Dresden Attack: SPD European Leader Candidate Hospitalized after Election Poster Incident

Dresden – He wanted to put up election posters for his party, now the Saxon SPD European leader candidate Matthias Ecke is in the hospital. On Friday night there was an attack and four people were seriously injured in Dresden. The group of perpetrators beat the 41-year-old man, as the police and the party announced on Saturday. He had to undergo surgery in the hospital. Several state and federal politicians condemned the attack on Saturday.

A few minutes before the attack on Ecke, according to the police, a group of four had already attacked a 28-year-old campaign worker for the Green Party who was also posting posters. The perpetrators hit and kicked him, and he was also injured. The investigators assume that the perpetrators are the same because of the consistent personal descriptions and the proximity of the time and place.

According to the police, the men are believed to be between 17 and 20 years old. According to witnesses, the four were dressed in dark clothes, a police spokesman said. A witness assigned the attackers to the right-wing spectrum. The study would show if that was true. The events took place in the middle-class town district of Striesen. According to the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, the State Criminal Police Office took over the investigation.

Many attacks against politicians

The events in Dresden are part of a series of attacks on party members ahead of the local and European elections on 9 June. Only on Thursday night, Bundestag Green Party member Kai Gehring and his party colleague Rolf Fliß said they were attacked after a party event in Essen and Fliß was beaten. Last weekend, members of the Green Party were attacked while posting posters in Chemnitz and Zwickau. According to the police, a member of the AfD state parliament was beaten at an information center in Nordhorn, Lower Saxony, on Saturday morning.

According to a study for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, insults, threats and physical attacks affect women as well as men and people with and without a migrant background to the same extent, both in Eastern and Western countries. West Germany and across all party lines. What is surprising, however, is a move that the federal government recently made in response to a small question from the AfD in the Bundestag – not specifically to local politicians, but to all political levels: Although in 2019 the representatives of the AfD were especially the target of hostility, the hatred has moved more and more on the Greens. According to preliminary figures, 478 cases were registered nationwide for the AfD in 2023 and 1,219 for the Greens. According to government information, 10,537 crimes were reported for all parties combined from 2019 to 2023.

Politicians are condemning the attack

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was “horrified” and called the attacks on Ecke and Fliß as well as the harassment and obstruction of Bundestag Vice-President Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Greens) a week ago in Brandenburg the “inaccessible” East. “This outbreak of violence is a warning,” he wrote in a statement. He asked everyone to keep the political debate peaceful and respectful and called on supporters of liberal democracy to stand together across party lines against attacks.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Berlin said: “Democracy is threatened by something like this, so refusing to accept it is never an option. ” explained at the SPD election event.

The heads of the Saxon SPD state party Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel said in a statement: “The violent and fear-mongering actions of the democrats are an expression of fascism.” completely unrestricted. SPD federal president Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil wrote in a statement about “an attack on all electoral activists who strongly support our democracy and the rule of law”.

English Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) was also reminded of the darkest times in German history. “It is appalling and an attack on our democratic values, the attack on the SPD main candidate Matthias Ecke shocks me and I cannot be justified by anything,” he wrote on the X platform (formerly Twitter ).

Green party leader Ricarda Lang wrote on X that violence in the election campaign was an attack on democracy and therefore on everyone. Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck (Green) said of the attacks: “They are a shameful and unthinkable result of the brutality of language, debate and disinhibition in so-called social media.”

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla also wrote on X: “We strongly condemn physical attacks against politicians of all parties. Election campaigns must be tough and constructive in terms of content, but without violence.”

EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola assured her colleague Ecke of support and solidarity. Metsola wrote on X that she was “horrified by the vicious attack.” Those responsible must be brought to justice.

Faeser announces a tough task

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) announced a tough action by the constitutional state. “If a politically motivated attack on MEP Matthias Ecke is confirmed a few weeks before the European elections, this serious act of violence is also a serious attack on democracy. We are experiencing a new dimension of anti-democratic violence here. . “The constitutional state must and will respond to this with tough action and further protective measures for the democratic forces of our country. I will discuss this very soon with the interior ministers of the federal states. “

The Greens in Saxony have responded to last weekend’s attacks and are not leaving the ball alone to put up posters. Other parties now have similar considerations and guidelines.