Coloradans’ ‘Journey for Justice’ Off to Rocky Start in Germany

With their own state’s image tarnished by its new anti-gay law, a large delegation of elected Colorado officials and community leaders launched a “journey for justice” Monday to learn about intolerance more than 5,000 miles from home.

The privately funded tour of Germany was led by Lt. Gov. Michael Callihan, who raised the ire of Bonn officials with a news release that appeared to compare the wave of right-wing violence here to human rights abuses in Iraq, Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“We travel to Germany to stand in solidarity with the millions of people who recognize the danger of the rising neo-Nazi movement,” his statement said. “Our travels could just as easily be to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia or Iraq, where there also exist grave injustices to the human body and mind.”

At the Federal Press Office, a government spokesman said the statement was “totally unacceptable to compare a democracy like ours . . . to places such as Bosnia. It’s pretty shameless, really.” A U.S. diplomat sniped, “I guess they want to lure Barbra Streisand back to the slopes at Aspen.”

Callihan, a Democrat, told a news conference in Bonn that “we’re not wagging our fingers at the Germans.” Colorado, he noted, “has its own share of problems,” including racial tensions and violence.

Told of the Federal Press Office’s comments, Callihan said he did not mean to imply that Germany’s human rights record was comparable to that of Iraq, Somalia or Bosnia.

He refused to say how much the five-day trip for 25 people to Bonn and Munich cost but emphasized that “this is not a state trip and there is no government money in this.”

The delegation includes representatives from a cross section of ethnic and religious communities, as well as a survivor of Dachau and one of the U.S. generals who helped liberate the concentration camp at the end of World War II.

The group planned to visit Dachau in Bavaria--the German state with the lowest rate of racial violence by neo-Nazis and skinheads. But there were no plans to visit eastern Germany, which experts consider a powder keg for attacks against foreign asylum-seekers; there also were no meetings set up with right-wing youth or those who work with them.

“We’re not here so much to convert Nazis as to enlighten ourselves,” said Allegra Haynes, a Denver city councilwoman and a delegation member identified as a representative of the black community.

Meetings with low-level German government officials were scheduled, as well as talks with leaders of grass-roots groups that have staged massive public protests against the right-wing thugs. Seventeen people, including 10 foreigners, were killed in the 2,000-plus right-wing attacks reported last year in Germany.

“In the last year, I have buried far more . . . victims of irrational violence, prejudice and bigotry,” said the Rev. Marshall Gourley, a Roman Catholic priest with the Colorado delegation. “The same kind of intolerance, the same kind of prejudice--without a doubt I have found them in Colorado, and I found them resulting in the deaths of far more than 17 people.”

Still, he said of the trip, “I don’t think it’s wasted money; I don’t think it’s misused money.”

Asked whether he could understand why Germans might resent Coloradans meddling in domestic politics, Callihan said he would “direct a tour” of Colorado’s own dark past if Germans wanted. He mentioned camps where Japanese-Americans were detained in World War II and the site of the Sand Creek massacre of American Indians as two possible stops on such a tour.

The two representatives from Colorado’s gay community did not attend the delegation’s news conference Monday night; their absence was not explained.

Enactment of Colorado’s Amendment 2, approved Nov. 3 with 53% of the vote, has been delayed by court challenges. The amendment bars state and local governments from passing gay-rights laws and repeals such ordinances already in place.