Anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing \u201cIslamisation\u201d of the country.<\/p>\n
Demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, \u201cWir sind das Volk\u201d. They say they want to preserve Western culture.<\/p>\n
The protests come as Bavaria\u2019s ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) is seeking to distance itself from a draft proposal for its party conference which said that immigrants should speak German not only in public, but at home as well.<\/p>\n
Germany is now the second most popular destination in the world for migrants, after the US, and the country is struggling to cope with an unprecedented influx of asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n
Thousands have defied sub-zero temperatures to join weekly marches each Monday in Dresden under the banner of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of Europe, or Pegida.<\/p>\n
The protests were started by a local man, Lutz Bachmann, with no background in politics. When he called his first demonstration in October, only a few hundred turned up, but the movement has snowballed, and last week 7,500 came.<\/p>\n
Pegida has inspired similar movements across Germany. Though the numbers have not been as high as in Dresden so far, marches have been called in cities from D\u00fcsseldorf to Munich.<\/p>\n
Bachmann\u00a0has been at pains to stress that he is not opposed to genuine political refugees, only to economic migrants who \u201ctake advantage\u201d of the German system, and has no problem with Islam but is worried about erosion of German culture.<\/p>\n
Concerns for the German culture plunged Bavaria\u2019s ruling CSU into its own controversy, after a draft proposal for the opening motion at the party conference called for immigrants to speak German at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever wants to live here permanently should be encouraged to speak German in public and within the family,\u201d the draft said.<\/p>\n
After a storm of criticism, including the Twitter hashtag YallaCSU, Arabic for \u201cLet\u2019s go, CSU\u201d, and questions over how such a policy could possibly be enforced, Andreas Scheuer, the party\u2019s general secretary, sought to limit the damage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing \u201cIslamisation\u201d of the country. Demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, \u201cWir sind das Volk\u201d. They say they … Continue reading “Germans take to the streets against Islam”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[10686,51,914,10685,315],"class_list":["post-17160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-dresden","tag-germany","tag-islam","tag-pegida","tag-protests"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17161,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160\/revisions\/17161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}