TOWARDS THE EUROPEAN "SECURITY" STATE: THE GERMAN VERSION
The more law and order you promise, the greater era your chances of winning elections.
The German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther has learned the lesson, just as his conservative colleagues, Charles Pasqua in France, and Michael Howard in Britain.
"Internal security" is certain to become the leading issue in Germany's important election year 1994. Earlierthis yearthe Christian Democrats successfully pushed through a crucial change of German asylum policies, amounting to the de facto abolition by constitutional amendment of the right f asylum guaranteed by the country's post war constitution. In a populist public campaign Social-Democrats and Liberals opposed to the new legislation were accused of endangering Germany's internal stability by obstructing the governments efforts to deal with mounting xenophobic violence caused, as the Christian Democrat hardliners put it, by the "uncontrolled immigration" of ever more "bogus refugees". The Social Democrats and the Liberals, considering the great popularity oft calls for tough action on foreigners, quickly abandoned their resistance to the amendment.
By doing so, they both lost a lot of credibility among their traditional voters and nonetheless appeared as the brake blocks of the government's attempts to protect law and order.
No wonder then. that Mr. Kohl's Christian Democrats are determined to further take advantage of the opposition's disarray. Once again, they are calling for the abolition of constitutional rights, this time under the pretext of combatting organised crime and extremist violence; once again the Liberals and Social-Democrats who are timidly opposing the reforms, are presented as brake blocks, if not a security risk. and once again, everything indicates. that the hardliners will have their way. While stressing the social and economical problems at the root of crime, the Social Democrat Party is no longer opposed to the "big eavesdropping attack" and has hastily presented its own "security" proposals. Within the Liberal Party too, hardliners are gaining ground. Chancellor Kohl will have no problem in making clearthat, while opposition lacks imagination an decisiveness, his government is taking action.
Meanwhile, the question, whether crime is realty at the root of peoples' growing sense of insecurity, is left unanswered.
In Germany. as elsewhere, "the 'fair-weather democracy' is coming to its end", Hans Adoif notes in an article on the internal security issue in the 1994 elections (Geheim 2/93). In the developing "two thirds societies", "distribution strugglesare increasinglyfought out with criminal energy rather than by elbowingW. Adolf points out at statements published by experts of the US "World Future Society' predicting a massive increase in crime and a sustained boom for private security industry."
According to opinion polls, 70 per cent of western Germans and 90 per cent of eastern Germans feel personally threatened by violent crime. This growing sense of threat is however not really confirmed by statistics. It is true. that the number of offences in Germany has risen from 2.5 million (only Westem Germany) in 1973 to 6.1 million in 1992 (united Germany), but the increase is really signficant only in the field of property, drug-related, tax and white collar crime.
According to the Internationale Liga fur Menschenrechte (ILM: German section of the International Federation of Human Rights), the manifest boom for populist "security" policies has other reasons: In times of crisis and insecurity, "big" politics make no exception. They react with helplessness and paralysis and are in need of new enemies. As the concrete threat scenarios and enemy patterns of the past, such as the "Red Army Faction terrorists" and the "communist threat", no longer exist, new "enemies" have to be found, in order to unite people behind the government.
Thus, asylum seekers, forQigners, and last but not least, a phenomenon as anonymous as "organised crime", are presented as the new threats requiring the people's allegiance to the government and the introduction of measures of generalised surveillance which in truth are safeguards aiming at the preventive control of social tensions expected in the event of a further aggravated economic situation.
No serious effort has been made so far, to define "organised crime" legally. Thus. the use of the farreaching new executive powers for security authorities risks to spread far beyond the limits they have officially been conceived for. As a matter of fact, all criminal acts planned or committed by more than one person can be considered as "organised".
The ILM is very critical about a general tendency to characterise "organised crime" as a phenomenon at the margins of economic life. "Organised crime", it stresses, is not a problem mainly related to the "filthy" business of drug pushers, car thieves and smugglers, as the hardliners of "internal security" pretend, but an integrated function of free market world-economy governed by the free movement of goods, services and capital. And the CDU's and the BKA's finding that "the pursuit of profit is the motor of organised crime" draws the ILM's amused comment: "It is a paradox of history, that here the CDU and the allegedly dead Karl Marx arrive at the same analysis".
In the view of the ILM. the fact that "legal and illegal business can no longer clearly be distinguished" is at the root of the problem with defining "organised crime". The "shadow zone" between legality and illegality is steadily spreading and under a regime of ever more tough competidon "even large legal companies constantly violate national and international law (legislation on environment, taxes, competition, arms exportations, etc.), when competitive privileges and cost/benefd calculations require this".
The Siemens corporation and money-laundering Swiss banks as the main and most dangerous perpetrators of "organised crime"? The question does not seem to have caused sleepless nights in the ranks of Mr. Kanther.
Constitutional rights under police reservation
The ILM is of the opinion that the noisy quarrel between "hawks" and "doves" among security politicians about the "big eavesdropping attack" amounts to throwing dust in peoples' eyes, as police investigators and secret service men have been using such practices for many years. For the ILM, "security laws are laws confirming a Iawless practice".
It is true that weakening constitutional guarantees is nothing new in Germany. Since 1974, such safeguards have been constantly restricted to the sole advantage of prosecution. Yet, this development was limited to criminal law and procedure, and to police law. According to the ILM, the really new element in Mr. Kanther's programme is, that from now on, even genuine constitutional law is to be subjected to reservation by police requirements.
The long standing police practice of extending criminal investigation to non-suspects by the use of proactive surveillance, data-matching and "drag-net" search, as well as telephone tapping, is now to be exempted from any possible constitutional barriers. Oncethis has happened, nothing will prevent the ever more extensive use of such measures.
In a "thesis paper on internal security" the liberal party, FDP, recalls one of the holy values of liberalism: "As a principle, the liberal constitutional state views its citizens as law abiding and not as a potential security risk". The solemnity of this profession fatally reminds one of a commemorative service.
Indeed, FDP, a junior partner in Helmut Kohl's coalition government, does not appear to be keen to go on war against the CDU/CSU's populist hardliners.
"Anybody who wants more control, must also be willing to accept being more put under surveillance himself", it says in the FDP's paper. Another way for telling the voters: OK! You want it, we'll do it. But don't forget that we warned you!
N.B.