René Springer, November 10, 2022, International Rights

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, pp. 7696-7697.

Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

Mention was already made of the ratification of the 2008 facultative protocols – it is already some time here – for the international pact on economic, social and cultural rights.

I am irritated that the two preceding speakers have made reference to Qatar. Human rights in Qatar are nevertheless not so protected that we here today are to ratify this treaty.

            Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (Greens): I spoke of Germany!

That lies in the hands of Qatar. And Qatar has not ratified this treaty. I would wish that you not tell such nonsense to those who are watching. That is completely misleading.

What shall this facultative protocol make possible? A grievance procedure will be contrived for individuals and groups which, subsequent to the exhaustion of national state legal means, will have the opportunity to lodge a grievance at a UN committee if they feel themselves violated in their rights. Individual persons and groups? What are groups? NGOs, that is nevertheless clear. Here is an NGO law. Here, it is about that once again will be created for NGOs the possibility by means of international organizations to execute an attack upon the national states. That is the actual aim. – At least you applaud honestly.

We of the Alternative für Deutschland always put forward two questions: A law has which uses, and which risks proceed from a law? What are uses of this? In a two-fold sense: None. The rights dealt with here which have been defined in the 1973 international pact on economic, social and cultural rights – which was ratified – are guaranteed and protected in Germany. No one here present would assert that these rights are stepped on in Germany.  

            Kai Whittaker (CDU/CSU): Yet you assert it every day!

Thus we therefore do not need this law. Beyond that, it is a duty of the lawmaker to adjust to where a need for regulation exists. And we are the lawmakers and not some international organization distant from our states.

            Götz Frömming (AfD): That is so!

Beyond that, risks proceed from this law if we ratify it. What will happen is that NGOs will make Germany laughable before the United Nations where, for example, limitations of rights are made a theme in the sense that they are certainly not limitations of rights if it is meant seriously. I even see already some sort of crazy gender association which then brings complaint before the United Nations that here there are no toilets for the fourth gender.

            Manuel Gava (SPD): That is precisely the aim!

That is nevertheless to where this law leads. We do not want precisely that. We do not want that a UN committee decides over what is here law and statute.

            Stephan Stracke (CDU/CSU): That is just not right!

You say: What is happening here is not legally binding, it is only soft law. – Yet the fact nevertheless is that soft law very quickly becomes hard law,

            Stephan Stracke (CDU/CSU): Now he’s on “soft law”. It’s just nonsense!

by which of course national courts in regards their decisions draw upon that decision of the next higher level for an interpretation.

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

Thereby is national law nevertheless again at an end

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): That is pitiful!

and that we reject.     

We reject the left-green Agenda which pursues just one goal:

Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion.

To soften up the national state and democracy for an attack by international organizations.

I am grateful for the attention.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): Good night!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tobias Peterka, November 10, 2022, Ukraine War Tribunal

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, pp. 7679-7680.

Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.

The motion put forward by the CDU ascribes to nothing less that the enforcement of justice and cites nothing less than a judgement of the Nuremberg process. This determined, courageous leap, here well attempted, however clearly falls short, and even immediately in the second paragraph of the text which meekly yields on what is here proposed.  

Yes, put forward is a Russian war of sudden aggression according to articles 1 and 3 of the corresponding definition of the United Nations. No one disputes that and no one wants to sugar-coat that. Yet the so-called security of world peace will now be assigned, according to article 24 of the UN Charter, to the helplessly outdated construct of the Security Council in which Russia possesses a right of veto. We all the more cannot proceed at the much too late established International Criminal Court; since there, China and Russia have, by definition with the U.S.A. as three similar veto powers, withdrawn themselves from trouble. The U.S.A. would even be prepared to liberate its own citizens from the Hague by means of a commando mission.

Thence now this apparent solution of a dilemma by a special tribunal: What of its apparent value shall exactly, legally lead to where? The tribunal for Yugoslavia was at the time validated by the Security Council and thereby found itself entirely within the executive power [Vollzug] of the UN Charter. That will plainly not work here, since Russia is against it. Thus a court beneath the actual level of the UN, sustained by a pair of intermediary powers? Certain actions can be internationally represented if that is wanted, yet to completely ignore fundamental, real factors – that seldom leads to success and always damages one’s own credibility.

Clearly, this special tribunal would initially not directly and substantially affect us as do the economic sanctions. Yet wherefore then have we in the West lauded and spread with gusto the principle of world law? Would it not be much more honest to deliberate the elaboration of war crimes in the Ukraine directly before national courts? Naturally in regards to both warring parties. The cooperation problem then would not be pettier and, all the same, not all perpetrators would be in custody.

One thing however is definitely presumptuous: To believe we could, by means of a tribunal decision, direct the president of an atomic power. The only two instances of who would be in a position to direct Putin are the Russian oligarchs and the Russian people. Whether these consider doing that is however their decision alone.

The presently proposed special tribunal would be a nice-looking covering

            Vice-president Aydan Özoğuz: Please come to a conclusion, Herr colleague.

without effective content, the proverbial Potemkin village. We should not erect that. We should preferably leave that to others.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

  

 

Petr Bystron, November 10, 2022, Germany and China

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, p. 7578.

Right honorable Herr President. Dear colleagues.

The CDU/CSU has now suddenly discovered the term “sovereignty” and feels that the German sovereignty is threatened by China. Quite honestly, I ask myself: What is the cause of that? We in Germany for 50 years have the best of relations with China. It was German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel who was the first to travel to China, a year before Kissinger, and took up diplomatic relations with China. We have profited from that. Nothing of that has changed other than that the U.S.A. now has chosen China for its enemy. And now here you are in the wake of the Americans and want to build up China as a threat.     

Herr Wadephul, you have even interjected: Hamburg, critical infrastructure! How laughable is this argument! Here, China wants to purchase not even 25 percent of one terminal – not of a harbor but of one terminal – and you puff that up into a threat to the sovereignty of Germany! COSCO has participations in ten such harbors in Europe: 100 percent in Greece, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in Spain over 51 percent. Is the sovereignty of these countries in any way threatened? Of course not! That is complete nonsense, what you have told here!

            Andreas Beck (AfD): Keiner klatscht!

We are an export nation. We produce goods which we export to all the world. And we need goods which we must import. China is our largest trade partner; you know that exactly as well as do we.  

Our German firms besides do the same: Hapag-Lloyd has ten participations in harbors in the entire world, Fraport in ten airports in the entire world; in an airport in Shanghai even with 50 percent. We need the trade, we need the exchange of goods, and that which we claim for ourselves in foreign countries we must also make possible for our partners here in Germany.

Besides, it is your colleagues in the CDU and the CSU who rejoice over China’s investments in Germany. It is, for one, Hendrik Wüst, CDU Minister-president in Nordrhein-Westphalen, who praises the cooperation in the area of the Silk Road. Your CSU colleague has certainly praised the KUKA investments. And if you look at the results: KUKA last year celebrated the second-best year in its history. That is the result of good cooperation between China and Germany.  

            Gyde Jensen (FDP): Yes, that makes Xi Jinping happy!

Let us remain at Duisburg. The railroad terminal there, a junction of the Silk Road, is highly praised. In that regard, there is great competition. The Chinese are investing 100 billion dollars in the Silk Road infrastructure. The Poles say: We would gladly have this junction in Poland. – In Germany, of course, the railway infrastructure is already so decayed that no secure transport is possible. That, dear Herr Wadephul, is the fault of your CDU colleagues, your transportation ministers from Wissmann to Andi Scheuer of the CSU.

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): There is still lacking “16 years”.

The best example is the Transrapid, a German leading technology which we wanted to construct here in Germany. Your colleague Wissmann and the Bavarian Minister-president

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): Now we are even in the ‘90s!

–  2008 that was, since you have buried it. Instead, the technology was sold to China. The Transrapid now runs in Shanghai, and the successor to this train, built by the Chinese, runs at 620 kilometers per hour.  

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): What has that to do with strategic sovereignty?

All of us here could thus go from Munich to Berlin in an hour and we need not bother with the continual delays of the Deutschen Bahn or the Berlin-Brandenburg disaster airport.

Dear colleagues, the Chinese are not the greatest threat for Germany, the greatest threat for Germany is you, the politicians, who in the last years have driven this country into the wall.

Thank you.

 

[trans: tem]