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Ramelow criticizes the CDU for dealing with Maassen
After attacks against him, Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) criticized the CDU for its dealings with former President for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen. photo
© Martin Schutt/dpa
For the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, right-wing extremist statements are almost a trademark. Attacks are also hitting Thuringia’s prime minister. And he is outraged – about the CDU.
Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) has the CDU criticized for their dealings with their member, the ex-Bundesverfassungsschutz President Hans-Georg Maassen.
Maaßen accused him of setting up a regime that corresponds to Cambodia, “so he assigns me a mass murderer,” Ramelow complained in the MDR summer interview. In addition, Maassen asked the CDU to initiate a vote of no confidence against him. “And I don’t hear a word about it from the CDU in Thuringia,” said Ramelow.
Maassen said in an interview that he had the impression that Ramelow wanted to transform the country into “a socialist Cambodia,” but he didn’t explicitly mention the Khmer Rouge era. Between 1975 and 1979 they wanted to establish a farming state. They forced everyone who could read and write into the fields. It is estimated that between 1975 and 1979 up to 2.2 million people of the 8 million inhabitants lost their lives as a result of forced labour, famine, torture and murder.
Ramelow: Silence is not an option
Ramelow was appalled by Maassen’s comparison with Cambodia. “You can’t say that we are in an ongoing process and I won’t say anything about it,” said Ramelow, referring to the CDU, which had initiated party exclusion proceedings against Maassen. In the interview, Maassen once again referred to Ramelow as a communist. A communist wants a totalitarian form of rule “where it is determined from top to bottom how people have to live,” said Maassen. Such people also have “no scruples about walking over dead bodies”.
Maassen had again claimed that Ramelow had become prime minister of Thuringia with the help of then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). In fact, on March 4, 2020, Ramelow was elected Prime Minister in an election in the Thuringian state parliament after short-term Prime Minister Thomas Kemmerich (FDP) resigned from his office without forming a government and appointing ministers. Kemmerich had previously been elected on February 5, 2020 through a trick by the AfD, which surprisingly did not choose its own candidate and instead voted for Kemmerich.