Markus Wagner, December 15, 2021, Right of Assembly

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/155, pp. 69-70.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

For over a year, this present law of assembly occasions statewide protests in large cities of Nordrhein-Westfalen. The last large demonstration against the law was a few weeks ago here in front of the Landtag building.

I have witnessed in four and a half years in the Landtag just so many demonstrations. What I have not seen in four and a half years was a massive police presence of the kind which was at this demonstration in front of the Landtag. The police were not there to defend the assembly from disturbances, but they were there to defend the parliament and the parliamentarians from the demonstrators. Now this is surely very interesting, since it was the demonstrators who had demonstrated against this assembly law.

Now, assemblies should actually be peaceful events since it is naturally good, right and important to be a critical citizen who openly declares his opinion in common with others at rallies and assemblies; ja, that makes up die Demokratie. It would be frightfully boring if we all had the same opinion. It is of the greatest luxury – on this account is a democracy so important – to have one’s opinion and also to be able to advocate it. Yet it is nevertheless important how this opinion is advocated. When it so happens, then please let it be peaceful and without weapons; these in any case are our value concepts.

A sad climax of the protests was that of June 26 in Düsseldorf in Oberkassel at the Rheinweisen, a Saturday. The alliance “Stop NRW Assembly Law” met there. Supporters of these alliances were, among others, the State associations of the Grünen Jugend and the Jusos NRW. The people should appear to be combative for demonstrating against the allegedly authoritarian and undemocratic draft of this assembly law; it was in any case thus in the invitation. And combative it was then; I am about to speak of that also.

Now the question is: Who there actually observed the right of freedom of assembly? With whom go the leftist next generation hopefuls of the SPD and Greens hand in hand into the street? There were, believe it or not, 42 supporter groups of these alliances which have been categorized by the Constitution Defense as extreme left – 42 extreme left organizations.

The rally was also evaluated by the Nordrhein-Westfalen Constitution Defense as an extreme left dominated mixed scene. In the public presentations, extremist positions overlapped the ostensible concerns of the protest against the law and led to the break up of the assembly.

Enemies of the state of law, violent perpetrators, brawlers, and amidst the Greens and SPD. So that we do not misunderstand: Even extremists have a right to demonstrate, yet also here the question is: How does that happen? Naturally the question needs be asked why youth organizations of democratic parties – in any case, those which designate themselves as such – knowingly go into the street in common with extremists?

The result of the event was: For 328 of the participants, criminal proceedings were determined by officials on account of crimes of violence, violations of the ban on face covering, the explosives law, etc. Certainly, democracy does not thus function. This day clearly showed that a consequential proceeding against such fanatics is required.

Extreme left violent perpetrators claim the right to freedom of assembly so as to abuse it and thereby confirm the necessity of a law of assembly. Any of those at this demonstration who directed themselves against this law have with their behavior confirmed the necessity of this law.

Frau Schäffer, you opined on the netzpolitik.org that this law treats assemblies primarily as a potential danger for public security. Know that when Greens go into the street together with extreme leftists public security is then in fact affected, since such assemblies quite obviously need be seen as a danger; this we have seen on June 26.  

You may thus be grateful to your clientele for this law. These people with their violent actions are therein implicated that such actions need be penalized and presuppositions need be created which in such a law find expression so as to be able to apply to these culpable actions.

It would actually be simpler to finally cease disturbing the peaceful demonstrations of others, as is ever readily done by the Black Block and many leftist counter-demonstrators. It would actually be simpler to cease attacking the police. It would actually be simpler to cease torching automobiles. If all this were the case, such a law would likely not be needed.

In this law is nevertheless lacking, among other things, a language regulation. Language is the most important step for integration; this we know and see in the well integrated foreigners in our country. Yet what shall it be when a demonstration takes place in a foreign language? Which effects could this have?

German is the official language in our country, which is used in social life as well as by government and administration. We understand ourselves in this language and form for ourselves our opinion, in which we with others discuss and make contact.

An assembly in the sense of Art. 8, paragraph 1, of the Basic Law is a local meeting of many persons for the purpose of a community discussion and announcement, with the goal of participation in the public formation of opinion.  So far as assemblies are not held in German, it is by all means to be feared that participants who do not speak the language employed are not able to participate in the formation of opinion. This minority needs to be thought of; their desire for formation of opinion is to be protected.

 

Still more important however is that it can also not be excluded that statements counter to the free, democratic basic order or on a complexity of criminal offense may be come upon. Here the police would be requested to immediately intervene.

If however no one among the police understands the statements concerned, this can have destructive consequences. Thus, for example, can violent confrontations arise. So as to counter this, a translator needs to be named who simultaneously translates the assembly. The leadership of the assembly has to bear the cost of commissioning the translator.

We have presented a comprehensive motion to amend [Drucksache 17/16057] which names some of the details; inter alia is there also regulated the question of language at assemblies and the mission of the translator.

Ladies and gentlemen, the right of assembly is a very lofty good. The AfD defends it wherever it goes and of course in peace. This is the only way to in fact maintain our right of assembly.

I thank you.   

 

[trans: tem]

 

Markus Wagner, August 10, 2021, Pandemic

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/138, pp. 20-22.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. Colleagues.

            “Let the pandemic run. Treat it like a flu.”

This sentence, ladies and gentlemen, is not some demonstration motto of German Querdenker; no, it is Bild’s approving headline on Denmark’s Corona policy.

After England’s Freedom Day and Sweden’s anti-lockdown, we now learn that almost all of Denmark’s Corona preventive measures have been abolished. Even masks in the streets are scarcely to be seen.

The Welt writes:

The Danes very early submitted an opening plan. Since June, people need wear no masks; from September, the clubs shall be open and the schools again operate normally.

It is Sören Riis Paludan, professor of virology at the University of Aarhus, who spoke precisely this sentence in the left-liberal newspaper The Politician: “Let the pandemic run, treat it like a flu.”

For the German discourse, that clearly sounds provocative. Yet what he means is not to equate the flu with Corona, but to manage it with the art and ways of viral illnesses.

Further: More than 90% of the endangered population, said to be groups at risk, have been vaccinated. It is therefore no catastrophe if school children are infected. We should no longer, Herr Kutschaty, send home entire classes because one, single student tested positive. That is not proportionate.

For once, the German numbers: The German Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases since March 2020 includes in a register children and youths who have been treated for reasons of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Up to March 2, 2021, that was approximately 1,400 children and youth. 71 young patients need be treated in intensive-care stations. Eight have died, of whom three on account of other illnesses were already found to be in a palliative situation. For a total of four children was Covid-19 identified as a cause of death. Four children are much too many – here we all clearly agree – ; nevertheless, four children out of 14 million children in Germany, that is 0.00002%. For whom cannot correctly conceive of 0.00002%, 0.00002% of 100,000 euros is two cents, ladies and gentlemen.

Those facts on the state of the Danish discussion of Corona, which we here in this country to some extent at times read of prominently in Bild and Welt, yet which otherwise fall under the table as “accidental”, are the scientific basis for the decision of – now get a good grip, dear colleagues – the social democratic government of Denmark.

Dear colleagues of the SPD, what then now actually are your Danish party friends for you? Are they Nazis, are they Covidiots, or are they all aluminum hats? Social democratic Denmark now follows social democratic Sweden. And the only party in Germany which thinks along this line is not those of you in the SPD; it is certainly not Herren Laschet and Söder; it is also not the FDP which has diligently voted for every lockdown; it is the AfD.

The world is plainly still a bit more complex than your “black-white panic mode.”

Yet then we are not quite so alone. “This Corona policy is wrong” headlines Germany’s largest newspaper.

And further:

“The Federal government’s Corona policy has nothing more to do with reality! For a year and a half, the government tells us its preventive measures are working and openings are dangerous. Both are false. The government asserts that Sweden’s Corona course has failed.

The fact is: For a year, the Swedish mortality curve runs parallel to the German, with the distinct difference that Germany was in lockdown for six months, yet Sweden not a single day.

Yet nearly everything with which the government frightens us was in reality completely disproved; that they simply continue to do so harms Germany.”

Ladies and gentlemen, it does not get more clear.

With the exception of particular persons like Wolfgang Kubicki who however does not have the FDP behind him, or Sahra Wagenknecht who the Linke forthwith wish to exclude, Hubert Aiwanger who the Frei Wähler want to remove, or Boris Palmer who has an expulsion proceeding of the Greens running against him, these are insights which unfortunately will plainly be admitted by only one party, by us of the AfD.

Herr Laschet, the morning’s press will be submitted to you. I really ask myself: Don’t you actually read it? Does it not impress you? Or have you simply not the guts to commit yourself to measure, mean and reason? You now come here with a five-point plan which wants to prolong the epidemic situation.

“The prolongation of the epidemic situation is however no question of free, political judgment, but is tied to the criteria of the Infection Protection Act.”

Public law professor Josef Lindner says this, and he is therewith naturally right.

And Professor Kingreen quite clearly says:

The prolongation on a chance suspicion with regards the Bundestag election and the following time is an inappropriate consideration which may play no role. That would be highly actionable. Restrictions of basic rights cannot be made dependent upon the policy’s ability to act.

Ladies and gentlemen, for over 16 months it is thus. In the beginning, we had given you an advance of trust. It was understandable that it was not immediately known how to deal with Corona. But then you first put forward an unconstitutional Corona law, with whoa and gee [hü und hott] assented to masks with which those of the CDU have made a mint, and then you slither like an electric eel through the country, first on account of an inter-party election fight – due to the intra-CDU elections – and then in your impotence vis-à-vis Söder, Merkel and Spahn.

You toss the dice – this you must concede – with utterly unscientific incidence numbers, and establish in the morning verbose, nonsensical national lockdowns which you then in the afternoon again take back. That was really a memorable day here in the parliament, ladies and gentlemen.

It is however actually inexcusable: Instead of protecting the at-risk groups, as we had again and again demanded, which in 16 months made up 80,000 of the 90,000 deaths, you send all into one lockdown after the next. Yet now instead of finally getting out of this total madness, you remain, Herr Laschet, only in nuances better than Söder and Spahn on the playing field of demonstrably false premises and guidelines which want to exclude from the buying of bread those non-vaccinated people who yet have tested negative.

…

Ladies and gentlemen, since the Federal government replied in writing to inquiries that they do not know which preventive measures had helped or not, I want in concluding to again peek at Denmark. Lately, – so writes the Welt – the vaccination campaign is not the decisive difference between the two countries. Denmark is here not decisively far ahead of the Federal Republic. It is the fundamental political decision of how at an agreed point to prioritize the vaccination campaign. When is the point reached at which the opening is foremost, and no longer the restriction?

CDU, SPD, Greens and FDP do not muster this political will. They have stubbornly attached themselves to a completely characteristic lockdown logic. With them, logic is in long-term lockdown.

Instead of ever further inciting the people one against the other, children against the old, non-vaccinated against vaccinated, Corona winners against Corona losers, it would be better to finally put more money into the research of medicines with which to have serious developments treated.

There nevertheless also always belongs to life a known measure of risk. We need again to learn not to look at risk exclusively in a panic. And we need finally to undertake an overall view: How harmful are the side-effects of the Corona preventive measures in regards other illnesses – for education, for the economy? The hitherto one-sidedness of viewpoint is a regression for our way of living.

But our way of living is no longer negotiable. Our basic rights are no longer negotiable. And, Herr Laschet, our freedom is no longer negotiable.

I thank you.

 

[trans: tem]