Protest against the abuse of academic freedom

To the Attorney of the German Federal Supreme Court,

This is a letter of protest and petition against the abuse of academic freedom recently committed in Germany against a number of individuals including Andrej Holm for alleged membership of a terrorist organisation or supporting such an organisation.

We are the Planners Network UK, a group of teachers, academics, researchers and practitioners who work in the field of urban geography and planning in the UK. We write because what is currently taking place in Germany undermines academic integrity and freedom, and serves a gross injustice against the individuals being persecuted and by extension all of us who pursue the truth in our research endeavours. The actions of the German police and by extension the German state are the antithesis of what our organisation considers to be foundational to proper academic research and endeavour: these are an open but critical and inquiring mind, the ability to publish freely the results of research that was undertaken with rigour and integrity, and the right to live in freedom where those responsibilities have been upheld.

Individuals involved in this case include researchers and academics of the highest integrity, whose work has made a very great contribution to urban geography and planning in recent years in raising key issues and concerns for urban and public policy. We hold all of the accused in the highest regards and are appalled at the attempts made by the German state to brand those accused as ‘terrorists’ or as supporting terrorist crimes on the flimsy evidence that has thus far been presented.

The arguments used in the arrest of these individuals render every academic research activity that is politically engaged as potentially criminal. Since we believe that all research activity should be politically engaged toward justice and human rights, but always rigorous and undertaken with the highest of ethical integrity, this presents a very dangerous course of action. In the UK and elsewhere, academics routinely intervene in social struggles for just outcomes, this is an essential part of our work. The actions of the German state in this case undermine this by branding such political engagement as ‘terrorism’.

We demand that the Federal Prosecutor (Bundesanwaltschaft) immediately suspend the § 129a-proceedings against all parties concerned and release Andrej Holm and the other imprisoned from jail at once. We strongly reject the outrageous accusation that the academic research activities and the political engagement of Andrej Holm are to be viewed as complicity in an alleged “terrorist association”. No arrest warrant can be deduced from the academic research and political work of Andrej Holm. The Federal Prosecutor, through applying Article § 129, is threatening the freedom of research and teaching as well as social-political engagement.

Yours sincerely

Planners Network UK (PNUK)
Sent by Dr Libby Porter: convenor of PNUK and Lecturer, University of Sheffield

Planners Network UK
c/o Department of Town and Regional Planning
University of Sheffield
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
UK
15 August 2007

Source: Planners Network UK (PNUK) | 15.08.2007