Regarding Item 4 of the Agenda:
The actions of the members of the Supervisory Board are not to be ratified.
Reason:
In its Code of Ethics, Daimler AG demands ethical behavior of its executives (see Annual Report 2008, page 218). In many interviews
and statements, leading representatives of Daimler AG emphasized last year that ethics, morals and a sense of responsibility are
the basis of their actions.
Reality speaks another language. In 2008, Georgia’s armed forces were involved in a warlike conflict with the Russian army. Armaments expert Otfried Nassauer, head of the Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security (www.bits.de), provided evidence last August that Georgian armed forces had imported multiple rocket launchers mounted on heavy, all-terrain Mercedes trucks. Nassauer rightly commented: ‘Cluster munitions can be used with these rocket launchers. This is controversial, because they equally affect military and civil targets; also a long time after a war.’
Photo documents show one of the rocket launchers on a military version of the Mercedes Actros 3341, which is particularly suitable for heavy terrain. The rocket launchers fitted on the Mercedes truck are known as LAR-160 and are produced by Israel Military Industries (IMI) – which is to be assessed as extremely politically explosive, also in view of the warring deployment of the Israeli Army in south Lebanon and in Palestine. Each Mercedes truck has been fitted with two rocket containers each with 13 rockets. Each of the version Mk-4 rockets carries a warhead that can be filled with 104 submunitions. When detonated, ‘semi-hard or soft targets’ can be destroyed. ‘Soft targets’ is meant to include human beings. The salvo of one warhead is sufficient to destroy an area of more than 800,000 square meters with submunitions.
The Supervisory Board failed completely once again last year. This so-called ‘board for monitoring the Board of Management’ made no attempt at all to discontinue such inhuman weapon systems as cluster-bomb launchers, in which Daimler/EADS are involved. One example at this point is the MLRS or guided MLRS (multiple launch rocket system).
The MLRS cluster munitions used in 2006 by the Israeli Army in the war with Lebanon have effects similar to those of landmines. Due to the extremely high number of duds, whole areas of land are contaminated with cluster munitions. The alliance for action landmine.de (see www.landmine.de) assesses the use of cluster munitions as a violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
Meanwhile, a broad alliance of peace, civil-rights and Christian organizations has joined the alliance for action ‘We don’t buy Mercedes: boycott cluster munitions!’ Together with the Critical Daimler Shareholders (KAD), Arndtstraße 31, 70197 Stuttgart, Tel. 0711-608396 (see www.kritischeaktionaere.de and www.juergengraesslin.com), support has also been declared by the German Peace Association – United Opponents of Military Service (see www.dfg-vk.de), the Peace Center in Braunschweig, Living Without Armaments (ORL), the German section of the Pax-Christi movement, the Armaments Information Office (see www.rib-ev.de), the Workshop for Violence-Free Action/Baden (WfgA) and the Information Center for Militarization.
Several thousand signatories have declared through their signatures on the campaign postcard and many of them on the website www.wir-kaufen-keinen-mercedes.de that they will not buy a Mercedes until Daimler/EADS give up all involvement in the research, development and production of cluster munitions and of rocket launchers that can be used for cluster munitions.’
http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-7175-1-1188790-1-0-0-1184539-0-0-135-7164-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html