Germany: What Follows a Week of Protests?

PROTESTERS AND COUNTER-PROTESTERS CLASH, OVERWHELM POLICE

by Sharon Rondeau

(Sep. 2, 2018) — The fatal stabbing of a 35-year-old man in Chemnitz in the Eastern German province of Saxony last Sunday sparked a week of protests and clashes between supporters of liberal immigration policies and those opposed.

Widespread protests against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 policy of allowing up to a million “migrants” to enter the country occurred in February.  Those opposed to the policy have been labeled by some as “far-right” and “rightwing extremists.”

During the summer of 2015, Saxony’s capital of Dresden saw a large influx of “migrants” after residents held a major protest against Merkel’s policy.  “The German city which dared to stand-up to their government’s policy of accepting Islamisation and mass migration appears to have been punished for dissent by the zero-notice imposition of a migrant camp,” Breitbart reported on July 25, 2015.

“Attacks” by Islamic immigrants a year later were said by The (UK) Independent to be unrelated to Merkel’s immigration policy.  The paper also opined that Merkel’s stance “means that the vast majority of Muslims resident in Germany have every reason to cooperate with the security services in the fight against terrorism.”

“This is not something that can be said of the marginalised and radicalised Muslim communities of the run-down suburbs of Brussels or Paris which breed and harbour terrorist networks,” the article appearing in “Voices” continued.

“Syrian refugee kills a woman in a machete attack,” reads the title of a video posted within the article beginning with the date July 22, 2016. The caption reads, “Timeline: Germany rocked by week of deadly violence.”

Many of the more than 600 comments appearing as of this writing disagreed vehemently with the writer, with some going as far as to say that it represented “propaganda.”

After news of the man’s murder and the serious injury of two others by two men of Middle-Eastern origin last Sunday become public, protests began, running through Saturday, September 1.

In Germany it is illegal for an arrest warrant to be made public. Citing a “Saxony official,” the BBC reported that the “leak” of the warrants connected with last Sunday’s violence was “most likely” committed by a law-enforcement official sympathetic with those opposed to mass Middle Eastern immigration on the political “far right.”

Local police were reportedly unprepared for the number of protesters and the speed at which they assembled, forcing them to call in federal reinforcements.

A makeshift memorial to the man was established amid the formation of a protest last Sunday countered by “riot police,” the BBC wrote.  Additional protests have occurred throughout the week involving the “far right” and opposing “anti-fascist” groups at times pelting each other with bottles and setting off firecrackers.

By Monday night, as many as 6,000 “far right” protesters were in the streets in Chemnitz, countered by growing numbers of “anti-fascist” protesters, some of whom are “black-clad,” according to Reuters.  “The Goldwater” called the counter-protesters “Antifa.”

On Wednesday, the BBC reported that Saxony “is a stronghold for the anti-migrant party,” Alternative for Germany (AfD), “which national polls suggest is also on its way to becoming the country’s second largest party.”   Along with a graph supporting the statistic, the reporter wrote of German immigration, “The number of people seeking asylum has fallen steeply and there are integration success stories – one in four new arrivals has a job.”

Some protesters on the “German far right” have been accused of attacking “refugees.”  During the past week’s protests, ten have reportedly been arrested for displaying the “Nazi salute,” which is against the law in Germany.

Chemnitz retains a bust of “father of communism” Karl Marx and was formerly part of the communist state of East Germany.

On Saturday, The Guardian reported, “Germans have been shocked by the intensity of the protests over the past week, although the area has long been known as a hotbed of far-right extremism. Nearby Dresden, also in Saxony, was the birthplace of the new far-right political group Pegida – its acronym in German stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.”

Nine people were injured Saturday, according to a report from Newsweek today, although AFP reported the number to be double that amount following the “xenophobic” protests.

In early July, following gains in Parliament by the AfD Party, Merkel pledged to “build border camps for asylum seekers and to tighten the border with Austria.”