Opening speech by Prof. Wolf-Dieter Narr of the Free University of Berlin

Translation from German:

Ladies and gentleman, I hereby open the Russell Tribunal on abuses of human rights in psychiatry. I am doing this for the simple reason that we are in Germany and I speak German, otherwise Kate Millett would have done that – she is the president of the jury. 

Let me just say in advance why we are meeting here at the Urania, rather than at the Free University in Berlin. I am a lecturer at the Free University and applied for use of the rooms at the university a few months ago. I don't know whether you got this brochure that we have distributed – I assume that it is available outside the hall. Isabella Häuser wrote a letter to the president of the university complaing about the tribunal. The brochure also contains a brief note about Otto Klein, who was treated by Josef Mengele, who worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the 1940's under the Nazis. The Mengele Institute now forms part of the Free University of Germany, of course that has nothing to do with the activities that previously took place there because the Free University was not founded until after the war. And in conclusion on this piece of paper there is a press release by me which basically says everything that needs to be said. So if you are interested in finding out the reasons why there has been this transfer from the Free University of Berlin to the Urania here, then please consult this particular publication.

The presidium of the Free University of Berlin and the president, Mr. Gaehtgens, banned the holding of this meeting at the Free University for reasons which I must say something about in just a moment. The essence of the matter is quite simple: in December of last year I talked to a wide range of people about hiring the rooms at the Free University. My application was approved – I was given the green light to go ahead with the staging of the tribunal at the rooms in the Free University. In the meantime the ASTA at the Free University of Berlin joined in with my application, so there were two organisations or if you like, two persons if you include me as an individual wish to have the rooms for the staging of this meeting. 

If I remember correctly, I heard in April that there might be problems in the staging meeting, stemming from the fact that on the one hand, the application had been filled out correctly by myself and secondly that the rooms in the meantime were required by the university for other purposes, so the rooms would no longer be available. Of course I immediately did what I could and contacted a lawyer and agreed with him that I would take the requisite action. After all, I had a contract stemminig from the previous December which the university was on the poiint of violating and therefore there had to be formal reasons which had to be provided. In the meantime we've also established that the rooms, which we were not allowed to use, or are not allowed to use  - to use the present tense – are not required at all by anybody else, so it is not the question of the rooms not being available that was the issue. So we took legal action, applying the the administrative court. The first instance of the administrative court said that the president of the university was correct, from my point of view for incorrect reasons. He's not weighed up what the issue was at hand. The fact of the matter was that there was a contract signed by the university which had been violated. 

What was also at dispute was Article 5 of the Constitution: freedom of opinion and § 3 stresses the right to teach and research and I, as a lecturer at the Free University in Berlin have applied for rooms for a conference which has to do with a scientific and academic theme as part of my teaching and research of freedom and rooms are made available to me. Then of course, if the rooms are taken away from me, then this freedom to teach and research is violated. These two violations were not adequately taken into account. I have appealed against this decision taken by the administrative court in the meantime, so we'll be moving up to the upper administrative court and if the decision is upheld, that will nevertheless not mean my accepting that – I will take the matter further. But basically Article 5 §3 of the basic constitution is affected. 

We tend to talk about the Free University of the Federal Republic of Germany – I am not talking about the United States, the president of the United States – which I am criticizing. In this instance I am not criticizing the Free University, but the president of the Free University. So we have to take care that we make the proper distinctions here. I can only speculate what the ultimate reasons are, why the application was turned down. However there are useful points of departure, a few suspicions. 

The first is the fact that Isabella Häuser mentioned on the brochure that I referred to, wrote that she herself is a member of the department of psychiatry at the polyclinic for Clinical Psychiatry at the Free University in Berlin and she writes in this letter – let me just quote briefly from it now. First of all she writes to Mr. Gaehtgens that she was very upset that this anti-psychiatric congress is being held and how the Free University could put itself in the position to allow something so like this to be held, something so anti-scientific. In the second paragraph of the letter – and I quote here – "At a time in which psychiatry on a high scientific level is continuing to make rapid progress in the detection and healing of mental illnesses, this finster event, clouded by anti-psychiatric ideology is not only damaging to the Free University of Berlin which has a high international standing as a university with a high scientific standard but also damaging to a neuro-scientific, modern psychiatry."

So if you like, I imagine that she feels on the one hand – this is the second hypothesis, which I should refer to, which I cannot confirm – which derive from the symptoms expressed. I was involved in the decision. Nobody talked to me, which is not "cricket". The second reason is the unease in respect of what questions one can put to established organizations. We all put questions and depending on the answers, we will come to the appropriate assessment, which may well be radical. We don't have any biases or pre-judgements. It's a question of examining, whether human rights abuses take place  It is not a question of the issue being prejudiced at all. We will see what we establish in the course of the next two days in terms of evidence and we will come to the appropriate conclusions on Sunday evening and publizise those on Monday morning. 

So, in other words, the Free University does not have proper justification for hindering something because it has a critical content. Although, I think if a university has "veritas, justicia, libertas" in its emblem, then a free university and its governing board should be capable of understanding that truth can be seen from different perspectives and something like the Russell Tribunal should be able to be tolerated on the grounds of the Free University. Obviously it is not possible so one concluding remark in this respect. You will know that the human genetic discussion is being conducted in Germany but not just here, because this is something unheard of, what is happening here: that people are being interfered with as regards their genetic substance. So in this context, memories of what occurred in Nazi Germany are being recalled and Mengele and Schur and others who worked here tortured their patients to death and it's a question really of finding out, what it is that they tried to do. At a time when the Nazi expression of genetically healthy people is being referred to again and where it is in the process of mapping out the human genome and interfering with the genetic substance in order to produce healthy people, then it is inevitable that memories are recalled of what happened in Nazi Germany. But that does not mean that what is happening now is the same as what happened under the Nazis. Nor that the people who are researching are doing Nazi-type things. What we are saying is: look at the experience from the past, take care, be cautious and make sure that if you are looking at the utopia of genetically healthy persons and of course there is economic motives behind the research that is being conducted at the present moment in time. 

So in brief, the presidium should be criticized for refusing us the rooms but they are also trying to suppress discussion of human rights abuses. Thank you.