Organisers of a weekly anti-immigration protest in Germany have cancelled this Monday’s event after a threat was made against its founder.
The far-right Pegida, or “patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the west”, said on its Facebook page it was calling off the event on the advice of police, who had told them of a “concrete threat against a member of the organisation team”.
It called on its supporters to place a candle in their windows and hang out a German flag on Monday evening instead of attending the rally.
Police in Dresden confirmed the there had been a threat against one of the leaders of the rally and said it had put a general ban on all public gatherings on Monday.
Dieter Kroll, Dresden’s police chief, said that there had been a call for attackers to mingle with the demonstrators and kill one of the protest organisers. He said there was no information about any specific attacker or how exactly an attack might be carried out, which led officials to conclude that there was no way to safeguard lives other than to cancel the rally.
Pegida was to hold its 13th demonstration in as many weeks and has become the most talked-about protest movement in Germany for years. Its numbers have been growing each week. Its central demands are a tightening of Germany’s asylum law and a curb on foreigners coming to Germany.
Having begun with just a few hundred members, last week it attracted a record 25,000 and this week that number would have risen again.
The cancellation happened after a report in Spiegel magazine said that intelligence sources had received information about concrete threats of terrorist attacks at Berlin’s and Dresden’s central railway stations and at a Pegida demonstration.
The Pegida organiser thought to be the threat’s target is Lutz Bachmann, the 41-year-old butcher’s son who established the group in November. It has been reported that he has received police protection.
According to Pegida’s Facebook posting, a “concrete murder threat” was made. “[The] execution was ordered by the IS terrorists,” it says. Police did not specify where the threat came from, or if any group was behind it, but said it resembled an Arabic-language tweet describing Pegida as an “enemy of Islam”.
Pegida demonstrations have been springing up across Germany as well as in Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Spain, but Dresden remains the only rally to have got off the ground in a significant way. The organisation has drawn huge criticism from German politicians, especially the chancellor, Angela Merkel.
The decision to cancel the demonstration was taken amid heightened security fears across Europe, following the terrorist attacks in Paris in which 17 people were killed, and thwarted terrorist plots in Belgium.
The future of Pegida could be in doubt, commentators said, if policing such large numbers amid fears of a terrorist attack is deemed logistically impossible.
