WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
Choose language:
AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS
Several tens of thousands of people gathered in Berlin today to condemn the rapprochement of the right and the far right, three weeks before the parliamentary elections in Germany.
Berlin police said that about 20,000 people had gathered, but that more demonstrators were arriving. The protesters carried banners with the inscriptions "Shame on you CDU" and "Merc without a heart".
German conservatives and the far right joined forces last week to pass a text in parliament that aimed to tighten the country's migration policy.
The text, which is not binding, has great symbolic value. It was proposed by the conservatives, the favorites in the polls ahead of the February 23 election, and received the support of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, without which the text could not have been adopted.
The text, among other things, demands that Germany turn back all foreigners without valid entry documents, including asylum seekers, at the border.
Around 500 police officers were deployed today to secure the rally, which is taking place near the German parliament.
On Saturday, more than 220,000 people demonstrated in the country's major cities, such as Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne and Stuttgart, ARD television reported.
Since World War II, "there has always been a clear consensus among all democrats in our parliaments - that we do not take joint actions with the extreme right," said Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who accused his conservative opponent, Friedrich Merz, of putting an end to the consensus reached in 1949.
The debate was sparked by a recent knife attack, for which an undocumented Afghan with mental health problems was blamed.
Then one child was killed, while in December there was also an attack with a car whose driver (of Saudi origin) deliberately ran into people at the Christmas market.
