On the night of July 14 1990, Walter Sedlmayr, one of German television’s most recognisable faces, was found brutally murdered in his Munich flat. It was Munich’s most spectacular case in post-war history. Over the next three years, the time that it took to apprehend his murderer, the actor’s most personal secret was outed and revealed to the public - one that he had held hidden for decades - that he was gay.

In 1993, two men, Wolfgang Werle and Manfred Lauber, were arrested for his murder. They spent 16 years in prison, and in this time not only were there names featured in news articles, documentaries and other media, with the advent of social media and the permanence in the digital world they felt it would prevent their reintegration into society. They sued not only newspapers, but also Wikipedia, saying that their individual rights were violated. The courts framed this case in the context of individual rights versus public interest. 

Over the course of the podcast we speak to experts across Germany, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldvies to make sense of the question: where do rights end?

Host: Abeer Kapoor

Speakers: 

Sarayu Natarajan, Founder, Aapti institute (India)

Matthias C Kettemann, Head of the research, Hans-Bredow-Institut.

Kumar Lopez, CEO, Sri Lanka Press Institute

Ahmed Zaki Nafis, Assistant Professor Media and Maldivian History, Maldives National University