While putting up election posters for the SPD late on Friday evening, four unknown people beat a 41-year-old, the police announced on Saturday. He had to receive medical care in the hospital. According to the SPD Saxony, this is their top candidate in the European elections, Matthias Ecke.
The politician therefore needs to undergo surgery. There were further attempts at intimidation, destruction of posters and insults from other poster teams.
The SPD federal chairmen Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil strongly condemned the attack on the Saxon MEP. “This insidious attack affects our entire party. It is an attack on all election campaigners who passionately support our democracy and the rule of law,” it said in a statement on Saturday. “The perpetrators want to intimidate us as representatives of a democratic society. But they will never succeed.” It is expected that the crime will be solved and the perpetrators will be held accountable.
“Unmistakable alarm sign”
The attack was an “unmistakable alarm signal to all people in this country,” said state party leaders Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, according to the statement. “The series of attacks by thugs on poster teams of democratic parties are an attack on the foundations of our democracy. The violent actions and intimidation of democrats are the means of fascists.” The seeds that the AfD and other right-wing extremists have sown are growing; their supporters are completely disinhibited. But the SPD cannot be silenced, emphasized Homann and Michel.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also strongly condemned the attack on MEP Ecke. “If a politically motivated attack on MEP Matthias Ecke is confirmed a few weeks before the European elections, then this serious act of violence is also a serious attack on democracy,” said Faeser on Saturday. “We are experiencing a new dimension of anti-democratic violence here.”
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Minutes earlier, according to the police, a group of four had attacked a 28-year-old campaign worker for the Green Party while he was also posting posters. The perpetrators hit and kicked him, and the 28-year-old was also injured. Based on the matching personal descriptions and the proximity in time and location, the state security investigators assume that the perpetrators are the same in both cases.
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Source: Nachrichten
