GDR Committee for Human Rights

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The GDR Committee for Human Rights was a social organization in the GDR from 1959 to 1990.

history

On May 21, 1959, the committee for the protection of human rights against militaristic arbitrariness and class justice in West Germany was founded on the initiative of the federal executive committee of the FDGB . The occasion was the arrests of GDR citizens in the Federal Republic and trials of members of the KPD, which was banned in 1956 . The committee stood up for these people in a legal, humanitarian and political way. On October 23, 1959, it was renamed the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights . On May 21, 1969, it was renamed the GDR Committee for Human Rights .

Another focus of the activity was the support of the political struggle of liberation movements in Africa , the Middle East , Latin America and other countries against human rights violations. The committee campaigned for the release of the American communist Angela Davis , the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile Luis Corvalán , the chairman of the ANC Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners.

Furthermore, it was committed to the admission of the GDR as an equal member in the UN . After the admission in 1976 it was the official representative of the GDR at international conferences on the subject of human rights. The committee represented the official policy of the GDR with regard to human rights, which had implemented social security and material benefits for the population such as the right to work, housing, free medical care and others.

There were almost no areas of contact with the independent human rights groups that emerged in the GDR in the 1980s.

Siegfried Forberger (25.8.1925–31.1.2019) was secretary of the committee from 1959 to 1989. Friedel Apelt chaired the committee from May 1959 to 1989 .

On January 4, 1990, the committee disbanded and re-established itself as the German League for Human Rights in the GDR . On January 5, 1991, it was renamed the German League for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights eV and dissolved in 1995.

literature

  • Siegfried Forberger: The GDR Committee for Human Rights . Typescript, 1994–2000 ( chapter overview )
  • Elrun Dolatowski (edit.): GDR Committee for Human Rights. Font directory . Federal Archives Berlin 2011 ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Dowe, Karlheinz Kuba: FDGB-Lexikon - function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945-1990). Ed .: Manfred Wilke. Breslau 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 , pp. Entry Frieda (Friedel) Malter .