Germany - Far right Politics - Heavy police presence amid far right protests in Chemnitz / Far right
411 views · Published 19 December 2018 · 1:00 · Indexed 6 November 2026
Channel: AP Archive · 2018 · News & Politics
(9 Dec 2018) STORYLINE Riot police apprehended protesters during a far-right march in a city in eastern Germany on September 1st 2018. It happened as thousands of far-right protesters marched through Chemnitz over the August 26th killing of a German citizen. A 35-year-old German citizen was fatally stabbed in the city six nights ago and migrants from Syria and Iraq were arrested as suspects. Leaders of Germany's Alternative for Germany party and of populist group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West wore dark suits and held white roses as they began what they called a "mourning march" Saturday evening. Several thousand people followed behind them. Large numbers of police officers lined the streets while watching to keep the far-right crowd away an earlier protest against anti-foreigner sentiment that drew about 2,000 participants, according to the German news agency dpa *** Anti-migrant sentiment ran high in the German city of Koethen on September 9th following the arrest of two young Afghan men in connection with the death of a 22-year-old German man. Local media reported the man died after a fight erupted between him, the Afghans, and another German man following a dispute over who had impregnated a woman. Police said an autopsy revealed the victim died of heart failure that was “not in direct causal relationship with his injuries”, and local media reported he had a previous heart problem. Given the autopsy results, police said an 18-year-old Afghan man was being investigated on suspicion of bodily harm and a 20-year-old Afghani on a charge of bodily harm with death resulting. Following the arrest, more than 500 far-right supporters marched through Koethen, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. They later gathered at the scene of the incident, to mourn the victim and to protest against migration policy, the German government and German media. A few dozen were on hand for a counter-protest. *** On September 12th a leader of far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose members marched alongside the neo-Nazis at an anti-migrant protest in Chemnitz, defended their participation, saying they were exercising their "democratic right to freedom of assembly." Alexander Gauland said "there were a couple of aggressive idiots among the demonstrators who were yelling 'foreigners out' and who gave the Hitler salute, nobody disputes that", calling it "distasteful and criminal" but adding that it was a minority. Gauland said they had not been representative of the demonstration as a whole nor able to delegitimize the majority of the protesters. He accused the mainstream parties in parliament of making too much of the neo-Nazis involved for their own purposes. Social Democrat lawmaker Martin Schulz slammed Gauland's comments as harking back to the Nazi era, saying "similar rhetoric has been heard in this house before." "I think it's time for democrats in this country to defend themselves against this kind of rhetorical escalation, which will result in the abandonment of inhibitions in the end and lead to violence on the streets," Schulz said to a standing ovation. The comments come after the killing of a German man - for which an Iraqi and a Syrian have been arrested - prompted days of anti-migrant protests in the eastern German city of Chemnitz that at times turned violent. Neo-Nazis were seen giving the stiff-armed Hitler salute in the largest demonstration, the day after the killing, which attracted some 6,000 people, and on the sidelines of the protest masked men threw stones and bottles at a kosher restaurant yelling "Jewish pig, get out of Germany." Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/ You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/aa8c13fc580b4d3e8d5b2125e5b656fa
