The facts as submitted by the petitioner 2.1The German cultural journal Lettre International (2009 fall edition, No. 86) published an interview with Mr. Thilo Sarrazin, the former Finance Senator of the Berlin Senate (from 2002 to April 2009, Social Democratic Party) and member of the Board of Directors of the German Central Bank (from May 2009), entitled “Class instead of Mass: from the Capital City of Social Services to the Metropolis of the Elite”. In this interview, Mr. Sarrazin expressed himself in a derogatory and discriminatory way about social “lower classes”, which are “not productive” and would have to “disappear over time” in order to create a city of the “elite”. In this context, he stated, inter alia: “[…] The city has a productive circulation of people, who work and who are needed, be they part of the administration or of the ministries. Beside them, there are a number of people, about 20% of the population, who are not economically needed. They live off social welfare (Hartz IV) and transfer income; on a federal level this segment is only 8-10%. This part of the population needs to disappear over time. A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose numbers have grown through erroneous policies, have no productive function, except for the fruit and vegetable trade, and other perspectives will probably not develop either […]. […] One must stop talking about “the” migrant. We must look at the different migrant groups. […] With the core group of people from Yugoslavia, however, one sees a more “Turkish” problem, the Turkish group and the Arabs ‘slope’ dramatically [in terms of success]. Even in the third generation, a lot of them lack any reasonable knowledge of German. Many of them don’t even finish school and an even smaller number make it to the college entrance exam […]. […] There is another problem: the lower the class, the higher the birth rate. The birth rates of the Arabs and Turks are two to three times higher than what corresponds to their overall proportion in the population. Large segments are neither willing nor able to integrate. The solution to this problem can only be to stop letting people in, and whoever wants to get married should do it abroad. Brides are constantly being supplied: the Turkish girl here is married to someone from Anatolia; the young Turkish man gets a bride from an Anatolian village. It’s even worse with the Arabs. My idea would be to generally prohibit influx, except for highly qualified individuals and not provide social welfare for immigrants any more. […] It is a scandal when Turkish boys don’t listen to female teachers because of their culture. Integration is an accomplishment of those who integrate. I don’t have to accept anyone who doesn’t do anything. I don’t have to accept anyone who lives off the State and rejects this very State, who doesn’t make an effort to reasonably educate their children and constantly produces new little headscarf girls. That is true for 70% of the Turkish and for 90% of the Arab population in Berlin. Many of them don’t want any integration, they want