German police said tens of thousands of Cologne residents took to the streets on Saturday in protest at an “anti-Islamization” conference of European far-right leaders.
Carrying banners saying: “We are Cologne — Get rid of the Nazis,” protesters gathered outside the city’s cathedral to demonstrate against the congress organized by the local far-right group Pro-Koeln, or “For Cologne.”
Pro-Koeln began two days of seminars on Friday during which speakers denounced an influx of Muslims to Germany and the construction of one of Europe’s largest mosques in the city.
PHOTO: EPA
RALLY BAN
Earlier on Saturday, police banned a rally organized by far-rightists in Cologne just as it was about to begin, following clashes with thousands of opponents.
Some 3,000 police, drafted in to control the protests and seal off part of the old city, used truncheons and water hoses to fend off violent “anti-fascist” leftist activists.
“It is a dictatorship!” said a Pro-Koeln member of the decision to ban the far-right rally.
Andreas Molzer, a member of the European Parliament and an Austrian far-right group who attended the congress, called the ban an “anti-democratic scandal.”
Pro-Koeln had hoped 1,500 people would attend Saturday’s rally in the city center to oppose the mosque and an “immigrant invasion” of Europe.
Those attending the congress, including far-right leaders from Belgium, Austria and Italy, protested against “Islamification” and voiced support for Europe’s “Western values and Christian traditions.”
BLOCKADE
The counter-protest, called by trade unions, churches and anti-racist movements, saw thousands of students, families and local businessmen and women carry signs with slogans including “No to Racism” and “Cologne is rebelling!”
They disrupted the Pro-Koeln congress, ensuring less than 50 delegates were able to return to the meeting on Saturday morning.
Cologne Mayor Fritz Schramma, whose city council gave the green light for the construction of the huge mosque, slammed Pro-Koeln as “arsonists and racists” hiding under the cloak of a “citizens’ movement” in a speech earlier on Saturday.
NO BEER FOR FAR RIGHT
Meanwhile, around 150 bars in Cologne stopped selling Pro-Koeln members the local Kolsch beer with some taxi and bus drivers also refusing to transport delegates to the congress.
One hotel even canceled bookings made by “undesirables.”
On Friday, several hundred opponents of the congress formed a human chain around a mosque in solidarity with the Muslim minority, which numbers more than 3 million in Germany, or 4 percent of the population.
Pro-Koeln has five elected local councilors and is chasing other official positions in the region.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS