“These are people who are more concerned with euthanasia than with inclusion.” Munich’s former mayor Christian Ude found clear words for the AfD and its unofficial leader Björn Höcke on Saturday afternoon at Munich’s Marienplatz. If the inclusion of disabled people in schools as an alleged “ideological project” is to be abolished, this will prepare for a “relapse into barbarism”. Ude literally: “The right-wing extremists are becoming more shameless from week to week.”
Höcke’s verbal attack on the human dignity of disabled people was the main topic at the sixth “fringe group riot” in Munich – a rally organized by severely disabled and mentally ill people, their friends, caring relatives and volunteers and professional supporters. The organizer is Patricia Koller from the Bavarian Association of Disabled Persons.
In front of an audience of around 100 people, she recalled the “deeply rooted hostility towards the disabled” in German history, culminating in the mass murder by the National Socialists of more than 200,000 sick and disabled people. Koller warned of “what enormous danger arises for us if fascists come to power again (…) and want to disenfranchise us”.
Just a few years ago, no one would have thought “that Germany would once again develop in such a disgusting and extremely dangerous direction.” People used to ask themselves, stunned, how the gigantic crime of the Nazi era was possible and why so many people took part. “Today we can watch almost live how the Nazi system was reinstalled through incessant agitation and how entire sections of the population were excluded.”
Koller criticizes that many people with disabilities were kept small from birth
The psychiatrist Michael von Cranach, who has been trying to come to terms with the Nazi murders for decades, also made the connection to the most recent statements by the Thuringian AfD politician. According to Cranach, Höcke’s “ulterior motive” is that people have different values. But that contradicts the United Nations Convention on Human Rights and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Cranach summed it up as follows: “Give up the deficit model and try to understand that disability is an expression of human diversity.”
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is applicable law after it has been accepted by the Federal Republic of Germany. “Germany hardly implements them,” criticized Patricia Koller. This is another reason why it is important to protest “loudly and visibly”. Koller named numerous examples of discrimination, exclusion, paternalism and oppression. Disabled people would not be able to take part in events, would not have access to many restaurants or doctor’s offices, would not be able to use their own means of transport, would not be able to find any disabled toilets.
Many people with disabilities are afraid to stand up because they were kept small from birth and they were repeatedly told that they were inferior. “It’s outrageous,” said Koller. She called for a “functioning complaints system so that people with disabilities and chronic or mental illnesses” could defend themselves against injustice.