With a rally in Berlin has started a large demonstration against law. Thousands of people gathered in front of the Humboldt University in Bebelplatz under the motto "No footsteps, kill anti-Semitism and racism", including Berlin State Secretary Sawsan Chebli, Levi Salomon of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Anti-Semitism, and Berlin Bishop Markus Dröge.
With the demonstration four days after the anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Halle, a broad alliance wants to set a clear signal against law. On the Facebook page of the initiative "Indivisible" it said: "We stand together solidary and indivisible in this difficult hour! We can not play off against each other."
Around 14 o'clock the protest should start, as a spokesman said. She had called together with other groups to the demonstration, were registered according to organizer 10,000 participants. The target of the demonstrators was the New Synagogue. Already on Saturday several thousand people in different cities had demonstrated against the law.
Also in Halle, an alliance called for a further solidarity rally for the victims and demonstration against anti-Semitism and racism. The goal of the starting at 15 clock demonstration train through the city center should be the doner shop, in which on Wednesday a 20-year-old was shot by the assassin.
The action is organized by the coalition "Halle gegen Rechts" together with those affected from the bombarded doner shop. The latter want to turn to the public and speak at the rally. The Alliance also wants to remember music with the shot dead 20-year-olds and the 40-year-old killed. The demo also expressed solidarity with the Jewish community, it said. Out of respect for the need for rest, the route does not pass the synagogue.
Reactions to attack: The solidarity with the victims is overwhelming
Before the demo in the capital, the Berlin Bishop Markus Dröge calls for tougher measures against right-wing extremism. It was no longer enough to "never call again," Dröge explained to the Berlin protest march, in which he wanted to participate. "The protection of the Constitution and the security forces must take a much more consistent approach to right-wing networks and right-wing populist functionaries who have proven to spread anti-constitutional theses."
The CDU chairman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called the anti-Semitic attack of Halle "a shame" and "an alarm that will not leave any of us cold." There have been other alarm signals before. "But the problem is that none of these alarms seem to have arrived in such a way that one recognizes: Right-wing radicalism and the political arm of right-wing radicalism, the AfD, are a real problem in Germany," she said at the Germany Day of the Young Union (JU) in Saarbrücken , The AfD called her the "political arm of right-wing radicalism."
Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) told the German Press Agency: "After the killings of Halle, our society can not just continue as before. (...) Schools and all other educational institutions now need to intensify their mediation on which intellectual and cultural spheres historical foundation of our country and what responsibility we have in particular for our Jewish fellow citizens. " Her ministry will examine how ongoing democracy promotion projects could be developed further.
On Saturday, the non-party Lord Mayor of Halle, Bernd Wiegand , emphasized the cohesion in his city. Conditions such as 2018 in Chemnitz will not exist, he told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung". "Of course, we were in shock at first, but the city society is standing together, showing face and resisting capture." The solidarity with the victims was overwhelming. "The city shows how colorful and diverse it is." Wiegand will stand for re-election this Sunday.
There were demonstrations for days in August 2018 in the Saxon town of Chemnitz, after a 35-year-old German had been stabbed to death. At the rallies, right-wing extremists also marched in, some showed the Hitler salute or attacked people, where they suspected a foreign origin. Because of the bloody deed, a Syrian has been sentenced to nine and a half years in prison, after a second suspect from Iraq is sought worldwide.
Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) demanded a tough move as a consequence of the Halle attack: "We have to counter right-wing terrorism the way we reacted to RAF terrorism in the 1970s: with a hard-hitting, defensive-democratic constitutional state he does not like anything, "he told the" Bild am Sonntag ". To do this, security agencies would need to have more up-to-date tools and access rights to terrorist communications on the Internet.
Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht demanded: "Anti-Semitic offenses must be pursued with all consequence." The criminal laws were in place, but they also had to be applied consistently, said the SPD politician of the "Welt am Sonntag". As a model Lambrecht called the Bavarian prosecutor. She had "written on the flag that there are basically no procedural cessation of insignificance or low guilt in anti-Semitic offenses."