German Ministry of Commerce rejects complaint against Olympia sponsor Volkswagen

The German Ministry of Commerce has rejected a complaint of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) against the Volkswagen Company on account of the support of the Olympic torch-run through China . The GfbV had accused the company with violating the OECD guide-lines for multi-national enterprises and fostering infringements of human rights in providing vehicles for the torch-run.

The Ministry rejected this charge without giving any reason, criticised the GfbV Asia expert, Ulrich Delius, on Monday in Göttingen, although infringements of human rights were mentioned in the GfbV complaint. These have been committed just recently in Tibet and Xinjiang to prevent further protests when the runners arrive. In the town of Kashgar (Xinjiang), in which according to the latest plans the flame is planned to arrive on 17^th June, 70 Uighurs were arrested for political reasons at the end of March 2008.

"The letter with the rejection is disappointingly empty", said Delius. Instead of producing sound reasons the Ministry merely explained why the government had spoken out against a boycott of the Olympiad. This was however no concern of the complaint, nor did the GfbV call for a boycott.

The Federal Ministry of Commerce, as national headquarters for the implementation of these OECD guide-lines for multi-national enterprises, is the correct address for complaints. VW is in its 2007/2008 report on sustainability explicit in its support of these guide-lines. The GfbV accused the company of infringing Section 2 of the "General Guide-lines", in which companies are called upon to "respect the human rights of those persons affected by its activity".