Higher Administrative Court
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the AfD are fighting over the concept of the people
“The arguments are on the table and we have to evaluate them,” says the presiding judge at the OVG Gerald Buck. photo
© Guido Kirchner/dpa
The struggle between the AfD and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution drags on. A judgment before the Higher Administrative Court is not in sight.
Before the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court, representatives of AfD and the lawyer for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution continued their exchange of blows. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution accuses the party of making a distinction between an ethnically defined German people and a legally defined state people and had classified it as a suspected right-wing extremist case.
AfD federal executive Peter Boehringer referred to the party’s approved programs. The party must be judged by these contents when it comes to the question. In contrast, the lawyer for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Wolfgang Roth, emphasized that party representatives would repeatedly differentiate between the German state people and ethnic identity in their statements. This is explicitly a devaluation of the others. “They are second-class citizens,” says Roth. However, the Basic Law does not distinguish between the people of the state and the people.
Thomas Jacob, Judge of the 5th Senate, pointed out that this clearly defined the open wound. The party refers to its own program, while the Office for the Protection of the Constitution quotes statements from party representatives. “The arguments are on the table and we have to evaluate it,” Jacob said. The 5th Senate of the OVG is supposed to clarify whether the judgment from the lower instance at the Cologne Administrative Court stands. The Federal Office based in Cologne had classified the party and the youth organization Junge Alternative (JA) as suspected right-wing extremist cases.
Another point: Islamophobia of the AfD?
Another point was about the AfD’s view of Islam. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution accuses the party of blanket judgments, Islamophobia and thus a violation of the Basic Law.
Roth quoted high-ranking party representatives with words like “Be careful of Muslim boys and men” or the warning “Flooding Europe with Muslims and knife Muslims.” Roth complained about the lack of differentiation when, for example, Islam was described “in its entirety” as a terrorist organization by AfD representatives. Muslims are repeatedly denigrated across the board.
After the first two days of negotiations in March and the subsequent interruption, the 5th Senate of the OVG increased the pace a little more on Thursday. The presiding judge Gerald Buck interrupted those involved several times when already known content was repeated. The 457 new applications for evidence announced in advance by the AfD lawyers were not yet an issue. The OVG has scheduled twelve more appointments until June. According to a court spokeswoman, it is currently not possible to predict when there might be a verdict.