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Storming of the Reichstag on August 29, 2020: "unacceptable"
Photo: Achille Abboud / dpa
Bavaria and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are calling for harsher penalties for violations of constitutional organs.
The two federal states want to propose a corresponding resolution at the Justice Ministers' Conference on June 16, as the departments from Munich and Schwerin announced on Sunday.
Until August 1999, gatherings within a protection zone around the respective constitutional organs were therefore punishable with imprisonment of up to two years.
The criminal offense has been abolished.
Currently, fines of up to 20,000 euros threatened.
This should now change again, say the two countries.
With the attempted assault on the Reichstag building in summer 2020, a red line had been crossed, said Bavaria's Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU).
In August, supporters of the so-called lateral thinking movement stormed the steps of the Reichstag at a demonstration in Berlin, at times the police were no longer in control of the situation (read a reconstruction of the events here).
"Right-wing extremist signs in front of our parliament are unacceptable"
"Reich flags and right-wing extremist signs in front of our parliament are unacceptable," said Eisenreich about the action.
"We must not allow enemies of democracy to abuse symbols of our constitutional state." Attacks on the constitutional organs have a symbolic effect that could become a breeding ground for further acts of violence against the state.
"The sentence must take better and more specific account of the injustice of such acts."
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Justice Minister Katy Hoffmeister made a similar statement.
"The incident was an alarm signal for democracy and represents a sad episode in the history of the Federal Republic," she said.
It was thanks to the intervention of the police officers that the situation did not escalate and that the Bundestag building was no longer appropriated.
The events in the Capitol of the US capital Washington were also an occasion to question the previous protection regulations, Hoffmeister said.
Five people died in the riots in Washington in early January.
slü / dpa