{"id":41424,"date":"2019-11-02T19:22:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-02T19:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41424"},"modified":"2019-11-02T19:22:25","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T19:22:25","slug":"eastern-german-city-dresden-declares-nazi-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41424","title":{"rendered":"Eastern German city Dresden declares ‘Nazi emergency’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The eastern German<\/a> city of Dresden has declared a “Nazi emergency” as officials warned of a rise in far-right support and violence.<\/p>\n

The city is the birthplace of the Islamophobic<\/a> Pegida movement, which holds weekly rallies here, while the anti-immigration Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party won 28 percent of the votes in the regional elections in September.<\/p>\n

More:<\/h4>\n

Dresden’s city council backed a resolution against far-right ideas with the title “Nazinotstand?”, or “Nazi emergency?”.<\/p>\n

It was brought by Max Aschenbach, a local councillor for left-leaning satirical party Die Partei, who told DPA news agency that “this city has a Nazi problem”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The resolution said the city was “worried that anti-democratic, anti-pluralist, discriminatory and far-right positions which include violence” were on the rise in Dresden.<\/span><\/p>\n

It called for the “strengthening of a democratic culture”, making a priority of “the protection of minorities, human rights and victims of extreme-right violence”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The motion also stressed the importance to fight “anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The resolution was approved by 39 council member votes against 29.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was backed by the left and liberal parties, but rejected not only by the AfD members but also by centre-right Christian Democrats who said it should not have targeted right-wing extremism only.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The title is clearly pointed,” said Thomas Loeser, a council member for the Green party.<\/span><\/p>\n

“But we, as the city community, clearly declare our support for those who oppose racism and anti-Semitism, and expect everybody else to do the same,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The AfD is especially strong in Germany’s east which, almost 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, lags behind the west in jobs and prosperity and has been a hotspot for xenophobia, racist hate crimes and support for far-right groups.<\/p>\n

German\u00a0Chancellor<\/span>\u00a0Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let in about one million refugees and migrants, many fleeing wars in the\u00a0<\/span>Middle East<\/a>, has fuelled support for far-right groups such as Pegida and the AfD.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, the AfD surged<\/a> to second place in local elections in the east German\u00a0state of Thuringia, taking\u00a0<\/span>24 percent of the vote, with Merkel’s centre-right <\/span>Christian Democratic Union party coming one percentage point behind.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eastern German city of Dresden has declared a “Nazi emergency” as officials warned of a rise in far-right support and violence. The city is the birthplace of the Islamophobic Pegida movement, which holds weekly rallies here, while the anti-immigration Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party won 28 percent of the votes in the regional elections…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}