Hui Min Neo Six people were injured on Monday as pyrotechnics and other objects were hurled by the far-right camp as well as anti-fascist counter-protesters in the east German city. Germany was reeling Tuesday as xenophobia reared its head with far-right protests degenerating into attacks against foreign-looking people, adding fuel to an already explosive debate over migrants. After Sunday’s fatal stabbing of a German man, 35, allegedly by a Syrian and an Iraqi, thousands of protesters descended on the streets of Chemnitz for two straight days, some bearing insignia of the far-right AfD and neo-Nazi NPD parties. Six people were injured on Monday as pyrotechnics and other objects were hurled by the far-right camp as well as anti-fascist counter-protesters in the east German city. Police also reported assaults by extremists against at least three foreigners on Sunday, while investigations were opened in 10 cases of the protesters performing the Hitler salute. “Of course history is not repeating itself, but that a far-right mob is on a rampage in the middle of Germany and the authorities are overwhelmed, is reminiscent of the situation during the Weimar Republic,” noted Spiegel Online. The Weimar years were marked by the formation of paramilitary groups, such as the Sturmabteilung or SA, which eventually helped the Nazis to power. Josef Schuster, who chairs the Central Council of Jews in Germany, also voiced his alarm, saying it is “now the responsibility of citizens to counter the far-right mob”. “It must never be accepted in Germany again for people to be attacked because of their appearances or their backgrounds.” Anetta Kahane of the anti-racism Amadeu Antonio Foundation told rolling news channel NTV that people have the right to demonstrate. But he added: “What happened in Chemnitz went beyond that — it was incitement to hatred and the propagation of pogrom sentiment.” Noting that chatter among far-right sympathisers online is “extremely brutal, as calls are made blatantly for murder and killings”, Kahane said authorities need to crack down. ‘Nothing more dangerous’ Saxony state, where Chemnitz is located and which is the birthplace of the Islamophobic PEGIDA street movement, has repeatedly come under intense scrutiny as it is a hotbed for hate crimes. Misgivings run deep in the state against the arrival since 2015 of more than a million asylum seekers, many from war-torn Syria and Iraq. Railing against the newcomers, the far-right AfD party has made significant gains in the state and is poised to become the second biggest party in Saxony’s regional elections next year. With a new demonstration expected from 1300 GMT outside the Saxony state parliament in Dresden, criticism grew louder against the authorities’ failure to keep the far-right in check. “The state can never allow our streets to be overrun by far-right mobs,” said Bild daily, adding that at the same time, Berlin needs to promptly deport criminal foreigners. “For too long, nothing has been done. That’s why confidence in the state is buckling. That’s why racists like in Chemnitz think they can do what they want. Nothing can be more dangerous for our country.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that “where such hunting down of foreigners is possible, the rule of law has abdicated,” while Die Welt daily warned that “the rule of law and police now stand before a test”. “There cannot be a zone of violence, there is no such thing as partial security,” said Welt. Amid the alarm, criticism grew against Interior Minister Horst Seehofer for not making a public statement on the violence. “Could be that some of his voters in Bavaria are secretly pleased that people are running through Chemnitz shouting ‘foreigners out’. But that can’t mean that the interior minister and leader of the CSU party ducks under cowardly,” said Spiegel. “It is time for Seehofer to take a stand.” For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.<doc-sep>Berlin (CNN) The German government condemned attempts to "spread hatred on the streets" after a violent demonstration Sunday in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, where protesters called for foreigners to leave the city. Police admitted being unprepared for the scale of the protests, which took place after a 35-year-old man died from injuries sustained in a fight. Footage posted on social media shows participants clashing with police and shouting "Foreigners get out," "This is our city" and "We are the people," a phrase used 30 years ago to call for the reunification of East and West Germany, but now frequently heard at far-right gatherings to express anti-immigrant sentiment. In one video, two men are seen chasing after someone they believed was an immigrant. About 800 people took part in Sunday's protest, police said, with around 50 of them encouraging violence. The demonstration, which took place on the final afternoon of the city's summer festival, was called only a few hours earlier, and police initially did not have enough officers available. Extra officers were called in from the nearby cities of Leipzig and Dresden to deal with the incident. Read More<doc-sep>This week, Germany has been convulsed with rioting in the eastern city of Chemnitz, where right-wing protesters have clashed with police for days. The murder of a German man on Sunday, reportedly by two Middle Eastern migrants, birthed angry protests that have devolved into violence, with attacks on foreigners by right-wing mobs. The police have been unable to quash the street melee, leading to troubling questions for the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, whose open door to migrants three summers ago set the stage for political turmoil in the European Union’s predominant country. Angry right wingers flashing the banned Hitler salute for the cameras rattled Germany’s chattering class, which seems mystified by anger at Merkel and her policies. However, it’s no surprise that this unpleasantness exploded in Saxony, the German state where the renascent far right has the deepest roots. Chemnitz, called Karl-Marx-Stadt when this was East Germany, like much of Saxony, has proved an ideal breeding ground for hardline nationalism and nativism, thanks to socio-economic stagnation. Chancellor Merkel’s harsh criticism of the rioters is unlikely to change many minds in Chemnitz, where dislike of the current government runs deep. Right-wing hooligans from across Germany descended on Chemnitz to partake in the violent protests, and although the police have made progress in regaining the streets, the city remains in turmoil today. Tensions over migrants that have roiled German politics for the last three years, nearly causing the collapse of Merkel’s fragile coalition, have now exploded in open violence. Like the recent murder of a Jewish girl by a migrant, the Chemnitz fracas raises awkward questions about the true state of German politics and society. We also need to ask what’s really going on here. There can be no denying that the renaissance of Germany’s nationalist right is real, as demonstrated by the rise of the Alternative for Germany or AfD, which this month charted its highest poll numbers ever, as Merkel’s shaky government struggles to deal with the migrant issue. Birthed five years ago on anti-EU sentiments, the AfD has successfully rebranded in opposition to Merkel’s open-door policy on immigration. The possibility that the AfD could become a power player in Berlin, dismissed as fantasy until recently, now seems increasingly plausible. While Germany’s right-wing surge is genuine, it bears noting that the Kremlin has aided the AfD’s rise. Russian state media regularly pushes lurid stories about migrant crime in Germany, to the benefit of the far right, embellishing such accounts and even inventing them out of whole cloth for political effect, while the AfD’s cozy relationship with Russia is no secret. Russian financial support for the party has included flying some of its leaders to Moscow on a private jet paid for by the Kremlin. In return, the AfD praises President Vladimir Putin and displays a regard for Moscow’s perspective that is strong even for Germany, where Russlandversteher (“Russia-understanders”) are found on all points of the political spectrum. Russian intelligence has connections to right-wing hooligans in several European countries, Germany included. As I reported two years ago, there are detectable connections between Kremlin military intelligence, known as GRU, and football hooligans in Western Europe. Russia has forged ties to right-wing hooligans under the guise of sport solidarity, while some of Moscow’s violence-prone professional superfans, called ultras, are known GRU operatives. Moreover, GRU, which has formed links with far-right activists across Europe, has been busy in Germany doing the same thing, as uncovered by the journalist Boris Reitschuster, who two years ago warned that Moscow was building secret cadres of German agents under the cover of sport. As Reitschuster explained, GRU employs Russian martial arts clubs to spot and assess potential recruits, to be used for future espionage and even attacks on German targets. Is this what’s happening in Chemnitz this week? Gunter Pilz, a German academic specializing in the intersection of sport and extremism, explains that there is a real and growing problem here. “The new hooligan scene is quite clearly oriented to the right wing,” he stated regarding the Chemnitz debacle. “Unlike the hooligan scene in the 1980s, groups today are very well organized and networked,” Pilz explained, adding, “The scene is heavily dominated by Russian hooligans who organize martial arts events.” Some of them are proud of their part in the mayhem. Russian nationals have boasted about traveling to Chemnitz from Bavaria, arriving with baseball bats to help the right-wing protestors. My friends in German intelligence have confirmed this, and they are concerned that GRU has stoked the right wing in their country and that Moscow is poisoning German politics with violence-prone extremists, some of whom are directly controlled by the Kremlin. “We can see links between Russia and some of the rioters this week,” a German security official told me, adding that the security services are concerned that the Merkel government does not take this threat seriously enough. German intelligence has been unhappy with Merkel since 2015, when her open-door migrant policy created domestic turmoil and gave rise to the resurgent far right. Spies were under quiet pressure to lowball the number of migrant crimes, for fear of stoking the anti-Merkel movement, and now they feel that Berlin isn’t heeding their warnings about the Russian espionage and covert influence threat. “They don’t listen, they pretend to be deaf about such matters,” a German security official told me. Germany today offers an ideal playing field for the Kremlin to execute its customary provocative spy games. There, the Left and Right are riddled with friends of Moscow, and this week’s unpleasant events in Chemnitz indicate that the country may be entering a new, dangerous phase of political polarization and violence. Since some European security officials believe that Russian intelligence clandestinely aided the flow of migrants into the EU in 2015, as I’ve previously reported, Germany’s present turmoil looks like the Kremlin’s dream come true. Putin’s agents have abetted the EU’s left-right divide and possess the ability to stoke riots in Germany’s streets. Since Germany’s political divisions over migration and national identity show no signs of abating, Moscow has plenty of fodder to work with.<doc-sep>The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has condemned two days of far-right street violence that has left several people injured, which flared up after a Syrian and an Iraqi were accused of killing a German man on Sunday. Some far-right protesters were accused of hunting foreigners in street mobs in the eastern city of Chemnitz, while others were seen with Nazi-linked banners and giving the outlawed straight-arm salute as demonstrations went into their second day. “Such riotous assemblies, the hunting down of people who appear to be from different backgrounds or the attempt to spread hate in the streets, these have no place in our country,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Monday. Marauding far-right mobs assaulted people they believed to be immigrants, according to reports by Agence France-Presse. The local police chief said one Syrian and one Afghan teenager were attacked in separate incidents, though neither was seriously hurt. According to AFP, police said pyrotechnics and other objects hurled from both sides left several people requiring hospital treatment. Officers moved in with water cannon and urged the crowd to remain calm. Rightwing supporters protest after a German man was stabbed last weekend in Chemnitz. The banner reads: “Criminal foreigners out” Photograph: Matthias Rietschel/Reuters Seibert told reporters in Berlin that the violence had no place in Germany. “People ganging up, chasing people who look different from them or who come from elsewhere ... is something we won’t tolerate,” he said. “This has no place in our cities and I can say for the German government that we condemn this in the sharpest possible manner.” Hundreds of riot police worked on Monday to keep the noisy crowd of mostly men, who were chanting slogans against “criminal foreigners” and waving German national flags, apart from more than 1,000 anti-fascist counter-protesters. The far-right demonstrators chanted: “We are the people”, as well as the Nazi-era term “luegenpresse” (lying press). They displayed placards that read “stop the refugee flood” and “defend Europe”, the latter adorned with an image of an automatic rifle. Some carried banners or insignia of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) and neo-Nazi NPD parties and other extremist groups, while a handful delivered the illegal right-handed Hitler salute, said police. Their opponents, separated by a police line, yelled “Nazis, get out” and held up banners that read: “Rule of law, not vigilante justice.” The local prosecutor, Christine Muecke, said the killing of the 35-year-old German man, which sparked the violence, stemmed from a verbal confrontation that escalated after a street festival. Two other men aged 33 and 38 werehospitalised with severe injuries, police said. Two men were taken into custody: a 22-year-old Syrian citizen and a 21-year-old Iraqi citizen, and both were held on suspicion of manslaughter, Muecke said. She refused to provide more details about the suspects or the victim, the Associated Press reported. The mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, said she was horrified by Sunday’s demonstrations. She told the regional broadcaster MDR: “The fact that people can agree to meet … run through town and threaten people is bad.” Asked about an apparent call for vigilante action by a politician from the AfD, Seibert said it was up to the legal system to deliver justice. Markus Frohnmaier had tweeted: “If the state can no longer protect the citizen, then people will go on the streets and protect themselves.”<doc-sep>
Germany riots: Arrests made at hostile anti-migrant rally Police brought in water cannons after fireworks were thrown from both sides, causing injuries. State and local officials appealed for calm as thousands of people took to the streets and Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said Germany would not tolerate "vigilante justice". The unrest reflected a growing schism in German society after Mrs Merkel's government allowed one million asylum seekers to enter the country in 2015, triggering a shift to the right in German politics. Over a thousand leftist protesters massed near a giant statue of Karl Marx in Chemnitz on Monday evening to protest attacks on foreigners that occurred during an impromptu demonstration on Sunday after reports spread on social media about the stabbing of a 35-year-old German man. The scenes of people going after those who look like foreigners scare us. We want to show that Chemnitz has another side that is cosmopolitan and opposes xenophobia Tim Detzner "The scenes of people going after those who look like foreigners scare us. We want to show that Chemnitz has another side that is cosmopolitan and opposes xenophobia," Tim Detzner, the head of the radical Left party in Chemnitz, told the rally. Nearly the same number of demonstrators waving German and Bavarian flags gathered nearby, some breaking through police barriers aimed at keeping the two sides apart. Many chanted "We are the people," a slogan used by far-right supporters. The police in Saxony, the eastern state where Chemnitz lies, said on Twitter at around 8.30pm BST yesterday the demonstration had ended and they were accompanying participants to the train station. Tensions were running high after some 800 demonstrators - including about 50 that police described as ready to commit violence - had taken to the streets on Sunday after the stabbing, which police said occurred after a row. Local prosecutors said they had arrested two suspects, a 22-year-old Syrian man and a 21-year-old Iraqi man. Far-right demonstrators clashed with left-wing protestors in Germany and fireworks were thrown Police brought in water cannons after fireworks were thrown Police called for calm on the streets of Chemnitz Television news channels broadcast amateur footage of skinheads chasing a man through the streets at Sunday's protest. Police said they were still investigating reports of injury filed by Syrian, Afghan and Bulgarian people, and at least four demonstrators had been charged. "We don't tolerate such unlawful assemblies and the hounding of people who look different or have different origins, and attempts to spread hatred on the streets," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news briefing. "That has no place in our cities and we, as the German government, condemn it in the strongest terms," he said. "Our basic message for Chemnitz and beyond is that there is no place in Germany for vigilante justice, for groups that want to spread hatred on the streets, for intolerance and for extremism." Roland Woeller, interior minister of the state of Saxony, which includes Chemnitz, said authorities would not allow "anarchists" to run rampant. He warned against "misinformation and lies" circulating in social media. The arrival of huge numbers of migrants from the Middle East three years ago has fuelled support for far-right groups such as PEGIDA and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the main opposition party in parliament. Merkel: Protesters shout 'out' during chancellor's visit to Dresden