares that restrictions of the basic rights for the vaccinated can no more be maintained, and at the same time postulate that the non-vaccinated need to continue to submit to such restrictions. Give back to the people their freedom.

It lies in the individual responsibility of each individual whether he lets himself be vaccinated or not and whether he enters into these risks or not. We therefore reject making the Corona vaccination pass the measure of all things.

Hearty thanks for your attention.

            Maria Klein-Schmeink (Greens): Such perfidious nonsense!

            Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU/CSU): The speech is not logically cohesive!

            Jan Korte (Linke): Merkel vaccinates you all!

 

[trans: tem]