Demonstrations against the far -right AFD party brought together tens of thousands of people in Germany on Saturday to call to “block” this training accused of threatening democracy, one month from the legislative elections.
The most important rallies took place in Berlin and Cologne (west), with some 35,000 and 20,000 demonstrators respectively, according to the police, while the organizers estimated the number of people in the German capital at 100,000.
Faced with the emblematic Porte de Brandenburg, they formed at night “a sea of light for democracy”, with their mobile phones, brandishing letters forming the word “resistance”, AFP journalists found. Several organizations called for these rallies in around sixty cities, four weeks from the February 23 elections to renew the German Parliament. AFD is second to second position in voting intentions in the polls with 20%, behind the CDU/CSU conservatives with around 30%.
The mobilization proved to be stronger than expected, the police having initially touched on 5000 people in Cologne. Ten thousand people were expected in Berlin. Under the slogan “We block!”, The protesters paraded peacefully, bearing signs that were “the Nazis outside” or “AFD is not an alternative” in reference to the extreme right party “alternative for the ‘Germany”.
Slogans also aimed at the leader of the conservative party Cdu Friedrich MerzFavorite for the Chancellery, and holding a radical hardening of migration policy, some fearing that it is tempted to break “the health cord” of German political parties refusing all alliance with AFD.
-A demonstration also took place in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria (South) where a deadly knife attack This week in a park, attributed to an illegal Afghan, revived the debate on immigration. Thousands of people also mobilized in Halle (east) where the Codirigent of AFD, Alice Weidel, held a meeting during which, via video, the American billionaire Elon Musk.
A year ago, hundreds of thousands of people had beaten the pavement throughout Germany for several weeks in the streets to protest against right extremism after the revelation of an identity meeting where it had been a question “Remigration”, large -scale expulsions of foreigners or persons of foreign origin.
Since then, AFD openly has been claiming a “remigration”, which is a part in its program. “We need remigration to live safely in Germany”, A hammered Ms. Weidel Saturday during the meeting.
