Germany's Schroeder Slams Neo-NazisOn his first extended trip Monday through a region blighted by neo-Nazi violence, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on citizens to stand up to the extreme right following attacks that have left three people dead so far this year.Schroeder's two-week bus trip is a high-profile break with Germany's political routine ¡ª an attempt to connect with people and problems in a region where alienation and a lack of jobs play out most terribly in a growing number of neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners and other minorities. Many eastern Germans feel disadvantaged and frustrated a decade after German unification, which wiped out much of the region's industry and left it with joblessness about twice the national average. It is just this sense of dissatisfaction that caused a spike in neo-Nazi violence in the first two years after reunification and is contributing now to a resurgence. Schroeder emphasized Monday that in 1989, when their protests brought the Berlin Wall down, East Germans displayed the sort of civic courage that political leaders are now trying to foster. Schroeder met with some of the former democracy activists during his stop in Plauen and held them up as an example for all Germans ¡ª east and west. He urged citizens to defend democracy by standing up against ``far-right rowdies'' he said were giving the region a bad name. ``On this trip, I want to make it clear that extreme-right ideas are not purely eastern German,'' he said at an earnest meeting with local officials in this town near the Czech border. ``Without a civic response against right-wing extremism, we won't make it.'' Schroeder promised to continue the federal aid that has topped $470 billion to the region since unification, but he insisted that funding and tough responses from authorities were only part of the answer. Schroeder's 21-stop trip is the most attention any German leader has paid to the east outside an election campaign. Tanned from his summer vacation in Spain, he was at turns jovial and serious during Monday's stops. |
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