Vigil: Stop US Drone Warfare via Ramstein, Solidarity with the Victims

Wednesday, May 27^th 2015, 11 ARE, German Bundestag (Meadow)

All lethal US drone strikes are guided via the Satellite Relay Station located on the US Air Force Base Ramstein.  More than 10,000 people worldwide have been killed through these drone strikes. The bin Ali Jaber family lost two of its members through a drone strike in Hadramout in Yemen. Now the family has filed legal suit against the Germany government in a German court, demanding that the German government “take legal and political responsibility for the US drone war in Yemen” and “forbid use of the Satellite Relay Station in Ramstein.”

On May 27^th this case will begin before a high administrative court in Cologne.

The military base in Ramstein remains under the legal jurisdiction of the German federal government, even though the US Air Force has been allowed to use the base. If illegal activities are conducted from Ramstein -- such extra-judicial killings – and US justice authorities do not punish this legal offense, then German justice authorities have a duty to act.

According to the US conception of legality, it is legitimate to deploy killer drones everywhere in the world. But extra-judicial drone killings that are guided to their targets via Ramstein on German sovereign territory) are violations of both German law and international law. The (German) Attorney General’s Office is therefore urgently required to act and must initiate investigations against military personnel working in Ramstein.

The head of the Attorney General’s Office is Attorney General Heiko Maas.  He has so far done nothing. The German government’s tolerance of extra-judicial killings taking place from German sovereign territory makes clear that the German government’s assurances, that it would never use weaponized drones for manhunts, cannot be believed.

The Two-plus- Four-Treaty (the constitutional founding document of the reunited Federal Republic of Germany) grants Germany “complete sovereignty at home and abroad” and emphasizes that “there shall be only peaceful activities from German territory.”

In accordance with the Treaty, we demand that

 --The Attorney General’s Office immediately initiate investigations on the US military base Ramstein against those individuals who are participating in the operation of the Satellite Relay Station.

--The German government work for the immediate closing of the Satellite Relay Station in Ramstein and abstain from acquiring weaponized drones for the German military.

 German Action Coalition to “Stop US Drone Warfare via Ramstein”:

Attac Berlin, Attac-AG Globalisierung und Krieg, Arbeitskreis "Geopolitik und Frieden" Attac-Köln/Friedensforum, Attac Leipzig, Bürgerinitiative Keine Drohnen in der Oberpfalz, Bremer Friedensforum, Bundesausschuss Friedensratschlag, DFG-VK Köln, DFG-VK Landesverband Ost, Deutscher Friedensrat, Essener Friedensforum, Freiheit statt Angst e. V., Friedensinitiative Wilmersdorf, Friedenszentrum Braunschweig e.V., Friedensforum Dortmund, Friedensforum Duisburg, Gesellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde e. V., Informationsstelle Militarisierung e. V., Internationale LIGA für Menschenrechte e. V., Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, Ökumenisches Friedensforum Europäischer Katholiken, Palästina-Komitee Stuttgart e. V., Partei Die Linke LV Bayern, IALANA, Juristinnen und Juristen gegen atomare, biologische und chemische Waffen, NaturwissenschaftlerInnen-Initiative, Verantwortung für Frieden und Zukunftsfähigkeit, VVN Bund