(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.
"The
fear that our telephones or mails are recorded and stored by foreign
intelligence services is a constraint on the feeling of freedom and then the
danger grows that freedom itself is damaged," he said.
"We
are a democratic state with the rule of law with basic rights. Freedom is one
of these basic rights."
Merkel
has been at pains to maintain friendly relations with Washington at the same
time as showing voters she understands their anger about reports of intrusive
surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency's (NSA), where Snowden worked
as a contractor.
She has
repeatedly said the state has a duty to protect its citizens from the threat of
terrorism, but that the response must be proportionate.
Opposition
parties have accused Merkel of failing to press Washington for answers about
the scale of NSA activity.
Reports
that German spies cooperated with U.S. agents caused an outcry and one crucial
question is how much she or her chief of staff knew. So far she has offered few
answers.
The
issue has potential to damage Merkel in the election, although opinion polls
show little impact so far on a double-digit lead for her conservatives over the
main opposition Social Democrats (SPD).
Referring
to communism and Nazism, Gauck said Germany had painful experiences of living
in a security state where no one was safe to speak out:
"We
Germans have had to experience the abuse of state power with secret services
twice in our history. And therefore we are sensitive (to this) and our American
friends must accept that."
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