Maaßen defends himself against demands for resignation

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Hans-Georg Maassen

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Jacob Schröter / imago images / Jacob Schröter

After questionable statements by the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maaßen, about the corona vaccination, calls for exclusion are increasing in the CDU.

Now Maassen defends himself in a letter to several party members.

In it Maaßen defends that he had shared a video of a vaccination critic on the Internet - and claims to have suffered vaccine damage as a child.

At the age of five he had to undergo emergency surgery after a vaccination, and a year later after a combination vaccination a second time.

The online portal "The Pioneer" first reported on the letter, and it is also available to the dpa news agency.

Schleswig-Holstein's Education Minister Karin Prien, who is also a member of the CDU federal executive board, called for Maassen's exclusion on Sunday.

"My fundamental right to freedom of expression"

"The announcement of a party exclusion procedure against a party member because of such a posting is an attack on freedom of expression and intra-party democracy," writes the failed Bundestag candidate. This was intended to intimidate other members. "If I post a video of a professor who is seriously concerned about the contamination of the mRNA vaccines, I am exercising my basic right to freedom of expression." The CDU had to deal with the arguments of critical experts.

"I can understand anyone who gets vaccinated and boosted, because Covid-19 is a serious disease," the letter says.

But the state is obliged to take the concerns of the unvaccinated seriously.

"I am not against vaccinations, because I consider them to be a very important means of preventing infectious diseases," said Maaßen.

He had been vaccinated again and again, but only with vaccines that he had tolerated well.

However, he considers the statement by politicians that a vaccination is just a spade to be frivolous.

"Not scientifically founded"

The trigger for the exclusion dispute is a video shared by Maaßen by bestselling author Sucharit Bhakdi, in which he calls for the corona vaccinations to be stopped.

Schleswig-Holstein's public prosecutor's office is investigating the microbiologist on charges of sedition.

Bhakdi has long been popular with “lateral thinkers” because of his theses.

In the video, Bhakdi claims the vaccination destroys the human immune system.

The statements are unconfirmed, and scientific data cannot be understood.

The German Society for Pathology clearly distanced itself from the statements.

It is »here about personal expressions of opinion and not about the position of our specialist society.

As has already been critically noted by others, the data presented are not scientifically founded «.

Maaßen defended the distribution of the video and again shared it on Twitter as "noteworthy".

mrc / dpa