German left alarmed by spike in attacks on election campaigners, blame far right

6 months ago 28

Germany’s left-wing parties are accusing the far-right of creating a “climate of fear” after several incidents of physical attacks on left-wing campaigners were reported since the left-wing parties officially launched their EU election campaigns.

In eastern Germany, campaigners putting up posters for left-wing parties faced several attacks over the weekend as poster campaigns for the EU elections got underway in many parts of the country.

Martin Schirdewan, co-leader of the progressive Die Linke party and the Left group in the European Parliament, warned of a chilling effect on the election campaign, as he blamed the attacks on the far-right.

“Attacks of right-wing extremists are creating an unbearable climate of fear,” Schirdewan, who is also Die Linke’s top candidate, told Euractiv.

“The assaults on our campaign workers and those of other democratic parties are a direct result of right-wing hate speech,” he claimed.

Two Die Linke candidates for local elections in the state of Brandenburg were among the victims, police said on Sunday, adding that “a right-wing slogan” was heard as a group of youths attacked them.

There have been several similar incidents in Saxony involving EU election campaigners for the Greens and the pan-European left-wing Volt party.

The former East German states where the attacks took place are known as strongholds of the far-right AfD party, which is in second place in some German polls amid predictions of a wider right-wing shift in the EU elections.

On Monday, Schirdewan told reporters that he believed the situation regarding the attacks on campaigners had “worsened”, which he linked to poll gains for the right.

The leader of the centre-left SPD in Saxony, Henning Homann, told Der Spiegel that the campaign could be “the toughest since [German reunification]”, although the national party did not comment.

Greens co-leader Ricarda Lang denounced attacks on her party’s campaigners earlier this week.

“This is something else: people are being deliberately harassed, intimidated and assaulted,” she said, adding that the attacks were aimed at democracy itself.

The Federal Police declined to provide statistics on the matter for the current year for confidentiality reasons.

Police in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania told Euractiv that it was too early in the campaign to identify trends but that campaign attacks were usually linked to election posters, linking the recent spike to the launch of the posters.

(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)