Merkel says political hate speech is ‘playing with fire’
FAR-right politicians in Germany who engage in xenophobic rhetoric are not just testing freespeech limits but are inciting violence, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a memorial for the 25th anniversary of an arson attack that killed five Turkish girls and women and injured 14 in the western city of Solingen, Mrs Merkel said Germany was still suffering from “right-wing extremism” more than seven decades after the defeat of Nazism.
“Too often, the lines of freedom of speech are very deliberately being tested, and taboos are carelessly being breached and used as a political instrument,” Mrs Merkel said at the event attended by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
“It’s not banter, rather it’s playing with fire. Because whoever sows violence with words, risks reaping violence.”
Her words appeared to be aimed at, among others, the antiimmigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which entered parliament for the first time in an election last year amid voter con- cerns about a huge influx of migrants and refugees.
Some AfD politicians have been accused of racism by German lawmakers, and Turks in Germany said they would bring criminal charges against the AfD’s Andre Poggenburg after he called Turks “camel drivers”.
Hours before Mrs Merkel spoke, AfD lawmaker Beatrix von Storch drew criticism after she appeared to ridicule the deceased father of a Palestinian-German politician.
Ms Von Storch had suggested in a tweet that Sawasan Chebli’s father would have had “serious financial problems” if Germany copied Austria in cutting welfare to people not fluent in German.
“If your intention was to hurt me then you have succeeded,” Ms Chebli replied to von Storch on Twitter. “My father died recently. He was a good man. May God forgive you. He wouldn’t have wanted me to offend you.”
The tweet was later deleted. Ms Von Storch’s spokeswoman said the lawmaker had removed the tweet herself, without giving further details.