An important decision

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) welcomes the fact that the municipal council of Ingolstadt has decided to stop funding the "Audi Confucius-Institute". Together with the STP, eight other human rights organizations had advocated for this step. "Today, the members of the municipal council set an important sign by reducing the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Germany a little," stated Jasna Causevic, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, at a human rights rally at the Theaterplatz in Ingolstadt. "We are hoping that Audi AG and the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt will follow this example. In the long term, the Chinese propaganda institutes should not be able to rely on any more public funding in Germany."  

The municipal council's decision was clear: 27 votes for an end to the financing, and 22 votes against. Before, nine human rights organization had published a letter explaining why the institutes are problematic and why they should not be supported with taxpayers' money in Germany. Several human rights organizations had organized a rally alongside the meeting of the municipal council: the International Society for Human Rights, the Ilham Tohti Initiative, the Tibet Initiative Deutschland, the Falun Dafa Information Center, the Society for Threatened Peoples, the East Turkestan Union in Europe, the Association "Hongkonger in Deutschland", and the "Aktionsbündnis Ingolstadt für die Wahrung der Menschenrechte der Uiguren".