Erich Mielke demonstrations politically and giving "every DDR citizen the right to travel." On 17 October 1989, Mielke and the rest of the GDR's Politburo met to follow Gorbachev's demand, voiced in August, for Erich Honecker be removed as General Secretary of the SED and State Council chairman. Suspecting that Honecker's personal bodyguards might try to arrest the members of the Central Committee when they met to vote Honecker out in favour of Egon Krenz, Mielke saw to it that Stasi agents were stationed near the meeting room. While deliberations were underway, Mielke told Honecker that "we simply cannot start shooting with
Escape attempts and victims of the inner German border break through the state border". The GDR's leadership explicitly endorsed the use of deadly force. General Heinz Hoffmann, the GDR Minister of Defence, declared in August 1966 that "anyone who does not respect our border will feel the bullet." In 1974, Erich Honecker, as Chairman of the National Defense Council of East Germany, ordered: "Firearms are to be ruthlessly used in the event of attempts to break through the border, and the comrades who have successfully used their firearms are to be commended." East German border guards had a standard procedure to follow if they detected unauthorised individuals in the