What means most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable?

“The most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable” is a technique sui generis. Roland Koch invented it during the CDU campaign-funding scandal, back when he was premier minister of Hessia, a German Land. After the series of murders perpetrated by the network calling itself the “National-Socialist Underground” (NSU), many politicians have once again promised full clarification of the facts. What they failed to mention was that they, too, had “the most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable” in mind.

What does “the most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable” mean?

“The most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable” does not mean clarification of a scandalous state of affairs. It means that the way a state of affairs is clarified provides brutal insights into a society that makes such clarification possible. Roland Koch has demonstrated that he is capable of exempting not only his party’s financial shenanigans from democratic control, but entire government agencies as well. “Clarification” of the NSU murders has shown that an official of the Hessian Agency for Protection of the Constitution (German secret service) could be standing by when, on April 6, 2006, Halit Yozgat, who ran an internet cafe in the city of Kassel, was murdered. And that forty-two undercover agents could be active in the NSU milieu and pump hundreds of thousands of euros (if not more) into it in the form of informers’ salaries. And that agencies supposed to protect the constitution could conspire to make clarification impossible by shredding documents and hushing things up.

The consequences? The operatives who held, at the time, responsible posts in the Hessian Agency for Protection of the Constitution have been promoted to leadership positions. The national Agency for Protection of the Constitution has been granted additional rights, its budget has been increased by 17 million euros, and a planned three hundred more posts will be created in the agency, including that of a handsomely paid second vice-president. Impunity for crimes committed in the line of duty has been legalized. Have the perverse activities of underground agents found an end? Has parliamentary control over the agency’s operations been reinforced? Perish the thought! Involved here is, unmistakably, the most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable.[/columns]

Let us open the black box and take a look inside.

On the ninth anniversary of Yozgat’s murder, the Political Education Committee of the Berlin branch of the association “Naturfreunde” launched a campaign called “The Black Box of the Agency for Protection of the Constitution.” In the coming months, we shall be taking the predictable outcome of the NSU trial in Munich as an occasion to draw attention, on the anniversaries of various events, to state involvement in the racist murders perpetrated by the NSU. We intend to show what “the most brutal clarification of the facts imaginable” really means. For, despite all the investigating committees and the Munich trial, the assessment of official responsibility has only just begun.

Our basic assumption is that public pressure alone can help shed the necessary light on the complicity between state institutions and the NSU. For, in the past few years, all those involved have managed to disappear or else shrouded themselves in silence. When press reports showed that the Hessian Agency for Protection of the Constitution most likely knew that “something was going to happen” in Kassel on 6 April 2006, Hessia’s Prime Minister Volker Bouffier spoke of a “monstrous insinuation.” In fact, it is not the call for clarification of the facts that is “monstrous,” but, rather, the cover-up; and it is not just in Hessia that the cover-up is going on at the highest levels of governement!

We therefore call on the state to assume its responsibilities instead of denying the facts. Clarification, not cover-up! Without reservations, and not in the most brutal way imaginable!