Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy

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The Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy is a German civil rights organization founded in 1980 by Andreas Buro , Wolf-Dieter Narr , Roland Roth , Klaus Vack and Hanne Vack , among others . The committee advocates the observance of fundamental and civil rights .

Self-image

According to its own self-image, the committee advocates defending fundamental rights and democracy through “an active, contentious, courageous and civilly disobedient commitment”. The committee belongs to the network peace cooperative.

history

Some of the later founders of the committee organized the “3. International Russell Tribunal “on the situation of human rights in the Federal Republic of Germany. The first Russell Tribunal in London in 1966/67, as the international tribunal to investigate US war crimes in the Vietnam War, attracted great press attention in Europe. The follow-up event in the Federal Republic, however, met with little public response overall.

Various initiators of the Russell Tribunal decided to found the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, which, after questioning fundamental rights practice, was intended to provide a permanent platform. In the years after its founding, the committee also dealt intensively with questions of civil disobedience using the example of the peace movement's blockade actions against the stationing of US medium-range missiles. Internationally, the struggle for human rights in El Salvador , the massacres in East Timor and the advocacy of the rights of total objectors to military and community service shaped the first decades of the committee's work.

aims

The goals of the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy are “developing a human and civil rights policy approach” and “developing the theory and practice of a human rights strategy”. In contrast to the Humanist Union , for example , which mainly represents civil rights positions in publications and in hearings in the Bundestag or the state parliaments, the committee sends observers to the scenes of possible violations of the law and examines individual cases of asylum and deportation practices as well as the fairness of criminal proceedings with a political background. In addition to statements on the restrictions on fundamental rights diagnosed by the committee, such as the great eavesdropping , online searches or tightening of the right to demonstrate, and on the practice of the right to asylum, the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy supported the complaints against the controversial Aviation Security Act before the Federal Constitutional Court . The self-image of the committee is non-partisan, radical democratic and pacifist. Because of its support for the resistance to the 1987 census , the committee, like the Humanist Union , Young Democrats and Young Socialists, was observed by the Lower Saxony Office for the Protection of the Constitution in 1986 , until this was prohibited by an administrative court judgment.

The supporters and authors of the committee included Inge Aicher-Scholl , Ingeborg Drewitz , Dorothee Sölle , Ingrid Kurz-Scherf and Michael Th. Greven .

Actions and projects

Examples of practical initiatives of the committee are the meetings held annually since 1994 by young people from war and tension areas. So far, more than 22,000 young people from Bosnia-Herzegovina (1994 and 1995), Kosovo (1999), Macedonia (2001), Israel and Palestine (since 2002) have come under the motto " Vacation from War " for joint holidays and peace seminars under protected conditions Germany and third countries together. Young Bosnians and Serbs, Albanians, Roma and Serbs or Israelis and Palestinians should learn to get to know the supposed "enemies" as people and their interests as legitimate, whereby the real conflicts could not be ignored, but possible conflict solutions could be worked on in simulations. “Holidays from War” was awarded the “ Stuttgart Peace Prize ” and the “ Mount Zion Award ” in 2003 , the Panter Prize of the taz (2005) and the Erich Mühsam Prize (2007).

Publications

The Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, together with other civil rights organizations, publishes the annual Fundamental Rights Report . The yearbooks of the committee deal with key topics such as the area of ​​tension between human rights policy and international law (2007). The spectrum of topics ranges from the criticism of “security laws” to the support of the blockade actions in Mutlangen, which ultimately led to the Federal Constitutional Court's revision of the case law on sit-ins. But also new elements of direct democracy, the legal safeguarding of autonomous women's shelters or the discussion of the question of whether the life sentence is compatible with the human dignity of the Basic Law are topics on which the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy has written articles. With so-called "Citizens' Information", which is addressed directly to the public in large numbers, the "Committee" takes action on issues such as "Census Boycott" (1987), the threatened abolition of the right to asylum (1993), the war in Yugoslavia (1994), or the US intervention in Iraq (2004) and the question of Germany's further military engagements in Afghanistan (2007).

Organizational form

The committee is organized in the form of a non-profit association that initiates and is responsible for its activities through a working committee and the board of directors. Heiner Busch (Bern) and Michael Hiller (Mannheim) form the executive board. A secretariat based in Cologne coordinates and organizes the work of the committee.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy
  2. ^ Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy on the website of the peace cooperative
  3. ^ Founding declaration according to the committee's homepage
  4. ^ Yearbooks of the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy 1983–1988
  5. ↑ Yearbook 1986, p. 434
  6. ^ Processes, Journal for Citizens' Rights and Social Policy 91 , January 1988
  7. ^ Article in the yearbooks of the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy 1983-88
  8. ↑ Falco Werkentin in the committee yearbook 1986 , p. 17 ff.
  9. ^ Solidarite sans frontieres. Retrieved August 6, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy, Staff & Structure Accessed on August 6, 2020.