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Anti Neo-Nazi Protest Takes Place in Germany
Over 2,000 Germans took to the streets Saturday in Dusseldorf, the capital city of Nordrhein-Westfalen, to protest neo-Nazi violence and demand the banning of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
The protest was organized by some left-wing groups. Demonstrators staged a sit-in at the railway station, the site of an explosion on July 27 which injured 10 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish.
Although police have yet to establish the motive of the explosion, the possibility that right-wing extremists were behind it triggered a wave of national soul-searching and demands for official and public actions to stop neo-Nazi offenses.
On the same day in Thuringen in eastern Germany, police detained more than 100 suspected neo-Nazis to prevent them from taking part in a banned march.
German Interior Minister Otto Schily told the Der Spiegel magazine that the federal government is considering using frontier guards to fight against neo-Nazis. Meanwhile, Economics Minister Werner Mueller warned that the recent rise in neo-Nazi violence might scare off foreign investors and harm the German economy.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's administration has decided to establish working teams with state governments to discuss whether to declare the NPD unconstitutional.
The far-right NPD has great influence in eastern Germany. Its members grew rapidly from 3,000 in 1996 to the present 6,000, most of whom young people.
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