In Schwerin on Tuesday evening, many people demonstrated again against the rise of the AfD, against right-wing extremism and for a strong democracy. A broad alliance of trade unions, parties and associations called for this. The police estimated the number of participants at the beginning of the rally at around 2,500. They used posters to protest against racism and right-wing agitation. A week earlier, 1,600 people took to the streets in the state capital to demand tolerance and cosmopolitanism.
In a short speech, regional bishop Kristina Kühnbaum-Schmidt described the great response to the demonstrations as an encouraging sign. “We are committed to a free, open and diverse society! We oppose right-wing extremist movements and parties, we resolutely oppose fascist ideologies and ethnic ideas! We say: No to racism and anti-Semitism!” emphasized the church representative to the applause of the audience Rally participants at the Schwerin market.
The demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of participants nationwide were triggered by publications by the media company Correctiv about a meeting of radical right-wing circles in Potsdam. According to the research, one of the aims was to expel large numbers of people of foreign origin from Germany. Individual AfD officials as well as members of the CDU and the ultra-conservative Values Union also took part in the meeting in November. The former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, confirmed that he had spoken about “remigration” at the meeting.
Anyone who talks about “remigration” and wants to make fantasies of expulsion socially acceptable will get a resounding “No, never again!” to hear, emphasized Kühnbaum-Schmidt. This is what the majority of people in Schwerin, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Germany stand for. She called for this attitude to be made clear again and again, “in our everyday lives, at work, among friends, in sports clubs, in the family, at the ballot box, in social commitment and volunteer work – everywhere where it is necessary!” said the regional bishop.
“We will not allow what people fought for 35 years ago to be questioned today by right-wing extremist and populist movements and people and made contemptible with words and deeds,” emphasized Kühnbaum-Schmidt. Like them, the Schwerin theater director Hans-Georg Wegner also remembered the mass demonstrations in the GDR in the fall of 1989. “We demonstrated for an open country without a wall. And we fought for democracy,” said Wegner. Nobody who risked everything back then to be able to live in a democratic constitutional state will ever accept ending up in a dictatorship again. “We will no longer allow this freedom to be taken away from us,” shouted Wegner to applause from the rally participants.
According to the police, around 1,500 people demonstrated against right-wing extremism in Greifswald on Monday evening. On Thursday, the Rostock nazifrei/colorful instead of brown alliance called for a rally in the largest city in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
