A petite drone that crash-landed right in front of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her latest campaign rally has turned out to be a stunt protest staged by the Pirate Party, which campaigns for transparency in politics and internet freedom.
"The goal of the effort was to make Chancellor Merkel and
Defense Minister de Maizière realize what it's like to be
subjected to drone observation," deputy head of the
left-liberal Pirate Party, Markus Barenhoff, said in a statement.
"For us, the use of drones within the EU's security framework
is the expression of a disastrous trend," he added.
According to the statement posted on the party's website, it was
also a protest against a scrapped spy drone deal which had cost
Germany over 500 million euro before being cut off earlier in the
year.
In June, there were calls for Thomas de Maizière’s resignation
after the scandal involving his ministry’s Euro Hawk surveillance
drone project gathered momentum, amid reports that the
multi-million surveillance aircraft proved too dangerous to be
flown in European airspace.
Nine years ago a German drone nearly collided with a passenger plane
over Afghanistan. The classified drone camera footage drew public
attention after the German Defense Ministry scrapped the drone
program.
"The intention was two-fold: firstly, to draw attention to the
government surveillance scandal, and secondly to put de
Maizière's Euro Hawk failings back on the agenda," Barenhoff
told Spiegel online.
The 40cm-wide device, fitted with a camera, dropped down meters
away from the Chancellor during the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) event on Sunday in the eastern city of Dresden.
The Pirate Party said it was glad the drone managed to capture
everybody’s attention, with photos of Merkel and her team as a
historic souvenir.
"Though the crash landing wasn't part of the plan, we did
achieve what we wanted," Barenhoff noted.
An unnamed 23-year-old Pirate Party member, who was operating the
drone from a nearby hideout, was tracked down by the police soon
after the incident and temporarily taken into custody.
Following the incident, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told
reporters that the Chancellor "has confidence, as she always
does, that what's necessary for her security is done." An
Interior Ministry spokesman added that the federal police in
charge of Merkel's personal security had "taken note of the
incident and will draw its conclusions from it."
Merkel has just under a week left of rallies before parliamentary
elections on September 22. The conservative defense minister has
been tipped to be one of her possible successors.
It’s believed that the drone stunt could help the Pirate Party,
which currently has around 31,000 members nationwide, regain
popularity. Support for the pirates is currently just around 3
percent, although about a year ago, one in three Germans could
imagine voting for the Pirate Party, according to polls. The
challenge is to overcome the five percent threshold needed to win
seats in the Bundestag. The Pirates were set up in 2006; since
then they have been voted into parliament in four German states.