Germany: Enforced arrest for radio licence fees — woman behind bars because of just under 280 euros

An original translation from Oz-Rita with many thanks

From Deutsch RT:

Germany

Although the ARD itself considers the use of force in connection with broadcasting fees to be inappropriate, yet another woman landed in prison in North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday. Sylvia Schulte and her husband do not want to pay any flat-rate radio fee

It is not the first time that a citizen in Germany has ended up behind bars for small sums he refuses to pay for an unused service. And this despite the fact that the ARD itself considers the compulsory nature in connection with the radio report to be inappropriate.

Sylvia Schulte from Wuppertal was first taken to the Wuppertal prison. However, as this is a males-only prison, she was then taken to Cologne-Ossendorf, which her husband learned about only later, as he told RT Deutsch by telephone on request.

The offence committed by the 41-year-old housewife: For about four years Schulte has refused to pay the fees to the contribution service, which collects the radio fee for ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. According to the freshly signed arrest warrant, the sum amounted to just 277.62 euros.

This picture above ^^^ is the copy of the “Haftbefehl” which translates into: “WARRANT OF ARREST”.

As reason for the refusal her husband gives above all the flat-rate form of the contribution to RT Deutsch. In his opinion, an appropriate form for the fees would be, for example, a model similar to that of pay stations, for which the viewer pays according to use. However, he points to the low quality of the offer in his opinion and believes that the public broadcasters would then hardly generate any revenue.

Sylvia Schulte had not received any reminder notices; there was only a notice of determination. The city of Wuppertal was to take over the case, but the deadline had already expired when an employee visited. The city’s high court bailiff then intervened and eventually signed the arrest warrant issued in April.

The Schultes are not surprised. For this was not the first case of imprisonment for refusing to pay radio licence fees; they had experienced a treatment similar to that of Sieglinde Baumert. In 2016 the woman from Chemnitz had to serve 61 days in prison because she had not paid any contributions.

After the case led to a lot of public criticism, Karola Wille, then president of ARD, said that compulsory imprisonment was disproportionate. However, this decision is not made by a broadcaster, but by the relevant authorities of the respective state. According to a press spokesman of the Ministry of Justice, a prison stay costs around 130 euros per day.

For the Schultes one thing now remains: to raise the money as quickly as possible from somewhere, preferably by Thursday. Only then can they deal with the numerous details, such as procedural errors in the entry in the debtors’ register.


[Editor]

1: ARD is a far left wing government propaganda network.

2: I bet no muslims pay this fee, and no muslims have ever been jailed for not paying it.

3: Employees of this TV station should be taken to court on extortion charges under these conditions. At least in the UK if you do not watch the BBC, you do not have to pay the fee.

 

 

 

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

7 Replies to “Germany: Enforced arrest for radio licence fees — woman behind bars because of just under 280 euros”

  1. I don’t know how things work in Germany, but you’re mistaken about the UK.

    Here in Britain we are obliged to purchase a TV licence if we watch or record any live broadcast on any channel, BBC or otherwise. (We are also obliged to have a licence if we watch any recorded programmes on the BBC’s online service.)

    • Thank you for the correction. That is awful. People really should rise up against this and fight it. At least give up TV and just use the net. Do you have to pay the licence if you just use Netflix and watch news on Youtube etc?

      • wikipedia – Television licensing in Italy

        All owners of television equipment or any other equipment able or adaptable so to receive television are required by Italian law to have a television licence. The licence is used to part-fund the Italian public service broadcaster RAI. The licence fee was introduced for owners of radio sets in 1923, and is currently governed by a law which dates back to 1938. The annual cost of the licence fee is around €100 once VAT (IVA) is accounted for.

        Unlike television licensing in the United Kingdom, there is no exception for those who only use a TV to receive non-broadcast signals such as playing DVDs or watching online videos.

        From January 2016 all Italian electricity bills will carry a monthly surcharge which will be the equivalent of one tenth of the annual TV licence fee.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_Italy

        ===================================================Television licence

        rules and fees for various countries :

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#Canada

  2. The governments are afraid of independent news organizations, just as the Dems are. If the broadcast networks can’t make a living from ad revenue they aren’t showing what the people want to watch. Let them go broke and out of business.

  3. Tv-license ? In Denmark you pay for the priviledge of being force-fed garbage via your tax-money now , which , quite conveniently , is taken out of your salary even before you get paid . The basic thinking seems to be that whatever you earn is ours and we decide what you get . We’ll also decide whats good for you to watch and listen to . Your taxes also pay for newspapers which in a proper marketplace would have gone down the drain long time ago , isn’t that great . And if you have said and done the right things as an artist , you may find yourself on the “Finansloven” , simply speaking the budget of the state of Denmark . I’ll leave it to your imagination , what sort of garbage your taxmoney is paying for in some cases . I hear that danish prisons are quite well booked , but they’ll surely find a hole deep down in the slammer for tv-license evaders . More on topic , you gotta hand it to the germans : in matters of utmost importance , their judicial system is still fully up to the standards of efficiency one has come to expect during the last century…

  4. Everybody who works must pay it(now for some years even if you have NO TV or Radio).If you get Socialwelfare you dont have to pay it i think.

    Also interesting:The law says it should be for the necessary of Information and education,and started with 1 TV Programm for some hours a day.Now they have 22 or more TV Programms and 60 or more Radiostations!Germans pay 8 BILLION Euros every year for the Brainwashing and Cook Shows!And they say:We need more money!

  5. Use coercion to make people expend private, personal, hard-earned wealth on programs whose direct result endangers them by emboldening a declared and very dangerous enemy. Wow! That’s pretty damn evil.

    Wait a minute! Are we talking about radio and television licenses in relatively (but not for long) placid Europe?

    Or are we talking about how: The Jews are regularly pressured into supplying water and electricity to their mortal foes in Gaza?

    What a strange pattern it is that’s emerging amongst all of these Progressive governments. It seems as though they think that people are willing to be bled of their work product only to see it squandered to aid and comfort their sworn enemies.

    Wasn’t this sort of treachery once called treason? What should it be called when it is performed with complete and full cooperation of the authorities? Is that government—or world body, with regard to Israel—in possession of any moral authority?

    Or, are these merely precursors of much more kinetic future events?

    Well, that’s close enough to 100 words for the Trowel to begin nosing me a bit. It seems that Wuppertal is that odd little town in Germany, with that strange little sculpture park, and that bizarre little public conveyance known as one of the world’s first monorails.

    Now, lemme see. Where did all of us see that monorail make its cinematic debut?

    Wasn’t it in a story about a domineering government forcibly imposing it’s choice of media upon an intimidated people whose sole alternative was heavily pre-sanitized, dumbed down, AUTHORIZED media that had been scrubbed cleaner than the floor of a hospital’s operating theater?

    Just like in Europe!

    Didn’t that autocratic government go about and direct authorities to destroy those who disobeyed their mandate and, instead, regularly sought information from unauthorized information outlets not otherwise previously vetted?

    WASN’T THIS STORY CALLED FAHRENHEIT 451?!?

    “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”

    Translation:Wherever they burn books, they will also burn people at the end.

    — Heinrich Heine

    T = 00:02:00 – TSFW