생태주의, 민주주의, 인권

Ecology, Democracy and Human Rights. History of German

This paper deals with the history of German anti-nuclear movement in the light of the following three ideas: ecology, democracy and human rights. While turning from the peace movement in the Cold War era to the “Anti-AKW-Bewegung” in the 1970s, the West German anti-nuclear movement formed an alliance with the new environmental movement which was breaking with the former conservationist position and taking issue with the fatal environmental devastation of modern capitalist society. So-called “ecological turn” of the German anti-nuclear movement enabled its advocates to repudiate the fraudulent slogan of “Atoms for Peace” and to oppose all sorts of nuclear facilities and artifacts. This mental change was accompanied by opposition to the construction of new nuclear power plants so that dissenting groups occupied the prearranged areas for the construction like Wyhl and Brokdorf and stood against the government. The West German “Anti-AKW-Bewegung” was the arising “new social movements” par excellence, since such an act of civil disobedience was changed to a grassroots democracy in the course of unreserved debates and mutual consent. This new political tendency led to the foundation of the Green Party in 1980 which initiated to plan on shutting down nuclear power plants in West Germany. In line with such a grassroots democracy the idea of human rights can be another value system on which the German Anti-nuclear movement relied. At issue here are not only fundamental rights and social justice, but also more transnational rights for living and health. Under the threat of the potential danger of radioactivity man should try to find a way out of his vulnerability, whether disasters may be resulted from a atomic weapon or from a nuclear power plant. The history of German anti-nuclear movement provides an answer concerning how to recover the rights for autonomous decision for each man’s own life in the post-Fukushima age.