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adminonDecember 20, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Four years after the anti-discrimination law came into force, only one in three citizens knows about it. Likewise each third citizen felt however already once for reasons disadvantaged or discriminated against. This discrepancy is now to be resolved.

This is the result of a representative study by the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, the results of which were published on Friday. "So far, too few people know about their right to protection against discrimination," said the head of the Anti-Discrimination Agency (ADS), Christine Luders (non-party). That must change. "Protection against discrimination is a human right." Since its inception, some 10.000 requests for advice received by ADS. Most often, he said, it's about discrimination based on disability, age and gender. But there has also been a need for advice on discrimination based on ethnic origin, religion or sexual identity.

Demand for contact points close to home The General Equal Treatment Act (AGG), as the anti-discrimination law that had been negotiated for years was finally called, was passed on 18. The solution came into force in August 2006 in the face of opposition from business associations and parts of the CDU and CSU. Discrimination on the grounds of ethnic origin, gender, sexual identity, disability, age and religion is now prohibited in professional and business life. The independent anti-discrimination agency, based in the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, is to provide advice to victims of discrimination, inform those affected and the public, and campaign against discrimination. Luders renewed her call for contact points close to home. In the coming years, it wants to support counseling institutions to further qualify themselves and network with each other. This is how a nationwide counseling network is to be established. "That's what we spend most of our budget on," Luders explained. Critics' fears that the AGG could trigger a flood of lawsuits have not come true, they say. The Antidiskriminierungsstelle asked all courts at state and federal level about their experiences with the AGG. 63 courts responded and confirmed that there had been no wave of lawsuits since the AGG came into force. Two to three percent of all labor disputes are AGG cases, he says. ADS will soon publish a book with 50 exemplary cases of discrimination in Germany.

Empty conference table © Peshkova (shutterstock)

The suspension of the victims' advisory board of the Protestant Church in Germany to accompany the abuse investigation meets with strong criticism from the most recently active members. On Monday the end had been announced.

"By unilaterally suspending the participation of those affected, the EKD is trying to evade criticism from those affected about its inadequate processes of coming to terms with the situation," reads a statement by four members of the advisory council circulated on Tuesday.

The EKD had announced the provisional end on Monday evening. The concept had failed, they said. The reasons for this are resignations from the committee, internal conflicts and disagreement between the advisory board and the EKD's counterpart, the council of commissioners, about how to proceed.

"We are not to blame for the failure of the panel"

In their statement, those affected defend themselves against a portrayal that names internal conflicts as the cause and thus blames those affected themselves for the failure of the board. The majority of members were in favor of continuing the joint work, he said.

A "viable path" would have been external process control, according to the memo signed by Katharina Kracht, Detlev Zander, Henning Stein and another former advisory board member using the pseudonym NKD.

The reason for the failure and the resignation of members is rather deficient structures, it was said. By March, five of the initial twelve members of the Affected Persons Advisory Council, which was only founded in September, had resigned. Among the reasons they cited were a lack of support from the EKD and a lack of funding for the body.

Confidential protocols

According to the EKD, the events are now to be scientifically evaluated. This, too, is criticized by those concerned. "Confidential protocols would thus be passed on against the will of those affected," the statement says. Affected people should not be made the focus of investigations.

One rejects this "categorically. When asked, a spokesman for the EKD said that it is not the committee itself that is to be evaluated, but rather the cooperation with the Council of Representatives, in order to gain insights into how the participation of those affected can be better organized in the future.

It is central and indispensable, the speaker of the commissioner council, the Braunschweig bishop Christoph Meyns, had explained on Monday evening. The EKD Council of Representatives for Protection against Sexualized Violence includes other leading clergy and church lawyers.

The Theater Bonn presents the world premiere of the play "Bilder von uns" (Pictures of us) on Thursday. In it, the Berlin playwright Thomas Melle deals with the cases of abuse at the Aloisius College in Bonn.

"The background in the play is very similar to real events," the 40-year-old Melle, who was himself a student at the Aloisiuskolleg, told Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd). However, he said, it is neither a continuation of the work of the associations affected nor a defense or indictment of the perpetrators, but an "aesthetic confrontation".

"The piece deals with fictional conflicts that may nevertheless be typical of the struggles in reality," Melle said.

Melle does not want to judge, but to illuminate

According to investigative reports, 60 victims accuse 18 Jesuits and five secular employees of the college of sexual assault and abuse that allegedly took place from the 1950s through the 2000s. "I was on the spot, I understand the conflicts exactly, the dislike, the defense, the hatred, the pride, everything. And precisely also the ambivalence," said Melle. But it is not his task to judge, but "to illuminate the whole thing with the often enough opaque means of art, to throw one's own, complex perspective on what is happening.".

The main character in the play, a 40-year-old manager, like many college students, was once photographed naked by a priest. "The whole system you grew up in is called into question, and the struggle for your own identity and biography sets in," said Melle, whose novels "Sickster" and "3.000 Euros" was nominated twice for the German Book Prize.

Everyone deals differently with what they have experienced

When 40-year-olds realize that they were photographed naked by their educator as children, that triggers a lot in one person, and nothing at all in another, Melle said. Third parties would hold their heads up for a few weeks and then suppress it. "A fourth, on the other hand, is already broken," said the playwright. This is also due to the fact that other people's view of the victims changes. "That's why it's so brave of those affected to start speaking out."

The perpetrators hardly play a role in the play, said the writer. They would only become more and more guilty because they did not speak out. "Like silent, dead gods, they hang over the scenery and have actually already made off," explained Melle. The victims have to sort everything out among themselves and with themselves.

Commenting on the current state of processing real cases of abuse in schools, the former Aloisius College student said the institutions affected could only function again "if they deal with it offensively, don't just work it off to get rid of it, but really process it". Institutions must "integrate the stain into their own self-image," Melle said. "That's the only way."

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