East German Church leader wants ‘glasnost’

Press, 29 January 1988, Page 6

East German Church leader wants ‘glasnost’

NZPA-Reuter East Berlin A Protestant Church leader, responding to a clampdown on dissent, says the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, is an example for the future and that his reforms belong on the agenda in East Germany. In a measured but defiant speech, the top Church official, Manfred Becker, told an East Berlin congregation, “Much hope in our country is linked with the name Gorbachev. “Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) belong on the agenda in our country too,” he said amid cheers and applause. Today the verdict is due in the trial of Vera Wollenberger, one of 10 dissidents detained since activists tried to join an official march on January 17. She is charged with hooliganism. The defence has called for her acquittal but ADN news agency said in a brief report on the trial that the prosecu-

tor had demanded an eight-month prison sentence. Mr Becker, a senior figure in the Church leadership that has been seeking to mediate with the State, said Mr Gorbachev had changed from being an abstract object of hope to a real example for the future. East Germany, while wishing Moscow well in its attempts at domestic reform, has refrained from introducing similar policies. It says it has long since embarked on its own reform course. Only Rumania among Moscow’s East European allies has shown similar reluctance to tread the same path as Mr Gorbachev. Mr Becker urged the East German Government to have more trust in its people, of all opinions. “See the wealth of good will ... don’t throw everyone into the same pot,” he said. While Mr Becker urged East German officials to be less hasty in categorising people, he made clear

that the Church did not necessarily support the attempted demonstration and the myriad reasons behind it. "The Church supports those people in distress,” he told a congregation of about 600 at East Berlin’s Galilaea church. “But that does not automatically mean it identifies with the action and with the motives.” The police detained about 200 activists, many of whom had applied for exit visas, when some of them tried to join the official demonstration to commemorate two German revolutionary figures, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Since then, most of the activists — from a wide range of small dissident groups — have been freed and about 60 would-be emigrants sent to West Germany. Seven others who would like to leave were jailed for up to a year. Ten dissidents who want to remain in East Germany are in investigative custody.