„I believe (…) that civilisation is only a very thin blanket that peels off very quickly.“ That’s how Fritz Bauer put it in a nutshell, and in times of Trump, Erdogan, Putin and the AfD, it hasn’t necessarily become any firmer since then.
On 25 May 2018, the new Police Duties Act came into force in Bavaria, which, among other things, enables police surveillance in the event of imminent danger (instead of a concrete danger, as was previously the case) and preventive detention (ordered by a court) without a maximum time limit in order to protect important legal interests.
There is no doubt that individual cases and situations are conceivable in which such measures would be sensible and necessary. But is the situation in Bavaria and Germany really so threatening that it would justify the enactment of what some have called the toughest police law since 1945? The facts, as far as they are recognisable, speak a different language. The police crime statistics for 2017, for example, show a decline in the (violent) crime recorded there (despite all the necessary doubts regarding their validity, see https://community.beck.de/2018/05/08/die-polizeiliche-kriminalstatistik-2017-wundersame-heilung-oder-mogelpackung) . Of course, the police and security authorities must do their utmost to prevent terrorist attacks, for example. It is clear to any reasonable person that such attacks cannot be 100% prevented. And in the case of the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016, for example, the perpetrator had already been on the authorities‘ radar for some time and more powers would not have helped.
Now you might argue that the new powers are not that serious, especially as a court always has to decide on more serious interventions and the police are so overloaded anyway that they don’t have the time or resources to monitor „law-abiding“ citizens.
But the bigger problem lies elsewhere. It lies in the fact that there is no objective, fact-based need for such a police law. Even representatives of the police have spoken out against the law (see http://www.spiege l.de/politik/deutschland/bayern-polizeigewerkschaft-gegen-polizeiaufgabengesetz-a-1207818.html) , and the CSU has not even attempted to justify why this law is absolutely necessary on the basis of concrete and comprehensible facts. It is, it is to be feared, all about moods. It is about stirring up public fear and then appeasing it in order to win votes. And this law creates new standards. Standards to which other federal states will also orientate themselves, and standards from which there will probably be no turning back.
In Saxony, for example, there is a real danger that the AfD will become the strongest party in the state parliament next year. There are quite a few prominent representatives of this party who deny basic human rights to certain groups of people and do not shy away from lies and manipulation in order to stir up public opinion. These are not people you can rely on to respect certain minimum human rights standards once they are in real power. Their self-centred, inhuman, destructive power will then also affect many of those who are still cheering them on. And the courts, the decision-makers in the judiciary, police and administration? Suppose the AfD were to come to power and exploit and tighten the (police) laws. How many lawyers in the civil service would say: I won’t go along with that?
That is the real problem with the new Police Duties Act in Bavaria. It does not serve an objective necessity, but rather does the business of the AfD in order to win votes by fuelling and exploiting public sentiment. In doing so, it is causing damage that extends far beyond Bavaria and beyond 2018.
So far, so bad? No! Because there has been massive resistance, and there still is and will continue to be. In Munich alone, over 30,000 people took to the streets to protest against the law.
According to Fritz Bauer, „Resistance (…) is the refusal to obey an unjust order or law, is the help given to the victims of an evil state.“ Fortunately, we are still a long way from an evil state in Bavaria and Germany. However, as the frightening rise of the AfD and its ominous influence on parties such as the CSU shows, it could come closer to us sooner than we can currently imagine. And then, at the latest, it will become clear that the PAG and the way in which it has come about is causing great damage. That is why (legal!) resistance to it is so important, and that is why it is so encouraging and admirable when so many people take to the streets and show: not with us!