GERMANY
Saturday
1 October, 2005
Dignitas Branch Provokes Outcry in Germany
Swissinfo reports:
The decision by the Swiss assisted-suicide organisation,
Dignitas, to open an office in Germany has been harshly criticised
by the German authorities. However, the head of Dignitas has
defended the move. The branch opened on Monday.
The justice ministry of Lower Saxony – the
state in which Hanover is located - said on Friday that it intended
to pass a new law making it illegal to give professional advice
on suicide.
Dignitas's move has also been condemned by the
German medical association. "Assisted suicide is killing
on demand and that is forbidden in Germany," said the association's
president, Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe, earlier this week. "The
patient has a right to a dignified death but does not have the
right to be killed," Hoppe said in a news release. "We
doctors therefore categorically reject assisted suicide."
This is a view shared by Lower Saxony's Health
Minister Ursula von der Leyen and the state's Evangelical Lutheran
bishop Margot Kässmann, who released a joint statement."Dignitas
is going down the wrong path," they said in a message published
on the health ministry's website. Half are German
But for Dignitas, opening a branch in Germany
was a natural choice as more than half the number of people
seeking its services in Switzerland are from Germany, said the
charity's general-secretary Ludwig Minelli. "In the past
seven and a half years, there have been 453 persons who we've
assisted to commit suicide here in Switzerland, and 253 of them
have been German," Minelli told Swissinfo.
He said the German office was set up on the "initiative
of our German friends", who would run it on a day-to-day
basis, but he would be the president. The main goal of having
a German branch was to push for change in German legislation
on assisted suicide and to offer advice to local members, said
Minelli. He quoted statistics on the high rate of suicide in
Germany, which he said was linked to the topic being a taboo.
The situation could be remedied "if the Germans
would take as a starting point that suicide is a marvellous
institution for human beings" because, he said, they can
think for themselves, opening up "the possibility to withdraw
from unbearable situations".
Travel Agent
He added that someone interested in exercising
the right to assisted suicide would require advice.
"You do not leave for a great journey without
having consulted the travel agency nor do you leave without
having said goodbye to your family and friends," Minelli
explained.
When asked if the Hanover branch would function
as a travel agency, he denied that this was the case as Dignitas
was not a "commercial company but an association".
However, he admitted that Dignitas' hands were tied by the legal
situation in Germany.
"[The new branch is] not an agency for sending
people to Switzerland but as long as we can't get the medicine
sodium pentobarbital in Germany, we have no other possibility
for an assisted suicide [than bringing them here]," he
said. He added that, in any case, 70 per cent of members who
approached his organisation for help in recent years did not
go on to have an assisted suicide.
These were members who had passed an assessment
for suitability and had been informed that a physician had been
found who was willing to prescribe them the deadly drug. "They
know that the emergency exit is wide open but they do not use
it," Minelli noted.
Support The German Society for Dying with Dignity
(GSDD), which has 35,000 members, welcomed Dignitas' decision
to open an office on German soil. It is, by its own admission,
the only other organisation in Germany fighting for assisted
suicide to be decriminalised.
"Dignitas Germany has been established to
try to improve the legal situation [on assisted suicides] in
this country," board member Jürgen Heise told Swissinfo.
German legislation is tighter than Swiss law on
euthanasia and assisted suicide. Active euthanasia is illegal
in Switzerland, while assisted suicide is not. In the latter,
the patient has to physically carry out the final act without
outside help. Euthanasia is defined as administering a lethal
drug to a person by a doctor or medical staff. Across the border
in Germany, Heise explained, it was possible to help individuals
to kill themselves.
"However, this assistance comes to an end
in cases where death begins with unconsciousness – under
German law, the helper must then call emergency services,"
Heise said.
This was different to Switzerland, where people
in seemingly hopeless situations, suffering from incurable and
painful diseases could be assisted to commit suicide. "Dignitas
and GSDD want such an exception to be made in Germany too,"
said Heise.
If this change took place, he agreed that this
could stem the flow of "suicide tourists" from Germany
into Switzerland. He told Swissinfo that the two organisations
would not be cooperating officially but have pledged to help
one another reach a common goal. "We see ourselves as two
football teams, [playing on the same field, striving towards]
legislative change," said Heise.
Minelli added that there were no plans to open
other offices in other countries.
By Faryal Mirza
