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| Editorial |
| WE'RE FOLLOWING THE LEADER ... MY CHRISTMAS WISH by Pinkie |
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| Since I spent quite some time of my life in former Eastern Germany, I get asked “How was is it? How was life behind the iron curtain?" I am never quite sure what to answer. We sometimes got oranges in wintertime, real coffee powder from the “Intershop”, (shops that stocked all sorts of products from the west, where you had to pay in western currencies) got used to buying our Christmas candles in summertime due to our “planned economy” and got Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” within 2 years of its release. We couldn’t travel, well not to the west, the capitalistic enemy. Most of the eastern allies could be visited, Czechoslovakia and Hungary among the most popular. Various neighbours, sometimes friends spied on us. We got sent to prison for being political incorrect or being a punk and got fined for leaving the school without the full school uniform on. We had to join the FDJ (free German youth – youth party of national party SED) if we wanted to stay at the ballet school, attended the First of May Parade and learned how the speak in Russian. I felt fenced-in most of the time. Not so much because of the wall or the travelling situation but for no freedom of having an opposition. We had only one party to give our voice to during elections, only our media, and only “our” point of view. We had to follow the leaders and they had no respect for their people. Or as our headmaster used to say: "We have to break them to rebuild them!" In communism, we had to be all the same. “We have to break them to rebuilt them!” I despise this sentence. After the East became “free” again, I hoped I would never have to hear it again. Until - a few days ago, I watched a documentary on TV about the first youth prison of the U.S. in Texas and American boot camps. And there it was again, one of the guards used exactly this sentence. As an explanation on the reporters question “why he kept shouting at an already crying teenager” he answered that “everyone must be the same here”. At the youth prison the boys are to take “medicine” twice a day. “I can’t tell you what’s in it but it’s for the best of them, keeps them healthy” the director told the stunned journalist. Sadly this aspect is the same as it was in the former "Land of Evil”. The authorities deprived us of our human dignity. There are different points of views about crime and its punishment, and it would be too much to go into details here. Personally I believe in re-socialisation, especially when I look at the perspectives and statistics of the U.S. penal system. It shows that in the year 2020 up to 40% of all Americans could be in prison. To me, there must be something wrong with this system. I experienced the “respect the authorities/system of fear” kind of treatment at our school. But I have never seen anyone walking away from it being a better person, only angrier than before. And in the boot camp case, probably more disorientated than before. “Violence produces violence" is true also in the name of the state. Depriving people of their dignity is as wrong in the U.S. and the rest of the world as it was in former East Germany. As my Christmas wish, I hope the “We have to break them to rebuilt them!” sentence will disappear from this world! Regardless of who did whatever in the first place. We have to leave it behind, just like we left East Germany behind and make a new beginning. |
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