BERLIN (AP) — The German protection ministry stated Tuesday that it has obtained 178 purposes for compensation from homosexual servicepeople who skilled discrimination within the navy up to now.
The ministry stated in an announcement that it had anticipated extra purposes, however that nonetheless “the goals of the law were achieved.”
A legislation rehabilitating homosexual troopers who suffered discrimination got here into pressure two years in the past, and to this point, about 400,000 euros ($438,000) has been paid in symbolic compensation, the ministry stated.
The legislation was handed in 2021 after a examine commissioned by the protection ministry and offered in 2020 documented “systematic discrimination” within the Bundeswehr – the navy of West Germany and since 1990 of reunited Germany – from 1955 till the start of the twenty first century.
While the German navy stopped its coverage of discrimination towards homosexual troopers in 2000, it took greater than twenty years to go the legislation providing them compensation.
The legislation additionally presents compensation for homosexual troopers who served in East Germany’s National People’s Army till Germany’s unification in 1990.
The protection minister apologized for the discrimination towards homosexual troopers within the Bundeswehr on the time the examine was offered.
The examine discovered that “same-sex orientation was viewed as a security risk in the Bundeswehr until the turn of the millennium and made a career as an officer or noncommissioned officer impossible.”
In the previous, troopers have been punished by navy courts for consensual homosexual intercourse, dismissed, denied promotion or stripped of accountability.
In its report on Tuesday, the protection ministry wrote that “the reconciliation of the affected soldiers with the Bundeswehr cannot be measured solely by the number of successful rehabilitation proceedings and the associated payments.” It confused that as well as, “individual, appreciative communication and comradely attention are also just as much a part of this as the explicit admission by the Bundeswehr that injustice was done to those affected at the time.”
In latest years, Germany has tried to deal with previous anti-gay discrimination in numerous methods. In 2017, parliament voted to annul the convictions of 1000’s of homosexual males below a legislation criminalizing male homosexuality that was enforced zealously in post-World War II West Germany.
Legislation criminalizing male homosexuality was launched within the nineteenth century, toughened below Nazi rule and retained in that kind by democratic West Germany, which convicted about 50,000 males between 1949 and 1969. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969 however the laws wasn’t taken off the books solely till 1994.
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