Germany seeks to curb far right

[Talon]

Germany seeks to curb far right

The German authorities plan to restrict rallies by far-right groups intent on undermining official World War II anniversary events this year.

A bill presented by Interior Minister Otto Schily on Friday would outlaw such rallies near Holocaust memorials, including former concentration camps.

He urged parliament to pass it before 8 May - the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

On Sunday Germany will mark the Allied air raid which destroyed Dresden.

Far-right activists are threatening to upstage the commemorations by holding a huge rally.

Legal manoeuvres

"Right-wing extremists must not be allowed to profit from any gaps in the law," said Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries at a joint news conference with Mr Schily.

The far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) has vowed to hold a big rally at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on or around 8 May - near a new national memorial to victims of the Holocaust.

The NPD has had only marginal success in elections. But in September it won 9% of the vote in Saxony's elections, allowing it to enter a regional assembly for the first time since 1968.

Interior ministers from Germany's 16 states are meeting on Friday to consider imposing an outright ban on the NPD.

"I want my government to use every possibility to go down this road of a ban," Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in an interview on Thursday. "But it must have good chances of success."

But an attempt to ban the NPD failed in March 2003 when constitutional court judges ruled that evidence from secret service informers inside the party was inadmissible.

Last month NPD members caused outrage by storming out of the Saxony parliament during a commemoration for those killed by the Nazis at the Auschwitz death camp.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...ope/4256877.stm

[warden]

Is this like the BNP in britian

[Talon]

Yes, but I think their even more fascist, make the BNP look like the Commission for Racial Equality.... although ironically the CRE is notoriously racist against white people

[Talon]

Germans mark bombing of Dresden

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has warned Germany will not tolerate far-right attempts to rewrite history as it marks 60 years since the bombing of Dresden.

Allied planes devastated the historic heart of the famed baroque city, killing tens of thousands, as ground forces closed in on the Nazi regime.

The far right aims to upstage official events in the city on Sunday to portray Germany as a victim of World War II.

Mr Schroeder pledged to counter "all attempts to re-interpret history".

"This is our obligation to all the victims of the war and Nazi terror especially, and also the victims of Dresden," he told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Candles and white roses

Germany, he said, should mourn its own war dead, but not ignore "how much suffering the war started by Germany brought to others".

Mr Schroeder said he hoped to "keep the far right out" of the commemorations, referring to the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

The day was due to start with a church mass.

Later, a wreath-laying ceremony will be attended by the ambassadors of the four wartime Allied powers - the US, Russia (for the Soviet Union), the UK and France - and 10,000 candles will be lit to remember the victims in various towns and cities around the world.

The NPD plans a counter-rally which could attract up to 7,000 supporters. Dresden citizens protesting at the NPD presence plan to wear white roses on Sunday.

Other events on Sunday will also remember the dead from targets bombed by the Germans, such as Coventry, Leningrad and Warsaw, as well as cities hit by more recent conflicts, including New York, Grozny and Sarajevo.

Outrage

NPD members in the Saxony state parliament, which meets in Dresden, caused outrage in January when they boycotted a commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

They called the Dresden raids a "bombing holocaust" and party leader Udo Voigt has asked for the dead of Dresden to be given consideration equal to the dead of the Nazi death camps.

Allied bombers took to the air on 13 February 1945 and rained bombs down on Dresden over two days. British planes made the initial two raids, followed by US aircraft.

They were acting on a request from Moscow. The city stood as an important railway and communications centre for Nazi forces resisting the Soviet advance from the east.

Officially, about 35,000 people died in the attacks. However, some historians suggest the number may have been greater, as German refugees from the east were arriving in the city and many of the dead were incinerated by the massive firestorm.

Some of the public buildings in the city once known as the Florence of the North have been spectacularly restored since the war, but much of its ruined historical heart has been replaced by modern buildings.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...ope/4261263.stm