“The peaceful united Europe
[...] has brought us peace, freedom,
justice, human rights and
democracy over half a century.”
Angela Merkel in her New Year’s address 2012

Open letter to Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel:

Madam Federal Chancellor,
dear Dr Merkel

First all the best wishes for the new year 2012 to you and your family.
Allow me some comments on the above-quoted statement in your New Year’s address. In recent times you can hear frequently that the peaceful united Europe had brought us peace, freedom, justice, human rights and democracy over half a century. Politicians justify the establishment of an united European state on the American model with this argumentation.
But I can only agree to this historical assessment to a limited extent.
If you mean Germany with “us”, then in my opinion it also applies to a limited extent.
Peace yes, but freedom in the light of subordination to the dictates of our American allies and Big Business? And justice, human rights and democracy? In the light of rampant child and old-age poverty, the monetary turmoil and the lack of a right to a say, many citizens are not feeling treated fairly and humanely or as mature citizens by the government, and they look worryingly towards an uncertain future.
But if by “us” all the peoples in Europe and all our brothers and sisters in the world are meant, then what is said is in stark contradiction to the stories of some of my friends from Serbia, Palestine, Somalia, Congo, Iraq or Afghanistan. Since more than a decade they have been covering news about bombed-out home countries, dead, war-injured, suffering from cancer and vegetating relatives, friends and acquaintances, who became homeless and hopeless. The people in the 1999 bombarded Serbia and in other parts of the world such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Somalia or Libya and elsewhere in Africa will perceive it as a cynicism that Europe – if you think about the European NATO countries which are allied with the USA – would have brought peace, freedom, justice, human rights and democracy in the light of the devastating bombing with partial nuclear weapons and in the light of the humiliating forays with which these countries were covered.
Europe would indeed be able bring the human achievements which you mentioned to all its citizens and the people of different cultures, if it reflected on its Western Christian roots. However, the will to do so does not exist yet.
Madam Federal Chancellor, I ask you to help ensure that Europe will do that someday.
My friends and I will play our part in that with pleasure.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Rudolf Hänsel, Lindau on Lake Constance