The case Billy Six is a prime example of how foreign Germans, or rather Germans abroad, are being tricked or abandoned by the Federal Foreign Office and embassy staff.

This brings me back to my demand that we Germans abroad have to elect our missions abroad ourselves, just as others in Germany elect their mayor democratically and do not get a bureaucrat par ordre mufti from the top down.

As a reminder: Billy Six is an investigative journalist who travelled to Colombia and Venezuela to research the social and political situation in Venezuela. On November 17, 2018, he was arrested by Venezuelan intelligence. Only after 119 days in prison was he released on 15 March 2019. One of the decisive factors for his release was the intervention of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lawrow.

What does it say about the status of German citizens and their political representation when German journalists are dependent on the help of foreign diplomats because their own embassy is too stupid to represent their own people properly?

It’s worth listening in full to the press conference Billy Six held in Berlin after his return on March 18, 2019. (Press conference of Billy Six after his release) Among other things, he reports that the prison administration(!) has asked the German embassy to visit its citizen after all. As far as the background is concerned, the Venezuelan secret service had indications of an assassination attempt on the president and they could not classify Billy Six, whether he was really only a journalist or whether he belonged to the conspiracy and was supposed to take the situation away. There was no clear demand from the Foreign Office for release and no clarification that Billy Six was really a journalist. As Billy Six’s parents report, the State Department expressly refused to demand Billy Six’s release. The Foreign Office really got Billy Six into trouble with this, because a lack of demand for the release of a journalist is the diplomatic admission that Billy Six is indeed a spy.

So our political representation is playing with the lives of the citizens who are supposed to protect them and represent their interests. Please support Billy Six in his fight against the corrupt official pack and support me in my fight for elected ambassadors.

Your Jürgen Hass