Demonstrators in front of the Chancellery are calling for the AfD to be banned
According to the police, the number of participants was in the “low three-digit” range
Source: picture alliance/epd-bild/Christian Ditsch
Banners read “Democracy in Danger” and “Never again”: A group of people demonstrated in front of the Federal Chancellery for a ban on AfD driving. Climate activist Luisa Neubauer was also among the participants. In Hamburg, thousands protested in front of the AfD party headquarters.
vor the Federal Chancellery in Berlin on Friday evening, demonstrators called for a ban on the AfD to be examined. According to the police, the number of participants was in the “low three-digit” range. The organizers said they were calling on the federal government, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat to examine a ban on the AfD.
Climate activist Luisa Neubauer was also at the demonstration. Banners read, among other things, “Democracy in Danger” and “Never again.” The motto of the demo was “Check the AfD ban – now!”
Luisa Neubauer at the demo in front of the Chancellery
Source: dpa/Jörg Carstensen
In Hamburg, around 2,000 people demonstrated in front of the Hamburg AfD party headquarters on Friday evening. The event was registered by the Jusos Hamburg-Nord under the name “Demo against the fascist deportation plans of the AfD and the Values Union”, as the police announced. The Jusos Hamburg-Nord are a district association of the SPD’s youth organization. “The demonstration was peaceful, there were no crimes,” said a spokesman. Initially, several media outlets reported about it.
The trigger for the meetings was the announcement of a meeting of right-wing activists and extremists in Potsdam and the reporting on radical theses on migration policy. The media company “Correctiv” first reported on it. At the meeting, the leader of the right-wing extremist Identitarian movement, the Austrian Martin Sellner, presented ideas on how more foreigners could leave Germany and how people with a history of immigration could be pushed to assimilate.
The organizers of the demo at the Chancellery were, according to their own statements, a group of democratic citizens from civil society who spontaneously got to know each other via social media after the publication of the “Correctiv” research. The call for the demonstration in Hamburg said that the plans from Potsdam were “a despicable attack on the lives of many millions of people in Germany and our democracy.” There is no place for fascists and their supporters in Hamburg.
So far, the AfD has been classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in three East German states. In order for it to be banned, it must be proven that it is acting aggressively and combatively against the basic democratic order, i.e. that it is striving for an overthrow. The federal government, Bundestag and Bundesrat can submit an application for a ban. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe would decide on this.