Karl-Liebknecht-Haus
Weydingerstraße 14–16
10178 Berlin
FRG	International Relations:
Fax 00 49-30-28 38 52 80	Klaus Hubig	Freie Deutsche Jugend
e-Mail: bundesvorstand@FDJ.de	Fax 00 49-89-69 99 86 33	Federal Executive Committee
Internet: www.FDJ.de                    e-Mail:International@FDJ.de
Berlin, in october 2001

Urgent action
Solidarity with a case of conscientious total objection 
in Fed.Rep. of Germany

Dear comrades

The 3rd september 2001 our comrade Ringo Ehlert who lives in the annexed  German Democratic Republic should have to come to the barracks in order to begin his military service together with hundreds of other young recruits. 
He has not appeared there and he has also decided not to do alternative civil service.
He has published a personal declaration about his conscientious total objection.  His motives for this decision are the same that many young people have who were born in the German Democratic Republic: Consequent antifascist attitude and standing up for peace and people's friendship and  for socialist fundamental values. All this makes it impossible for him to do his military service in an army of occupation. He has taken his decision in the effort „never to do a military service in an army which is once again the enemy of other countries and people". In his declaration (see below) you can also find, that he would go to the military service of GDR's National People's Army (NVA) „in order to defend values, which were not possible to implement after the annexation of GDR, namely the standing up for peace and people's friendship“.
In his personal declaration he writes further: „It s about time to throw a final stroke, even if my small action surely has only a symbolic value. It's not the point - not only the point - to object the German Army Bundeswehr - no, at the end it's time to call out even under the threat of strong punishment: I refuse the Federal Republic of Germany! (...) It's time to make a stand for a political opinion of the people here, in the annexed part of Germany, which are messed around since 11 years,  to show their discontent and questionning of the existing political system of the FRG in a clear political attitude."

This attitude of our comrade Ringo Ehlert is an attitude of all of us in FDJ (Free German Youth). 
The Federal Executive Committee of FDJ decided to start a great campaign about this case of antimilitarist struggle in the FRG and the annexed GDR. We inform each progressive and  democratic youth organisation in FRG and send various press releases to the media.
We call upon them to show their solidarity. Either to spend money in order to publish more material for information and/or to write a solidarity adress to Ringo Ehlert.

Ringo Ehlert has evaded military police and he is out of reach of the German Jurisdiction, but surely he will go to the trial.
We will inform you in the next months about the further results of our campaign.
Up to that, we would like to ask you to examine this political activity in a very sincere way. We would be very pleased, if you could show your solidarity with short solidarity message or any other kind of solidarity (publishing in your press or something else). 
If you have further interest or questions please don't hesitate and contact us!

Hoping to have stroke your interest.
Comradely

Klaus Hubig
resp. for international relations

Statement to my conscientious total objection

Ringo Ehlert 

23rd of August, 2001

Hereby I declare, that I object totally to the military service in the Bundeswehr with and without weapon, I object to the civil service and to all other war-supporting institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany because of my conscience and because of my political world view and I delare that I will not turn up to start the service on the 2nd September 2001. In this matter I refer to the basic right to freedom of conscience and of the world view, as to Article 4 Paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany.

I have grown up in the German Democratic Republic When I was 12 years old, the FRG took over my home country - as I learned later it took it over in an act of calculating and unlawful annexation.

My mother has worked in the GDR as a professional medical laboratory assistant in a policlinic. Her professional qualification was not recognized by the FRG institutions. The policlinic she worked in was closed, she was fired and could not find an adequate job any more. First she was unemployed and today she is working for a low wage as a cashier at the drugstore Schlecker.

The factory my father used to work in as a highly-qualified metal worker and fitter for medical furniture was also closed in the beginning of the Nineties. He was fired as well and to this day he could not find any work in a new job.

Myself, I have looked for an apprenticeship in the information technology area after my finishing secondary school. Regarding the high rate of unemployment among the youth in the annexed GDR I had to be glad to get just any kind of apprenticeship and so I finished my apprenticeship as a bricklayer and today I am a qualified bricklayer. After my apprenticeship I was not taken over by my training company because of a lack of task. After eight months of unemployment, I have tried my luck to find a job in the West. At the companies there I got a job, but I never got any written work treaty, nor money on a regular basis and I was treated like shit. I did not get any help from the job center, but a stop of unemployment money after I had quit my job. Today as a qualified worker I am forced to be an unskilled worker and be away on the job. This means to be at home for three days a month and the way to work is unbelievably far. In my home region it is not possible on all accounts to find any work. The unemployment rate in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is now at 40 to 50 percent.

For 11 years now, my country is being systematically destroyed and plundered by the FRG. The German Army, the Bundeswehr, is by fact an occupation army on the territory of the annexed GDR since the annexation, on the territory of the country that I still feel citizen of. Looking at the word annexation, there cannot be a difference between an annexation by war and one conducted by lies and false promises by a government of liars, a system built on lies. The system of the FRG has covered my country with a wave of poverty, mass unemployment, cultural barabrity and axing of social security - not only in the area of youth.

On behalf of the initiatives taken by the Treuhand - an institution for the liquidation of the GDR as to the interests of the FRG - the industry production rate sank between 1990 and 1991 alone to a third of the rate of the year 1989. 95 percent of the capital of the GDR ended up in the hands of the Western German Finance Capital. Between 1990 and 1995 over 3 million of the jobs were destroyed by the Treuhand. At the and of Treuhand's activities, of the property of my country a mere mountain of debts was left, 275 billion D-Mark of debts. So the activities of the Treuhand led to a deficit of 1475 billion and by that to the greatest destruction of social property in times of peace ever. With the robbery of the financial property of the GDR came an uprise of the FRG's economic power and also a doubling of the financial property of the FRG within ten years to an amount of a gigantic 6,75 trillion D-Mark.

The Bundeswehr represents and supports the interests of the annector FRG. For me it is not possible to do service in an army that has the status of a foreign occupation force in my country.

A service in the Bundeswehr is also not possible for me, because I am not willing and ready to do service in an army of aggression. Not only has the war of aggression against Yugoslavia that was conducted against international law shown in a shocking way that the Bundeswehr is a blind tool to conduct and fight for the interests of the FRG. There was clearly no right or lawful basis to this act of aggression. Whoever breaks the law in a serious way is a criminal. An army that breaks law in a serious way is a criminal army and I cannot do service there. International solidarity and friendship of the peoples are for me the inalienable basis for a peaceful living together of the peoples in Europe and in the world. Wars of aggression against international law are incompatible with these my fundamental values.

The service in the Bundeswehr is also impossible for me because of that army being more and more taken over by neo-fascist elements. I have a radical antifascist position. For a start, I cannot stand the fact that the barracks of the Bundeswehr have the names of Nazi-Generals. The Bundeswehr sees itself as the successor and inheritor of the German Wehrmacht, a criminal organisation that has destroyed the whole of Europe and burnt it to ashes in the name of the German Fascists and the German Capital. A service in an army that makes this mask of terror more vivid the more the far-right and fascist events and actions occur in the barracks more and more often is not possible for me. 

People might tell me I should have filled out a form for a lawful objection and civil service. I have not done that, I am no pacifist. If I were, I would have only been permitted to object to the military service with weapon. But if I were a pacifist, I could also neither do service in the army nor civil service. The civil service is no alternative for a pacifist because of the closely-linked civil-military colaboration and because by doing civil service one is also fulfilling the task of military service according to paragraph 3 of the Law for the Duty of Military Service. 

I am no pacifist. I could imagine fighting for a country whose aims are my aims and whose army is not an army of aggression for fulfilling the strategic and economical interests of the Capital at power. I can imagine having done my service in the GDR's National People's Army (NVA). And this not because I like being a soldier, but because that Army was not only defending a country but also values that could not survive any longer after the annexation of the GDR: the support for peace and friendship between the peoples.

Ringo Ehlert