The Ministry of Justice has come under renewed pressure to cut ties with Anetta Kahane after a Stasi expert declared her unfit to lead a “sensitive task like controlling the internet” based on her history working with the Communist secret police.
A review of the former Stasi informant’s files has led to further questions over Justice Minister Heiko Maas’s decision to use Kahane’s Amadeu Antonio Foundation to oversee a programme of removing “hate speech” online and prosecuting its authors.
Writing in Focus on Sunday, Communist political oppression academic and Stasi expert Dr. Hubertus Knabe, said it is “incomprehensible” that the ministry chose a foundation headed by Kahane to lead a “sensitive task such as controlling the internet”.
Director of the Hohenschönhausen Stasi Memorial, Knabe reviewed Kahane’s files and found that she had lied about her history with the Communist secret police, whose repression leaves many survivors still traumatised today.
Kahane hid her involvement for decades but when the files were made public, and revealed her to be an informant, the campaigner for open borders claimed she was put under extreme pressure by the Ministry of State Security (MfS) and forced to cooperate.
In his article for Focus, Knabe revealed that the foundation head, under the codename “Victoria”, delivered reports about friends and conversation partners, relayed the names of people who were sympathetic to dissident songwriters, and even reported a student for being “politically unsettled and unclear”.
Far from having only cooperated under pressure, Kahane received a gold fountain pen from the MfS for her service, management recording that she “has a strong positive attitude towards the security services”.
Knabe concluded the piece by recommending that the Ministry of Justice “would be well advised to end cooperation” with the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
Former Bundestag deputy Vera Lengsfeld, who was a prominent civil rights activist in Communist East Germany, slammed the task force at the weekend as an “internet spy group”.
Noting the foundation’s recording and removal of ‘hate speech’ from the internet had increased 353 per cent over last year, but that nearly 90 per cent of these were not legally actionable, she accused Maas of having launched a “procedure of extrajudicial censorship”.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) MEP Beatrix von Storch took to Facebook following the revelation, writing: “We pay taxes for the Ministry of Justice to give money to a Stasi-led authority to make propaganda against us? I propose to examine as to whether tax evasion is justified in self-defense. My money should not be spent directing propaganda against me.”
Kahane is a fanatic supporter of open borders and has declared it vital that the European Union change its immigration policy so as to eventually make natives of the continent a minority.
“This is very important; you have to change the educational system and the self-understanding of the states. They are not only white anymore or only Swedish or only Portuguese or only German. They are multicultural places in the world,” she said.
Earlier this year the high-circulation German parenting magazine Baby & Family carried a special report, informed by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, warning that families who are “cheerful” and “blonde” could be right wing and thus “dangerous”.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.