Stefan Keuter, January 27, 2022, Ukraine

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll, 20/14, p. 885.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Let us together take a time trip to the year 1962: At that time, the American President Kennedy threatened the Soviet Union with a third world war should it station atomic weapons in Cuba – practically at the front door of the U.S.A. If you ask me, he was right to do that. Why did he do that? The security interests of the United States were massively threatened.

Let us go a good thirty years further, to the year 1999: Poland, Czechia and Hungary joined NATO. A few years later, 2004 to 2007, followed Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Roumania.

            Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Because their security interests were threatened.

Let us for once consider the relation between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine; in the post-Soviet time, it is shaped by skirmishing over gas and the Crimea. Let us speak of the Crimea. For 180 years, it was Russian; it was russified after it had been conquered from the Ottomans. In 1954, Khrushchev, by an administrative act – it was then about the construction of a railway – attached the Crimea to the Ukraine. Since then, the Crimea twice sought to return to Russia: In 1994, and lately in 2014 in a referendum in which almost 97 percent of the population of Crimea voted for annexation to Russia. International law provided various possibilities of evaluation; yet in that regard, our Foreign Minister will likely be able to say a bit more.

What alarms me is this propaganda against Russia, indeed in the media, in politics and before all things in this sovereign house, in the Bundestag. We need only to have listened to our previous speakers so as to notice that here an unspeakable rhetoric deals with threatening scenarios of war and the suspension of gas deliveries. On this front [Horn] also pushes the ambassador of Ukraine, Melnyk, who today is a guest in this house. I am happy, Herr Melnyk, that I can also thus say to you: The demand for weapons we Germans cannot fulfill, and your unspeakable war-mongering I can only condemn. You insult Germany, you draw unworthy comparisons with German history, with national socialism. Frau Baerbock, under your predecessors such an ambassador would have been called in and a state secretary would have conducted a very protracted conversation with him.

Yet there are also other tones. Vice Admiral Schönbach recently stated that Russia wants eye-to-eye respect and also deserves it, that war is absolute nonsense, that the Crimea is gone and would never again return. I say to you, ladies and gentlemen: This officer is not only right, he has pluck.

To whose use is this escalation on the border in the Ukraine, cui bono? The U.S.A. uses the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a means of pressure. Germany should sacrifice its own interests for foreign interests. We may look at the 2014 EU sanctions for which the U.S.A. quite ably clamored. Those suffering are primarily Russia with a business loss of 36 billion U.S. dollars, followed by Germany – a disparity beyond all other European states together – with 23 billion U.S. dollars. With these sanctions, we carve our own flesh and this must stop.

The U.S. economy besides in this same time frame has made a gain in this business. A conclusion to this is needed. The Ukraine requires a solution, a solution which considers on one side the interests of the Ukraine yet also on the other side the security interests of the Russian Federation as well. We have just heard it, and here I grant you are right: There is to be no peace without Russia. Allow me to draw one conclusion. There is no war, no war threatens. No gas shortage threatens. We need to take seriously the security interests of Russia since this also suits world peace.

Many thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

Alice Weidel, January 26, 2022, Vaccination Obligation

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/13, pp. 825-826.

Right honorable Frau President. Valued ladies and gentlemen.

Our country stands on the threshold of an unexampled fall from grace. The intention to introduce a general vaccination obligation against the Corona virus is an attack on freedom and human dignity and on the basic right to bodily inviolability.

The vaccination obligation is an authoritarian run-amok against the foundation of our democratic and legal basic order. When the state presumes to decide over the bodies of its citizens, that is an elementary breach of civilization. It is a tragedy that we at all need to speak of it. There is no justification for a Corona vaccination obligation, whether it be for all or for specific groups of the population, neither medical, nor ethical, nor legal.

A vaccination obligation against an illness which presents no life-endangering threat for more than 99 percent of the people, with a vaccine which reliably protects neither from infection nor from transmission of the antigen, is absurd. To require and to compel people to a vaccination is therefore an unheard of overstepping of boundaries. The vaccination obligation is unconstitutional and disproportionate.

There are other reasonable and purposeful ways to uphold healthcare; for example, in which the health ministers in the Bund and States do their job and provide for proper working conditions, decent pay and more personnel in the clinics.

The vaccination obligation is also not enforceable. Of that warn the panel doctors, of that warns the officials’ union, of that warns the Gesamtmetall employers association. How do you want to actually compel millions of citizens who do not want to let themselves be vaccinated? With fines and coercive detention? How do you imagine that? Thus, our advice to you is: Do not only listen to the pharmaceutical lobbyists but also listen to the practitioners in this country!

            Kathrin Vogler (Linke): You certainly know about pharmaceutical lobbyists!

Yet you also know that the vaccination obligation, the forced vaccination, is wrong. Before the election you yourselves still spoke quite otherwise, Herr Scholz and Herr Lindner. The vaccination obligation is not least primarily a gigantic election fraud, a scandalous breach of trust. Of that are we speaking here.

You cling to the vaccination obligation because you have got yourselves stuck, stuck in a politics of paternalism and deprivation of rights. Two years of rigid Corona policy built on false numbers, manipulated statistics and contradictory asseverations have thoroughly squashed your credibility.

You have covered the country with crippling rules and regulations and a Kafkaesque Corona bureaucracy which drive the citizens to despair. Your attempt to introduce a de facto vaccination obligation by means of senseless and arbitrary 2G and 3G rules has already deeply divided the society.

            Claudia Moll (SPD): Nein, you divide!

Primarily children and youth suffer under the destruction of their social environment which these rules and regulations inflict upon them. There must be an end to this torment.

You have in this regard empowered an authority, the Robert Koch Institute, to continue overnight and at discretion to curtail millions of people in their rights with one-sided alterations of these rules. The citizens rightly perceive as an insult that arbitrary decisions calculated in the Bundestag, such as the limitation of the recovered status, should only apply with mitigation. All men are equal, some are more equal – you have thereby in other respects unintentionally and fully disclosed what you really make of the people out there.

And now already is perceived that the vaccination obligation railroaded by you ruins livelihoods in the area of medicine and nursing, inflicts an occupation ban on engaged skilled labor and only intensifies the crisis in this sector. Thus come out of your bunker mentality! Open the window! Look at Europe, at what is happening here!

In England, little by little, the Corona restrictions fall away; not despite of but on account of Omicron; the same in Denmark. In Spain, the virus in the future will be treated just as a normal flu. In Czechia, the planned vaccination obligation for elders and specific occupation groups is again cashiered; it of course proved to be a flop.

And stop disparaging the citizens who in this great protest movement in the history of our country express their opinion. Take this opinion seriously and finally abolish these nonsensical and discriminatory rules, and fully and thoroughly. Spare us the vaccination obligation, condemned to failure, for hospitals and nursing homes. Right yourself, before it is too late! We beg that of you.

We need to live with the virus. Freedom and self-responsibility are the key. Each must be able to freely decide for himself whether he wants to protect himself by means of a vaccination or in another art and way. Therefore, for God’s sake, hands off the vaccination obligation!

I am grateful.

            (Members of the AfD rise.)

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joachim Wundrak, January 14, 2022, Bundeswehr in Iraq

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/12, p. 781.

Frau President. Thank you for the word and the friendly introduction. – Frau Minister Baerbock. Frau Minister Lambrecht. Ladies and gentlemen.

We all in this house certainly agree that decisions for a mission of the armed forces require especial care so that these do not infringe upon not only the protection of the soldiers committed but also upon constitution and international law.

As was already heard, ISIS in 2014 assumed control over a large territory in Iraq and in Syria. Since the beginning of 2015, Germany supports the fight against ISIS by means of the training and equipment of Iraqi armed forces. Following the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015, Germany decided to also support the International Alliance against ISIS by means of the commitment of military aircraft. Like some here in house, I still remember the heated discussions over the international legal evaluation after combat aircraft were put into action over Syria, naturally without the invitation of the Syrian government. Out of consideration for international law, the AfD delegation has thus rejected previous motions.

Yet the Green delegation also – we have already heard it – voted against this mission and went even distinctly further in their criticism. Their present State Secretary Frau Minister Baerbock designated the previous mandate as illegal. I indeed do not know whether it originates in international law, but there was criticism that one cannot clearly and distinctly read in the United Nations resolution that a mission in Syria was justified. The mission also does not correspond to the guidelines of the Federal Constitutional Court. It is in fact the sole foreign mission of the Bundeswehr in a coalition which does not take place within the scope of the EU, NATO or the United Nations.

The “Islamic State” meanwhile controls, unlike in 2015, no more territory in Iraq and in Syria. The infringement of Syrian air space is thus today still more difficult to justify than at that time. The Minister nevertheless requests in her motion today a vote in favor so that the Bundeswehr can continue to support the air missions of other states over Syria. This, according to your motions, shall occur by means of air refueling, air space surveillance, reconnaissance and the passing along of acquired information. The disgruntlement concerning this stirred up in your delegation and in the SPD is understandable. On the other hand, the mandate for the training of Iraqi armed forces, in any case included in your motion, is fundamentally sensible and agreeable. We also welcome the intention, repeatedly demanded by us, of a successive evaluation of the mission. You should not combine into one motion and into one mandate these two missions based on fully distinct international law – on one side, training; on the other side, a fight against ISIS by armed means.  

You should give the parliament the opportunity to advise on two separate mandates, as was once demanded by the FDP. This would also build a bridge to many parliamentarians in your delegation and in the SPD – an SPD which indeed already today plans for the withdrawal from the mandate in nine months.

To make it brief: The AfD delegation cannot agree to your motion in this form.

I am grateful for your attention.

 

[trans: tem]