In Chemnitz, the nerves are alive and the dialogue laborious after several days of racist violence following the murder of a German, who gave this city of the former GDR a celebrity it would have gone well. Thursday night, there were still hundreds to rally again against the German migration policy.
Demonstrations For And Against
Several hundred anti-immigration activists, waving German flags, singing the national anthem, and promising to “resist” and “defend the future of [their] children,” gathered in front of the Chemnitz stadium, in East of Germany Thursday, August 30, at the call of a local group of extreme right “Pro Chemnitz”.
Since Sunday and the murder of a man presented under the name “Daniel H.”, xenophobic manifestations have erupted in this stronghold of anti-immigrant movements Pegida and AfD (Alternative for Germany, far right). Part of the police is suspected of sympathy towards the protesters because of the lack of firmness in the control of these disorders and the leak of documents covered by the secrecy of the instruction.
The rally on Thursday evening did not experience any excesses unlike the previous ones, especially on Monday when people were injured by pyrotechnic devices and projectiles. The day before, xenophobic activists led a “collective hunt” for immigrants in the streets of Chemnitz.
Fears of Violence
Thursday evening, the head of the regional government of Saxony Michael Kretschmer, member of the conservative party of Angela Merkel, there invited to a citizen dialogue. The appointment was long fixed. But recent events have suddenly given it a whole new meaning. Nearly 500 inhabitants made the trip. Outside, about 800 people demonstrate at the call of a movement of the radical right Pro Chemnitz, whose three representatives sit on the city council. By far, the cries “clear! Are heard by the politician.
“This city is not far right, this city is not brown,” says Michael Kretschmer side. But the images of the incidents in Chemnitz, where on videos posted on the social networks of the protesters make the Hitler salute, “are now everywhere in the world,” he says.
“We live well in Chemnitz,” said Birgit Menzel, a 59-year-old insurance saleswoman, who also came to the citizen dialogue. The former Karl-Marx-Stadt and its industries that had been ruined after the reunification of the country in 1990 – like most of the cities of East Germany – have recovered and give a clean and green image, the city center is completely renovated, there are many theaters, museums.
Destruction of Community Spirit
Yet security is the number one theme. “There is a feeling of latent fear, especially among the elderly, fueled by the extreme right,” said Sabine Kühnrich, who is involved in a citizen movement for democracy and tolerance. ” The foreigners? We do not have a lot here, “she says, about 7% out of a population of about 246,000. For her, Sunday’s murder that ignited the gunpowder – and for which the police suspect two young Iraqi and Syrian – is certainly “terrible”, but unpublished and does not justify this “surge of hate”.
Yet it is this homicide that set fire to the powders Sunday in the third largest city of Saxony. The extreme right has taken the pretext to hammer again one of his favorite themes. On Tuesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that “hate in the street” had no place in Germany. “We have seen collective hunts, we have seen hatred in the street, and that has nothing to do with the rule of law,” she insisted.
The Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, denounced Wednesday the escape of the arrest warrant, covered by the secrecy of the instruction, as an act “absolutely unacceptable”. In this case, members of the police are directly suspected of being at the origin.
