Boris Pistorius: “Many worry about rejecting the democratic state”

WORLD: Mr. Pistorius, the leader of his party Saskia Esken called the police operation at the “lateral thinkers” demonstration in Leipzig an “internal bankruptcy statement”. Do you share this assessment?

Boris Pistorius: I know from experience that it is always difficult to judge police operations from the outside. It is therefore common practice to address these issues in responsible internal committees

WORLD: In your opinion, what went wrong in Leipzig?

Pistorius: The court’s decision to allow the meeting to take place in the center of Leipzig certainly contributed to the fact that this was the case. After this experience, no one in the authorities and courts should really assume that the people taking part in such demonstrations are willing to comply with the requirements. Unfortunately, the police officers were once again turned into a buffer stop, who had to pay for what was wrongly decided elsewhere in my opinion. This bothers me.

WORLD: How should the police deal with elevators where the rules of the crown are deliberately violated?

Pistorius: With a sense of proportion, intent on decreasing the escalation, but from a certain point on with determination. Only then does it work.

WORLD: Should the number of participants for the demonstrations in Corona be limited, as Saxony announced?

Pistorius: It’s a fine line, we had it nationwide at the start of the pandemic. It was rightly repealed because freedom of assembly is a great good. If Saxony now wants to regulate this again in a similar form, it is a consequence of the events in Leipzig. In Lower Saxony we continue to focus on making encounters possible.

WORLD: This week you yourself warned against a radicalization of the Corona protest movement – not only by right-wing extremists, but also by those who oppose only the Corona rules. What specific indications do you have?

Pistorius: You can follow him very closely to these manifestations. It no longer goes against this or that crown rule. Rather, the demonstrations take place with slogans that we have already had in other contexts, keyword Pegida or Hogesa. Against the alleged dictatorship of Merkel, against the system, against the institutions of our country.

I understand when an innkeeper or an artist demonstrates against the rules of the crown, which limit their professional activity and threaten their economic existence. But many of these demonstrations now speak of a rejection of the democratic state.

WORLD: What are the experiences of police officers in Lower Saxony? Is understanding of the measures growing in view of the growing number of infections? Or does public acceptance decrease with the duration of the pandemic?

Pistorius: There is neglect, but people usually react sympathetically when officials ask them. Here and there in the evenings or on weekends, when alcohol is involved, there is occasionally a lack of understanding and sometimes resistance. But all in all, it remains within limits. Most people behave responsibly, acceptance is high, and criticism is a minority.

WORLD: If further restrictions, including curfews, are needed during the pandemic, do you think these measures could still be implemented?

Pistorius: It mostly depends on how well you can explain and justify a measure. An example from abroad: A new US study in which a large number of smartphone movement profiles were anonymously assessed shows where the risk of infection is particularly high. With this knowledge, the measures can be taken in a more targeted, therefore more delicate and more grounded way.

WORLD: How do you personally treat people who consider the rules of the crown nonsense or at least completely excessive?

Pistorius: It is human to suppress a danger that you cannot see because you are afraid of the consequences and do not know where it will lead. Especially when you suffer from it particularly, your existence is in danger, you are single, you no longer know how and where to put the children if the school or kindergarten is canceled.

So I say that we still know relatively little about the virus. But what we know very well is that the number of infections has recently increased significantly and hospitals are filling up again. This is why we must all act together and, to find the best solution, also dare to think outside the box.

WORLD: For example where?

Pistorius: A look at Asia – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, but also Australia and New Zealand – shows that you can be successful if you unite consistently and with discipline. Because the central question is: what is the most sensible, practicable and kind way for our country to fight this pandemic? In order to avoid that the health system is overloaded and that society and the economy suffer serious damage. I think we should ask ourselves if we have really considered everything.

WORLD: What do you mean specifically?

Pistorius: For example, we may further develop the Corona app with the aim of making it more usable. I can imagine that many people would be willing to cooperate here to some extent.

WORLD: When the app was supposed to be introduced, there was already a lot of criticism.

Pistorius: In recent months, essential fundamental rights, public and private life, even the exercise of a profession, have been restricted. In doing so, a compromise was made between the rights that were to be protected and those that were limited for it. However, I wonder why we haven’t discussed the right to informational self-determination at least once. Especially when it came to the introduction of the Corona warning app as an elementary pillar of a strategy against the Crown for our country, I would have liked to have open discussions on the technical possibilities and thus also on conceivable relatively minor interventions in the data protection law .

I believe that a temporary and appropriate adaptation of our data protection requirements, which are very high by international standards, would have made sense from an effective and harm-limiting pandemic control perspective. Of course, without affecting the central content of this fundamental right.

WORLD: It would be pretty late, wouldn’t it?

Pistorius: Although luckily a vaccine is now in sight, we will certainly have to hold out for many months and should therefore position ourselves more broadly. So, frankly, would a restriction of personal data protection rights with limited time and content be a reasonable price to avoid possible more serious action on other fundamental rights through further blockages?

In any case, people in the aforementioned states, to which these restrictions on the protection of personal data apply, currently enjoy much greater freedom than we do in partial blocking. I think it should be discussed at least once. And let’s be honest: If people leak sometimes sensitive data en masse to private companies like Facebook or when they collect discount points, why shouldn’t many people be willing to do so under clear guidelines in the current situation?

WORLD: Beyond Corona, the threat of Islamist terrorists seems to be growing again. How do you assess the current situation?

Pistorius: Islamist terrorism still represents a great danger, I have always said that. We are very vigilant, as he just showed again in Lüneburg with the deportation of a potentially dangerous person just four days after we had taken him into custody. We act immediately when we have the relevant information. But the attacks in Paris, Nice, Dresden and Vienna show that there can never be absolute protection.

WORLD: The Greens took this opportunity to demand 24-hour surveillance for all Islamist threats. I agree?

Pistorius: The Greens as a party of law and order, well, I don’t know. Such claims are not only irritating, but sadly also show ignorance of our legal norms. “Danger” is not a uniform legal term, but it serves the classification of the police. We know the threats in the hooligan scene, when it comes to domestic violence and, of course, especially in the terrorist area. But only with this classification you can not observe such a person around the clock for a long time. You need to be able to tell the courts very specifically why you want to put an electronic ankle seat belt on a dangerous person, for example.

The attempt by the Greens is very transparent. They are trying to gain a foothold in the conservative camp a year before the general election. This does not fit the other positions of the Greens and is therefore hardly credible.