Jakarta –
An estimated 1.4 million people in Germany demonstrated against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from Friday (19/01) to Sunday (21/01), according to organizers.
Demonstrations over the weekend were held in around 100 locations throughout Germany. On Sunday (21/01), protests took place in several big cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Other cities in Germany, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, are also planning similar actions.
In Berlin, around 100,000 people gathered outside Germany’s Bundestag parliament building, according to police data.
While police in Munich said there were around 80,000 people participating in the demonstration, organizers put the figure at 200,000. The action even had to be canceled due to the crowd being too dense and the demonstrators were asked to disperse.
Even in Cologne, the local police said that there were at least 10,000 people who took part in the demonstration.
Huge rallies across Germany
According to public broadcaster ARD, around 250,000 demonstrators gathered in various cities across Germany on Saturday (20/01), carrying signs such as “Disband the Nazis.”
At least 35,000 people gathered in Frankfurt on Saturday (20/01) to carry out the “defense of democracy” action. Protesters filled the central square of the city, where the organizers planned to hold the demonstration, even to the second square next to it and also the streets in between. But police said the protest was peaceful.
However, on Friday (19/01), a large protest in Hamburg had to be stopped early because the number of participants attending was much larger than expected. In the largest demonstration to date, police said there were at least 50,000 people, but organizers put the figure at 80,000 and said the rally had to be called off before demonstrators continued to arrive.
Police also estimated crowd sizes at other protests, including 12,000 people in Kassel, 7,000 people in Dortmund and Wuppertal, 20,000 people in Karlsruhe, at least 10,000 people in Nuremberg, around 16,000 people in Halle/Saale, 5,000 people in Koblenz, and several thousand people in Erfurt.
Why are so many people protesting?
The wave of mobilization against far-right parties was sparked by a January 10 report from investigative media Correctiv, revealing that AfD members had met with extremists in Potsdam in November to discuss the expulsion of immigrants and “unassimilated citizens.” Members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the main opposition party, were also reportedly present at the meeting.
Participants in the meeting discussed “remigration”, a term often used among ultra-right groups as a metaphor for the expulsion of immigrants and minorities.
News of the meeting’s agenda surprised many in Germany, where the AfD is also top in opinion polls ahead of three major regional elections in eastern Germany, where the ultra-right party enjoys the strongest support.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who also demonstrated at the weekend, said that any plan to expel immigrants or citizens was “an attack on our democracy, and ultimately, (an attack) on all of us”.
The AfD confirmed the presence of its members at the meeting, but stressed that the remigration proposal, which was part of its last election campaign, did not cover naturalized German citizens. The comments at the meeting were made by a right-wing figure from Austria, Martin Sellner, who is not a member of the AfD party.
kp/pkp (AFP, dpa)
(ita/ita)
2024-01-22 05:58:30
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