Tag: chemnitz

No support for NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe!

Petition by Semiya Şimşek, Mandy and Michalina Boulgarides and Gamze Kubaşık
To: The Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, to the Federal Ministry of Justice, to the dropout program “EXIT”

Ten people – Enver Şimşek, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Süleyman Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar, Theodoros Boulgarides, Mehmet Kubaşık, Halit Yozgat and Michèle Kiesewetter – were murdered by the right-wing terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU).

We are the daughters of Enver Şimşek, Theodoros Boulgarides and Mehmet Kubaşık.

For us, it is a scandal that we have now learned from the media that NSU terrorist Beate Zschäpe has been accepted into an exit program for neo-Nazis.

We were there when she was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 for, among other things, ten counts of joint murder. That was just eight years ago – and now we have to witness how Beate Zschäpe is apparently being helped to keep her prison sentence as short as possible.

We have lost our loved ones and have been criminalized, ignored and abandoned by the state and society for more than a decade. Now we are being ignored again.

The alleged exit is a tactical maneuver: so far, she has not answered a single one of the more than 300 questions that we have put to Beate Zschäpe during the trial and that concern us as surviving relatives. Why were our fathers, of all people, murdered by the NSU? Who are the – still unpunished – helpers of the NSU in Saxony and at the crime scenes? Who belonged to the NSU and its network? Were there contacts to the security authorities by members of the NSU and those of the network?

A credible exit includes the disclosure of all knowledge of the perpetrators to those of us affected, our lawyers and the law enforcement authorities. Backroom talks with investigating authorities and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are not proof of an exit.

Nevertheless, the “Exit” program accepted Beate Zschäpe – without any apparent remorse, without breaking with the right-wing scene, without contributing to the investigation.

We demand:

• Immediate exclusion of Beate Zschäpe from the “Exit” program as long as she does not fully disclose what she knows.
• Clear priorities! Support the surviving dependants and survivors of the NSU’s series of murders and attacks and all victims of right-wing violence – legally, financially, psychologically and institutionally through permanent, appropriate victims’ pensions.

Why is this important?

Between 2000 and 2007, ten people were murdered by the right-wing terrorist “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) – nine of them for racist motives. They were loved ones: Fathers, husbands, sons – and a daughter. They were brutally torn from their lives. The NSU also committed three racist bomb attacks and 15 robberies.

The relatives and victims were then left alone, suspected, humiliated and silenced by the German state and society. Instead of support, they experienced years of humiliation. The police did not investigate the right-wing milieu, but rather the families of the victims and the survivors of the attacks. Homes were searched, humiliating questions were asked and the bereaved and victims were turned into suspects.

The public regarded the murdered, their families and the survivors as criminals. They could not grieve, their pain was ignored, their dignity trampled underfoot. At the same time, they were exposed to systematic institutional racism, which manifested itself in preconceived negative assumptions, discriminatory investigative practices and a fundamental mistrust of those affected.

Even after the NSU unmasked itself in 2011, the injustice did not stop: There was hardly any real clarification, numerous files were destroyed and there was no political responsibility. Instead of recognition and support, those affected once again experienced coldness, silence and rejection. Many are still struggling with the psychological, social and financial consequences to this day – without sufficient help from the state.

And now the NSU terrorist and convicted ten-time murderer Beate Zschäpe has been accepted into an exit program for neo-Nazis. A woman who has shown no real remorse to this day. Who, in her testimony in the NSU trial, gave more space to a sad Christmas due to arguments with her accomplices than to the families that were destroyed by her crimes. Beate Zschäpe has maintained contact with the right-wing scene and protects it to this day because she testifies but does not provide any information. She demonstrably lies or allegedly cannot remember. For the relatives, this is not resocialization – it is yet another betrayal.

It is unbearable: perpetrators are given perspectives, support and care – the victims and their families are not taken seriously.

A state and a society that seriously oppose right-wing extremism must no longer protect perpetrators and ignore those affected.

Justice begins with listening – and with real action.