US Report on Human Rights in Germany

The right-wing magazine Zuerst! is usually extremely anti-American in its views, but in its current issue it heaps praise on the US Department of State.  Why the change of heart?  It turns out the editors of Zuerst! are tired of hearing "left-wing" commentators from NGOs criticize the Federal Republic for indirectly supporting torture of detainees in the US-led "Global War on Terror".  The US Dept. of State has touched upon the real abuse of human rights in its annual survey Country Reports on Human Rights Practices:

Der im Frühjahr veröffentlichte US-Bericht wurde zwar von der deutschen Presse nicht übergangen, jedoch beschränkte diese sich weitgehend auf die Wiedergabe von Agenturmeldungen. […]Bei den wenigen bundesdeutschen Medien, die nicht die Agenturmeldungen von hinten eingekürzt hatten, waren dann tatsächlich zwei erstaunliche Sätze zu lesen: „Das Gutachten des State Department weist außerdem darauf hin, daß das Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung in Deutschland und auf Versammlungsfreiheit ‚für Neonazis und andere als extremistisch eingestufte Gruppen eingeschränkt‘ sei. Als Beispiele führt der Bericht die Beschlagnahme rechtsextremer Schriften und Demonstrationsverbote für Neonazis an.“

Here is the actual text from the report on Germany under the section Freedom of Speech and Press: 

The constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press; while the government mostly respected these rights in practice, it imposed limits aimed at groups deemed extremist. On November 17, the Federal Constitutional Court limited free speech that specifically endorses neo-Nazi doctrines, claiming this was "an exceptional circumstance."
Individuals could criticize the government publicly or privately without reprisal, and an active independent media expressed a wide variety of views without government restriction. However, making or disseminating oral statements or propaganda inciting racial hatred, endorsing Nazism, or denying the Holocaust is prohibited.

And, in fact, the report has several examples of where German authorities engaged in the supression of right-wing extremist speech or text, and mentions the six-year prison sentence for Horst Mahler for using a Nazi slogan in a Vanity Fair interview.  Here I agree with Zuerst! that right-wing hate speech, and even Holocaust-denial, should be protected under German Basic Law (Grundgesetz).

But the editors of Zuerst! forgot to mention in their article that the US report also criticizes German authorities for violating the privacy of members of the Left Party (Die LINKE): 

Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

The constitution prohibits such actions, and authorities mostly respected these prohibitions in practice. However, members of organizations monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (FOPC) and state offices for the protection of the constitution (OPCs) charged that these agencies violated their privacy.On September 9, the federal government confirmed the FOPC collected information on all 53 members of the federal parliament from the Left Party. The government asserted that the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court decision on February 13 authorized surveillance of the Left Party.

The Left Party is now Germany's third largest party in terms of the number of votes it routinely wins in both state and national elections.  It does not undermine the constitution but stakes out positions that were traditionally represented by the Social Democrats (SPD).  Surveillance of the Left Party is a serious violation of the members' constitiutional rights.