Focus: Police state protection
Way out or way off? Democracy with dynamic protective fence
by WolfDieter Narr
Since the involvement of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (FOPC, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) in the scandal concerning the ‚NationalSocialist Underground‘ demands have been increasingly made in leftwing and leftliberal circles for the abolition of the domestic secret service. Some critics are now of the opinion that the police force, or to put it more clearly, the political police, can undertake the tasks performed until now by the FOPC, as they are better controlled and act more constitutionally. This is an obviously false conclusion. Political penal law, the essential instrument applied by the police force, has always criminalised political convictions. Linked to this are comprehensive procedural criminal and police powers for surveillance. Therefore not only the abolition of the FOPC is necessary, but also a thorough cleanup of the political penal and police laws, which are riddled with imaginary political enemies, together with a democratic reform of the police force as a whole. Summaries weiterlesen →