Member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Matthias Ecke was attacked on Friday May 3 while he was putting up election posters. Seriously injured, he is in hospital. The political class strongly condemned it.
A German MEP from the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) was attacked and seriously injured while putting up election posters, an attack strongly condemned by the entire political class which is concerned about the rise in violence against the elected.
“Democracy is threatened by these kinds of acts,” responded German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, wishing Matthias Ecke, a member of his party, to “face what has entered his life like a horror.”
“Seriously injured”
The attack suffered Friday evening in Dresden, in eastern Germany, by this MEP, also head of the SPD list in the Saxony region for the European elections in June, is not the first targeting the latter month of German political representatives.
According to regional police, the 41-year-old elected official was “hit” by four strangers while putting up campaign posters for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party. He had to “receive medical treatment in hospital,” the press release added.
Matthias Ecke was “seriously injured and requires surgery,” said the Saxony SPD federation.
The police add that before this attack, a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Green party, in the same street, was also hit “with punches and kicks”. Investigators say they suspect the same group of attackers, in particular because of “the match in the description” of the suspects.
The investigation was entrusted to the State Protection services, meaning that the police are investigating the possibility of politically motivated violence.
“If a politically motivated attack (…) is confirmed a few weeks before the European elections, this serious act of violence also constitutes a serious attack on democracy,” reacted Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in a press release.
Believing that this is a “new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, the minister invokes the responsibility of “extremists and populists, who are fueling a climate of increasing violence through totally disproportionate verbal attacks”.
“The seeds sown” by the far right
SPD officials in Saxony have questioned the role of the far-right AfD party, which has seen strong growth in the polls over the past year.
“The seeds sown by the AfD and other right-wing extremists are germinating. Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game (…),” lamented Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional party leaders.
Thursday evening, two elected officials from the Greens, a party which governs with the SPD, were attacked in Essen, in western Germany, and one of them was hit in the face, according to the police.
Last Saturday, a few dozen demonstrators attacked the vice-president of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt, an elected environmentalist, after a festive event in eastern Germany. His car was blocked and police reinforcements had to be called to allow him to leave the scene.
These attacks are the result of “discourse, of the atmosphere created, of bringing people against each other and of pitting them against each other,” lamented Olaf Scholz.
“We must never resign ourselves to such acts of violence (…), we must oppose them together,” he urged.
The attack on Matthias Ecke also caused a reaction in France. Raphaël Glucksmann, head of the PS-Place Publique European list, criticized X as a “horror” and an attack by “fascists”. “All my solidarity with Matthias and the comrades attacked. Violence will not win! The extreme right will not pass!”, he added.
