Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYthe purpose of the [Expert Report] is nevertheless to suggest this[…].”And toward the end of the verdict, after an entire series of hairraisinginterpretations and extrapolations, the verdict even comes to thefollowing conclusion: 130“With this, the right to live […] is denied to the Jews.”Or, to express it pointedly, the Stuttgart court stated that, because Ihad not written anything about Jews, I had denied their right to live, andtherefore I must be imprisoned. Well, you know, if one administers“justice” in that way, one should not be surprised when citizens inknowledge of such procedures lose their faith in the state.And now I want to reveal where I got those quotes from: They havebeen taken from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s trilogy The GULag Archipelago,Collins & Harvill, London 1974-1978, which describes theconditions of the Soviet judicial system during the reign of Joseph Stalin.You see: it’s a match!There are important differences between the Soviet and the FederalGerman systems of justice, though: torture does not exist in Germanprisons, and I am very grateful for this – if one ignores for once that themere incarceration of peaceful dissidents already amounts to torture.II. Definition of a Political PrisonerSince I have repeatedly spoken about political prisoners a shortwhile ago, I now want to try to define them so that one does not dependon official claims by governments. By so doing I wish to choose mycriteria as narrow as possible in order to make provision against the accusationthat I picked them in such a way to fit my own size. In additionto that I will restrict my following definition merely to political prisonersin the more narrow sense. This does not encompass prisoners whoare incarcerated for their religious views, ethnic origin or sexual orientation,although it goes without saying that in most cases the reason fortheir persecution is also political in nature in a broader sense. But alreadyin order to restrict the discussion temporally, I will talk onlyabout political or politically interpreted dissidents. In the left column ofthe following table various criteria are listed which can serve to define130 Ibid., p. 234.109