When the justice ministers of the federal states meet this Friday for the autumn conference in Berlin, the focus will be on the fight against enemies of the constitution in the judiciary, youth violence, hatred on the Internet and the use of artificial intelligence for criminal purposes. Above all, however, the participants in the meeting want to demonstrate the determination of the judiciary to protect Jewish life in Germany from hostility.
“Anti-Semitic terror by Hamas in Israel and the consequences for public peace in Germany” is the title of a draft resolution that the state of Berlin and Hesse submitted to the conference. Berlin’s Justice Senator Felor Badenberg (independent), the host of the meeting, has invited Israel’s Ambassador Ron Prosor and the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, as guests to the Justice Ministers’ meeting.
“We are already working on further bans.”
A demonstrative solidarity between the countries is planned. However, the Free State of Bavaria wants to add further criminal law demands to the planned resolution. It won’t be that easy. New measures in the fight against anti-Semitism and extremist incitement at pro-Palestinian rallies are already being decided almost every day. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has also issued a ban on the Islamist Hamas movement and dissolved the German branch of the Samidoun network. “We are already working on further bans,” she said in the Bundestag on Thursday.
Bavaria’s Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich apparently doesn’t go far enough. “Anyone who denies or applauds Hamas’s terror is making an unbearable mockery of the suffering of the victims,” he told the Justice Ministers’ Conference. The CSU politician wants to make promoting sympathy for terrorist organizations a criminal offense again. The measure was introduced in 1976 in the RAF’s fight against terror. At that time, Section 129a of the Criminal Code criminalized any advertising for terrorist organizations, including relatively harmless acts such as spraying house walls. The passage, which was increasingly viewed as disproportionate by the courts, was deleted by the red-green federal government in 2002.
Justice Minister Buschmann believes new laws against Islamists are unnecessary
Eisenreich now wants to revive it – even if the extremist pro-Palestinian organization that could be advertised is already banned. According to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, the sanctioning of criminal behavior is “independent of any existing official bans on associations”. “The particular injustice of advertising for terrorist organizations should also be expressed in the higher sentence of Section 129a Paragraph 5 Sentence 2 of the Criminal Code.” At this point, the criminal code provides for prison sentences of between one and ten years, including for acts that are likely to “significantly intimidate the population.”
A letter that Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) sent to the states before the conference caused anger. In it, he called on them to adopt a “zero tolerance policy” against anti-Semitism, which must “prove itself in everyday law enforcement.” Buschmann made it clear that he does not believe new laws are necessary in the fight against Islamist groups, but rather more consistent enforcement of existing regulations. In the countries, some people reacted sniffily. The state police have already taken consistent action against anti-Jewish rallies. You don’t need any tutoring from Berlin.
It will also be about pictures of children that parents post online
The topic at the Justice Ministers’ Conference will also be secret surveillance with Bluetooth trackers and tracking devices. The tiny tracking devices are actually intended to locate cars or suitcases after they have been stolen. “There are cases in which these trackers were used to locate and monitor people without their consent and knowledge,” explained Hamburg’s Justice Senator Anna Gallina (Greens). This is “an absolute horror,” especially for victims of stalking by ex-partners. There are currently no laws that sanction such acts. Hamburg and Bavaria want to tighten criminal law here.
Another resolution from Hamburg is directed against parents who carelessly post pictures of their children online. In some cases, influencers deliberately show humiliating situations in order to drive up clicks and increase advertising revenue. In order to protect the personal rights of children, child protection should be improved here. It should also be possible to prosecute crimes in which digitally manipulated votes are used to induce relatives to pay money. To date, relevant laws have often been missing in the area of digital technologies.