German president says whistleblowers like Snowden merit respect

(Reuters) - Germany's president, who helped expose the workings of East Germany's dreaded Stasi secret police, said whistleblowers like U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden deserved respect for defending freedom.

Weighing in on a debate that could influence September's federal election, President Joachim Gauck struck a very different tone from that of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has assured Washington that Berlin would not shelter Snowden.

Gauck, who has little power but great moral authority, said people who work for the state were entitled to act according to their conscience, as institutions sometimes depart from the law.

"This will normally only be put right if information is made public. Whoever draws the public's attention to it and acts out of conscience deserves respect," he told Friday's Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

After the fall of communism, Gauck, a dissident Lutheran pastor, headed a commission in charge of the Stasi's vast archive of files on people it had spied on, using them to root out former Stasi members and collaborators.

His unusual decision to speak out on a hot political issue comes as the fallout from the Snowden affair is dominating headlines in the run-up to the September 22 election where Merkel - who, like Gauck, comes from what was communist East Germany - hopes to win a third term.



http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/26/us-usa-security-snowden-germany-idUSBRE96P0NQ20130726