Jan van Aken (politician)

Jan Paul van Aken ( born May 1, 1961 in Reinbek ) is a German politician and activist for Greenpeace (The Left ). He is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in the German Bundestag. Jan van Aken drew 2009 on the Hamburg state list of his party in the 17th German Bundestag one. Since June 2012, he is Vice-Chairman of the Left Party. He was one of eight top his party's candidates for the general election in 2013 and was elected by them in the 18th German Bundestag.

Life

After his graduation in 1982 van Aken began to study biology at the University of Hamburg. At the same time he was active from 1980 in the anti- nuclear movement. After completing a degree in biology (1989) and his Ph.D. (1993 ), he was a research associate at the University of Hamburg. In 1997, he became an expert on genetic engineering in the environmental organization Greenpeace International, and remained so until 2009. Parallel to this, he worked from 2004 to 2006 as biological weapons inspector for the United Nations. His long -standing interest for biological warfare agents had already led him in 1999 to call for their banning the organization Sunshine Project to life, which followed the establishment of a research institute with similar objectives, 2003. After his return to Hamburg in connection to his work for the UN, he joined the party in the Left and was only three years later, their top candidate in the general election in 2009 in Hamburg. Jan van Aken was sentenced in April 2013 by the Amtsgericht Lüneburg to a fine of 2,250 euros for a " public incitement to an offense" because he signed ballast calling Castor.

From 2009 to 2011 was Jan van Aken deputy chairman of the parliamentary group, The Left and is since 2012 the foreign policy spokesman. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag.