Merkel shrugged off questions about Europe, but enjoyed a tour of China
Dialogue with countries such as Russia or China is still necessary, but this does not mean supporting their policy that human rights are an internal matter of the country.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated this during a direct line with German students, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“My parents are from Spain, but I was born and raised in Germany. I have both citizenships - Spanish and German... I am not a patriot of either Germany or Spain. I'm not proud to be German and I'm not proud to be Spanish, I'm just me. I’m European – this is more suitable,” said one of the participants in the direct line.
He compared the USA, where cities are separated by hundreds of kilometers, and Europe, where you can travel through several countries in the same time.
“I would like there to be a little less nationalism, so that people would see themselves a little less as Danes, Finns, Germans, and see themselves more as Europeans. It would be beautiful, it would be wonderful,” the student said, while the German chancellor only nodded meaningfully.
At the same time, the question about China and other “dictatorship countries” received a detailed answer from Merkel.
“It seems to me that we need to distance ourselves from dictatorship or almost dictatorship. The best example is China. They constantly promise that they will respect human rights and promise that they will improve, but they do the opposite. It seems to me that we absolutely cannot contradict them. It seems to me that we are looking too much at current economic interests rather than at future economic interests. You have already spoken about international law. In China, in many areas, he behaves very unusually and tries to rewrite international law in Taiwan or the South China Sea,” said another German student.
“Yes, and this is something we talk about, but we can be strong if we speak with one voice,” the chancellor said. – If countries like China or Russia know that if we talk to one country we will get one answer, and if we talk to another country we will get a different answer, then we cannot be strong. And, of course, we must cooperate with countries that have a different social order, but despite this, it cannot be that one country sets the agenda and determines what can be talked about and what cannot be talked about. And yes, we criticize the violation of human rights in China, be it the rights of the Uyghurs or something else.”
“But it's not always easy to talk to China about this because they say it's their internal matter. I do not believe that human rights are an internal, personal matter of a country, but there are many countries in the world in which, in our opinion, human rights are not very well respected and, of course, we cannot talk only with countries in which everything good, like ours.
You are right that we should not become dependent on such countries, and we should say what we must be able to do ourselves so as not to become dependent. Because there is some danger that we can become dependent on others, which is why science and technology are so important to us.
I am very proud that we have our own vaccine, which was created by the German company BioNTech. And that the vaccine we have is not only from other parts of the world. Imagine that America has a vaccine, China and Russia do, but Europe does not. Therefore, it is important to remain technologically ahead of the rest,” concluded Angela Merkel.
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