extremism
Tens of thousands of demonstrators are taking a stand against the right
Thousands of people have gathered for an anti-right-wing demonstration in Hamburg. photo
© Axel Heimken/dpa
Many people across the country once again protested against right-wing extremism this weekend. At a memorial event in Rostock, a victim was remembered – and warned of the dangers.
The trigger for the latest nationwide protests were revelations by the media company Correctiv about a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam, in which AfD politicians and individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union also took part. According to police estimates, around 8,000 and 9,000 people demonstrated in Stuttgart on Saturday under the motto “Break the right-wing wave”.
Several thousand people also took to the streets against right-wing extremism in various cities in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. According to police reports, up to 4,500 people walked through Trier on Sunday under the motto “Never again is now.”
Rostock remembers the NSU murder victim Mehmet Turgut
On Sunday, the city of Rostock commemorated Mehmet Turgut, who was murdered 20 years ago. The then 24-year-old Turk fell victim to the right-wing extremist terrorist group “National Socialist Underground” (NSU) on February 25, 2004 in the Toitenwinkel district. “The cruel crimes of the NSU and the murder of Mehmet Turgut must never be forgotten,” said Mayor Eva-Maria Kröger (Left) at a memorial event. Right-wing extremism continues to threaten democracy and the human dignity it protects today.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Interior Minister Christian Pegel (SPD) called the series of murders a warning, especially for the security authorities. “The fact that a right-wing terrorist group was able to murder unobserved for years makes us all aware that right-wing terrorism is the greatest danger to our social life.”
Turgut was shot in cold blood shortly after opening a friend’s snack stand. He was the fifth of ten victims in a series of attacks that primarily targeted small business owners whose families came from Turkey and, in one case, Greece. The investigators had been looking for the perpetrators among the victims’ compatriots for a long time. It was only in 2011, when the bodies of two NSU members were found in a burned-out trailer in Eisenach, that the authorities realized that the three-member terrorist group was responsible for the series of murders.