Official recognition of Schröder’s lifetime achievement is “unbearable”

From the viewpoint of the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), the statements of the new Secretary General of the SPD, Matthias Miersch, regarding an official recognition of the life’s work of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is “backward-looking and unbearable”.
“Like no other, Gerhard Schröder stands for Germany’s failed policy towards Russia. He courted the tyrant Putin, led Germany into extreme dependency, and turned a blind eye to the genocide crimes against the Chechen people,” stated Sarah Reinke, head of human rights work at the STP, in Göttingen today. “Given the fatal consequences of his policies, it would be an embarrassment for the Social Democrats to rehabilitate him now. If the SPD has still not understood who it is dealing with in the Kremlin, the party must be accused of complete political failure.”
In a speech in the course of the Annual General Assembly of the STP a few days ago, Russian human rights activist Oleg Orlov criticized that, during Schröder’s term in office, the focus on shared economic interests had overshadowed reason. “I still remember very well the reaction of our European interlocutors, especially of the German politicians. They condescendingly told us that yes, it is not good that the Russian security authorities are violating human rights in an attempt to combat terrorism in the North Caucasus – and they also promised to emphasize the inadmissibility of this issue in the resolutions of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe – but ‘what else do you want from us? That’s what the Council of Europe is for. We should not impose economic sanctions,’” Orlov recalled what German politicians replied to the criticism of Russian human rights activists during the 2000s. They were accused of exaggerating the potential threat Putin posed to other countries.
“Now, Putin’s regime is using the same methods that the Russian army used against the civilian population in Chechnya – systematic torture in the so-called filtration camps, the bombing of civilian targets, disappearances, and murder – in Ukraine, and on a much larger scale,” Reinke said. There is a clear connection between Russia’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
“During his term in office as Federal Chancellor, Schröder legitimized the war in Chechnya – with its approximately 80,000 victims – through his blind support for Putin. Back then, we, the Society for Threatened Peoples, had repeatedly appealed to Schröder to condemn the war. Not even in isolated humanitarian cases did he use his friendly relations to Putin to save innocent people,” Reinke said.

Sarah Reinke is available for further questions: s.reinke@gfbv.de or +49 551 49906-13