Cops on alert over far-right anti-migrant protest

CHEMNITZ: Officials in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony sought to avert further unrest in the city before the far-right gathered for another anti-immigration protest yesterday after several violent confrontations this week.

Thousands of people took part in two days of protests against asylum seekers in Chemnitz this week after police arrested a Syrian and an Iraqi on suspicion of fatally stabbing a German man on Sunday.

Germany is deeply divided over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to take in more than a million migrants, many fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We will see to it that those who have committed this homicidal crime are condemned, and swiftly,” said Saxony’s premier Michael Kretschmer.

“We will see to it that those who ran through the city with Hitler salutes are also convicted,” he said.

The authorities said federal police and police from other states including Hessen and Bavaria would be drafted in to support local forces during the far right protest at Chemnitz’s football stadium.

Chemnitz lies in Germany’s formerly Communist east which has become the heartland of anti-immigrant groups, including Pegida and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party, which won 13% of the vote in a 2017 federal election, its strongest showing yet.

In Wismar, another eastern town, police called for witnesses to come forward over an attack late on Wednesday on a 20-year-old migrant who was beaten with an iron chain by three assailants.

The Chemnitz stabbing has raised concerns of possible links between police and the far right in Saxony after prosecutors in the northern city of Bremen opened an investigation into a politician, a former police officer, accused of leaking information of the arrest warrant against the Iraqi suspect.

Chemnitz mayor Barbara Ludwig vowed to clean up her city’s image: “This city is completely different to what has been shown in the media in the past few days.”

The AfD and Pegida say they will march again in Chemnitz on Saturday to “mourn the stabbing victim and others killed by Germany’s forced multi-culturalisation”. – Reuters