In the middle of Dresden, an SPD politician is beaten to the point of hospitalization – after the horror of the attack on the politician Ecke, consequences are demanded. Saxony’s government is proposing to introduce a new criminal offense.
After violent attacks on politicians – such as the Saxon SPD man Matthias Ecke – the calls for consequences continue. While the federal and state interior ministers want to discuss concrete possible measures at a special meeting in the evening, there is broad agreement in the political environment that elected officials and politically active people need better protection.
The Saxon Interior Minister Armin Schuster announced an initiative from his state in the Bundesrat to separately regulate threats to officials and elected officials in the criminal code. The Saxon cabinet wants to decide on this today. The CDU politician Schuster said in the daily topics, the constitutional state must show its teeth. Within 48 hours, the police identified four suspects in the attack on Ecke in Dresden. “This should send a clear signal.”
Discussion about new ones criminal offence
“We need a new criminal offense in the criminal code for threatening officials, elected officials and volunteers,” demanded CDU politician Schuster. This is still difficult to grasp legally at the moment.
Saxony’s Justice Minister Katja Meier emphasized in the Tagesspiegel that a paragraph should be introduced into the criminal code that would criminalize “influencing state decision-makers.” Meier was optimistic that the other states and the federal government will join the Saxon Federal Council initiative. “There is a lot of approval from the state interior ministers,” she said.
Schuster called on Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann to get involved in this regard. He, for his part, appeared willing to talk. “We now have to discuss whether better protection concepts are needed, whether there is more police presence, for example in shopping areas, where the parties’ information stands are often located,” the FDP politician told the Phoenix television station.
“Signal of strength” demanded by interior ministers
Brandenburg’s Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke called for a “signal of strength” before the Interior Ministers’ Conference. “To be afraid or to allow oneself to be intimidated would be exactly the wrong signal,” said Woidke, who is also state chairman of the Brandenburg SPD, to the dpa news agency. “That’s exactly what shouldn’t happen.”
The open discourse must continue. Woidke is calling for a consistent reaction from the interior ministers: “I expect a signal to come that the existing legal framework is being fully exploited, and that we may also be able to achieve faster procedures in this area,” he said rbb.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is also in favor of harsher penalties. He told the newspaper “Neue Westfälische” that one could “make laws and significantly increase the penalties in order to punish violence against local politicians more harshly,” said the SPD politician. “When it comes to punishments, you have to work with deterrence. If we want local politics to still work, then we have to protect people.”
Cities and municipalities for measures against attacks
The German Association of Cities also believes that a tightening of criminal law is appropriate. President Markus Lewe told the newspapers of the Funke media group: “It must be possible to punish reenactments, marches in front of residential buildings and threats such as ‘We know where you live and where your children go to school’. This belongs in the criminal code.” Lewe, who is the mayor of Münster, also called for special prosecutors in order to be able to “act faster and more precisely.”
The German Association of Cities and Municipalities also appealed to the interior ministers to decide on measures against attacks on politicians and volunteers at their special meeting. “The recent incidents are a direct attack on our democracy and are part of a worrying development,” said the general manager of the municipal association, André Berghegger, to the editorial network Germany. Hatred, agitation, insults and threats against politically active people have continued to increase in recent years. Local politicians in particular are repeatedly exposed to such attacks.
Evidence of right-wing extremist background in the Ecke case
The debate was triggered by the attack on the SPD politician Ecke on Friday evening in the Dresden district of Striesen. Ecke is a MEP and the Saxon SPD’s top candidate for the European elections on June 9th. The 41-year-old was taken to hospital after the attack and underwent surgery.
The police have initial indications of a right-wing extremist background. The Saxony State Criminal Police Office assigns one of the four suspected perpetrators aged 17 to 18 to the category “politically motivated right-wing”. Interior Minister Schuster said it still needs to be determined whether the crime was ultimately politically motivated: “But the circumstances we found clearly indicate that.”