Chanting “Merkel out” and waving placards with slogans like “Rapefugees not welcome,” PEGIDA protesters on Saturday vented their fury against migrants after mass sexual assaults on Dec. 31.
Amid clashes with police, the protesters took aim at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accusing her of allowing migrants to run amok through her liberal stance toward those fleeing war.
Tensions escalated when followers of the movement — about half of them violence-prone hooligans, according to police — marched and hurled beer bottles and firecrackers at police, shouting: “Where were you on New Year’s Eve?”
Photo: EPA
Riot police beat back the protesters with batons, teargas and water cannons in clashes that left three police and one journalist injured and in which police detained multiple demonstrators.
“Merkel has become a danger to our country. Merkel must go,” one speaker earlier told the 1,700-strong crowd, which loudly echoed the call, expressing their anger at the 1.1 million migrants who entered Germany last year.
“Tolerance is the final virtue of a dying society,” read another banner in the protest, organized by the local chapter of PEGIDA, the self-styled “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident.”
The heated protest was held in the Cologne railway station area that was the scene of the New Year’s Eve assaults, at which witnesses described the perpetrators as people of “North African or Arab” appearance.
Cologne police have come in for broad criticism for failing to stop the violence and being slow to report on it afterward, a scandal that on Friday claimed the scalp of city police chief Wolfgang Albers.
By Saturday, police had received 379 criminal complaints of groping, assaults, thefts and two rapes.
Federal police have said that a majority of suspects identified so far were of foreign origin, inflaming a debate over Germany’s ability to integrate the influx of refugees.
One PEGIDA speaker, a mother of four introduced only as Christiane, told the rally: “These women who fell victim will have to live with it for a long time. I feel like my freedom has been robbed.”
PEGIDA started life over a year ago as a Facebook group, initially drawing just a few hundred protesters in the eastern city of Dresden before gaining strength, peaking with rallies of 25,000 people. Interest subsequently began to wane following comments by founder Lutz Bachmann, and the surfacing of “selfies” in which he sported a Hitler moustache and hairstyle, but PEGIDA has seen a revival with the record influx of migrants.
The PEGIDA protesters on Saturday were greeted by 1,300 demonstrators who staged a counterprotest, chanting “Nazis raus” (Nazis out) as hundreds of the 2,000 deployed police separated the crowds.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of