A German special-needs school teacher in the university town of Landau has been stripped of her job by local courts over her opinions regarding migration, local press has reported.
The tutor, referred to only as “Myriam K”, had criticised Germany’s migration policies and Covid-19 measures on a private YouTube channel.
The court ruled that Myriam K’s statements were in direct violation of her duties as a civil servant and that they clashed with the principle of “impartial and fair official conduct”.
They went further to say that she was guilty of “agitating” against the German state, and that her political activities merited the maximum penalty.
Myriam K, known online as “Myriam – the voice from Kandel”, expressed her views regarding German policies. Two specific comments she made were cited as being constitutional violations: “Our politicians beat down our right to freedom of speech with Nazi cudgels and hate speech,” and “We don’t want masses of foreign men here.”
Myriam K maintained that she refrained from expressing her political views to her students.
The court citied her “outspokenness” on her private YouTube platform as grounds for dismissal.
The trigger for Myriam K’s activism seems to have been a murder case in Kandel, Rhineland-Palatinate, back in December 2017. A 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death by an Afghani asylum-seeker, who was believed to be 20 years old.
In response, citizen alliances such as “Women’s Alliance Kandel” and “Kandel is Everywhere” rallied for justice, drawing the attention of interested individuals including Myriam K, who signed up with the Women’s Alliance Kandel group.
Thomas Hirsch, mayor of Landau and a member of the centre-right CDU, had called for a disciplinary review of the comments Myriam K was making as early as 2020, claiming that her activism disrupted the “peace in the school”.
Her students’ parents also protested her actions, sparking a Change.org petition titled “Teaching ban for racist teacher”.
Students did not complain about her teaching methods, according to Junge Freiheir, the right-wing journal that broke the story.
