Human rights in Germany

Reports from independent organizations such as Amnesty International certify a high level of compliance with human rights, while others, like the researcher Tobias Singelnstein, point out several issues, in particular police brutality[1] and mistreatment of refugees.

It has wide-ranging effects on judicial practice; for example, it has been used to justify the right on Informational self-determination in a 1983 finding of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.

However, following experiences from the Weimar Republic, Germany sees itself as a wehrhafte Demokratie (fortified democracy); actions targeted towards removing the democratic order are not covered by human rights.

Since 1 July 2011, the government no longer has the ability to exercise the right under this article, that is, military service is currently de facto voluntary in Germany.

The Amnesty International reports of 2005 and 2006 mainly criticize—though very rarely occurring and mostly severely punished—some cases of police brutality, mistreatment of refugees, and racist attacks.

The most notable incident involving free press restrictions was the Spiegel scandal of 1962, when the Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauß ordered the unlawful arrest of several journalists after an article accusing him of bribery.

However, on February 27, 2007, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that suspicion that a journalist is aiding the betrayal of state secrets is not sufficient to warrant a search, and thus the raid was illegal.

[7] However, there were some incidents in the last past years: On 5 March 2009 a man died in a hospital after falling into a coma while in police custody in Hagen on 17 February where he had been bound face-down.

[8] In December 2008, the regional court of Dessau acquitted two police officers of killing Oury Jalloh as a result of negligence.

In 2002, Frankfurt's police vice president Wolfgang Daschner ordered a subordinate officer to threaten the suspect of a kidnapping to use force in order to get information on the whereabouts of the abductee (the abductee was killed shortly after the kidnapping, but the suspect told the police that the child was still alive, and Daschner decided to break the law to save the child's life.

[15][16] By the time the first of these laws were enacted, the Special Rapporteur on torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Juan E. Méndez, reported on abusive practises in health care settings worldwide and the policies that promote these practises.

He stated that: "both this mandate and United Nations treaty bodies have established that involuntary treatment and other psychiatric interventions in health-care facilities are forms of torture and ill-treatment" and that "it is essential that an absolute ban on all coercive and non-consensual measures, including restraint and solitary confinement of people with psychological or intellectual disabilities, should apply"[17] Several parties, such as the right-wing "National Democratic Party of Germany" (NPD) and the communist platform of the Left Party, are under surveillance from the Verfassungsschutz ("Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution").

The end of communism and collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia has contributed to an increase in human trafficking, with the majority of victims being women forced into prostitution.

[22][23] Germany is a transit and destination country for persons, primarily women, trafficked mainly from Central and Eastern Europe and from Africa for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

The law initially required them to undergo surgical alteration of their genitals in order to have key identity documents changed.

[27] Intersex people in Germany have no recognition of their rights to physical integrity and bodily autonomy, and no specific protections from discrimination on the basis of sex characteristics.

In response to an inquiry by the German Ethics Council in 2012, the government passed legislation in 2013 designed to classify some intersex infants to a de facto third category.

[30] The United Nations and Amnesty International have joined local intersex civil society organizations in calling for protections.