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The EU’s foreign ministers have given provisional approval for the ratification of an opt-out from the EU Charter of Human Rights called for by Czech President Václav Klaus. If formally accepted, as is expected, the opt-out will be put to the Czech legislature at the same time as the bill on ratification of Croatia’s EU membership.

The Czech opt-out was put forward by Klaus as a condition of his signing the bill of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty

© ČESKÁ POZICE, ČTK Czech President Václav Klaus is undoubtedly the most vociferous critic of the EU among heads of state within the union

passed by the Czech parliament in 2009. His refusal to sign off on the bill before receiving assurances that the Czech Republic would be allowed to vote to on an opt-out from the Charter of Human Rights resulted in the country being the last EU member state to pass the treaty.

The issue will be put to the EU summit on October 23, but the vote by member states’ leaders should be a formality following approval approval by their respective foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.

Beneš Decrees

Klaus had argued the Charter of Human Rights could be used to overrule the so-called Beneš Decrees, signed by Eduard Beneš, the second Czechoslovak president, which included provisions for the confiscation of the property and expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans following World War II.

Klaus said the Charter of Human Rights would open the way for Sudeten Germans and their descendents to demand the restitution of confiscated property in what is today the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, since the Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, although the country has been subject to the provisions of the charter — because an opt-out has not yet been passed — to date no claims to property in the Czech Republic have been made by Sudeten Germans or their descendents.

Social Democrats opposed

The main opposition center-left Social Democrats (ČSSD) have repeatedly called upon the government not to call for approval from Brussels to hold a vote on the Czech opt-out, but the coalition government led by Prime Minister Petr Nečas’ (Civic Democrats, ODS) ignored the opposition. The ČSSD has said it will vote against the opt-out.

The bill on the ratification of the opt-out will be put to the Czech parliament at the same time as a bill on the ratification of Croatia’s entry to the EU. The two proposals will not, however, be presented as a single bill as was originally planned, which could have led to the ČSSD rejecting the bill although the party has consistently backed Croatia’s EU membership.

While the ČSSD is in minority in the lower house of Parliament (the Chamber of Deputies), in the Senate the party has a majority and could block the opt-out bill for a considerable length of time.

Press Release on Behalf of the "Germany-United States-Canada Reconcilliation Committee" US Army Major Apologizes to German people                             

Dateline Washington DC , Penetanguishene, ON, 

Vancouver, BC,Bonn.Germany

September 27 2011 12 noon.

On the occasion of the presentation of a formal letter of apology from a former US Army officer to the German people for the mistreatment of German prisoners after World War Two AND on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the publication of the book Other Losses about those prisoners.

A retired officer in the US army has apologized to the German army for the mass deaths of German prisoners in US army camps after world war two.  Following extensive private investigations in the US and Germany, Merrit P Drucker has sent an e-mail to Lt. Col. Max Klaar head of the Verband der deutscher Soldaten (German Veterans' Association) regretting the lethal conditions in the US camps where some 750,000 Germans died while they were denied available food and shelter.

By order from the American commander’s headquarters, General Dwight Eisenhower, German civilians were forbidden on pain of being shot to take food to the prisoners. Drucker has also formed a committee of six people, in Germany, the UK, Canada and the US to pursue further investigations and make amends by way of apologies to the families of the dead, and veterans' institutions. Drucker's first e-mail letter has been posted on the veterans' website where there is also a questionnaire asking for details of prisoners’ internment.

 The book Other Losses (Toronto, 1989) by James Bacque, which helped to set off the investigation, is being re-issued in an American edition in October. The launch will be held in Washington in the Marriott Hotel where Drucker plans to present a formal letter of apology to Klaar who is flying over for the occasion. Klaar will present in his turn a proposal for a peace treaty between the USA and Germany. It has 14 points. Two films about postwar Germany are included in the program.

Other Losses, a world-wide best-seller published in 13 countries, has been suppressed in the US for over 20 years. The new edition is being published by Talonbooks of Vancouver, whose editor, Karl Siegler is the son of a former prisoner in a US army camp. When his father told him what had happened to him in the US camp, Karl said, "I don't believe you." He changed his mind after reading Other Losses. Because of such sad events, Lt. Colonel Klaar has said that “Germany is a country of wounded souls.” Many Germans have already written to Major Drucker to thank him for taking a heavy weight of grief and guilt off their minds.

TIME AND PLACE Monday October 31, 2011 at the Courtyard US Capitol Marriott Hotel, 1325 Northeast Street, Washington DC 20002, tel 202 898 4000.  The meeting is to be in the Congressional and Monument Rooms. Time TBA.

REQUESTS FOR INTERVIEWS Please contact Talonbooks.

For further information contact Kevin@Talonbooks.com or James Bacque at 705 549 8148 or Merrit P. Drucker at 202 722 6716.

See also the websites Jamesbacque.com and talonbooks.com and the Verband der deutschen Soldaten which is www.verband-deutscher-soldaten.de

Friedrich Rejects Compensation for German Forced Labourers after WWII By The Local: Germany's News in English. Published 28 August 2011Here

Hans-Peter Friedrich on Sunday rejected demands to compensate Germans who were forced to work in neighbouring countries after World War II.

Gregorovich is librarian Emeritus of the University of Toronto, where he was a Department Head for 30 years. A descendant of Ukrainian pioneers in Alberta who came to Canada in 1899, he served as Chairman of the Toronto Historical Board, President of the Ontario Library Association , and President of the Canadian Multilingual Press Federation. He was a board member of the Governing Council of the University of Toronto, served as executive Director of the Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, and is currently the President of the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Toronto.

On March 31, CGE presented its “Educator’s Award”, which in 2011 is being conferred upon Professor Dr. Alfred de Zayas, an American lawyer (Harvard) and Historian (Göttingen), professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, retired senior UN official at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, President of P.E.N. International Centre Suisse Romand. De Zayas has written eight books and devoted his entire career to the pursuit of justice and human rights for all.

He has published on the Aborigenes of Australia, the First Nations of North and South America, the Armenians, the Greeks of Pontos and Smyrna, the Greek Cypriots, the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, and the expulsion of the ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe 1944-48. He has taught genocide studies at several institutions and is an expert on international criminal law, ethnic cleansing and forced population transfers.

He held the Gordon McKay Brown Chair in International Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and has lectured in many universities worldwide, including Harvard, Berkeley, Columbia, Oxford, Sorbonne, Strasbourg, Geneva, Zürich, Madrid, Berlin, Kiev, Moscow, Belgrade, Yerevan, Nicosia, Beirut and Tunis.

In 2009 he lectured at the Munk Centre of the University of Toronto and in March 2010 at the University of Waterloo and held the annual CGE lecture in Toronto. Among his books are "Nemesis at Potsdam" (Routledge), "A Terrible Revenge" (Macmillan), "The Genocide against the Armenians" (Haigazian University Press), "United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law" (N.P.Engel), and “Völkermord als Staatsgeheimnis” (Olzog, Munich 2011).

Source http://www.germancanadiancongress.com/media.html

Sacked Diplomat Blames anti-German British Bias

By The Local 3rd March 2011: The Local's Homepage Here

A German-born diplomat who was fired from his job in Paris with the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) is suing the British government for racial discrimination, he told The Local. Andreas Westerwinter said that during his time as the UK's deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO – the UN's cultural, educational and scientific arm – he was the target of racial slurs and unfair treatment, then finally singled out for a cost-cutting redundancy ahead of British colleagues.

“Racial slurs – such as being called a Nazi – were ignored or tolerated in the office, and grievance proceedings were not handled properly,” the Münster native told The Local this week. “Being a German who has lived abroad for about 20 years, it’s something I hear from time to time, but it’s a bit more shocking in a diplomatic setting.”

Hired at the international development agency on a French contract by the British embassy in 2006, the 40-year-old said he found himself locked out of his office on a Monday morning in January 2009 after being fired by letter the previous Friday.

“There had been reviews conducted by the Foreign Office that found it was incorrect to call me a Nazi, saying it was offensive, especially since I’m German,” he told The Local. “They sent someone from London in December 2008 ... and recommended diversity training. But this never took place and I was locked out of the office six months later.”