In Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, thousands of people took to the streets again on Monday evening. They protested in several cities against the consequences of the Ukraine crisis, such as high energy prices and the policies of the federal government. After a month-long break, the extremist and Islamophobic Pegida movement met again for the first time for the "Great Dresden Evening Walk" in Magdeburg, according to the police, around 1,100 people followed a call by the AfD.
"We are not aware of any disruptions," said a spokesman for the situation center in the Saxony-Anhalt Ministry of the Interior. The Thuringian colleagues also had no information about problems at the various meetings, including in Eisenach, Gotha, Ilmenau, Leinefelde Worbis or Gera. In Jena, Weimar, the Weimarer Land district and the Saale-Holzland district, the Jena police inspection counted a total of 2431 participants, as announced in the evening. The Saxon state police spoke of a quiet situation without incidents. "It's very relaxed," said a spokesman. The evaluation in the three countries was still pending because of ongoing meetings.
In the center of Leipzig there were clashes during the Monday protest between participants and counter-demonstrators, as a police spokesman said. Appropriate measures were taken. The elevator, whose number of participants was said to be in the "very low four-digit range", was blocked out of the counter-protest. According to the police, this consisted of several hundred participants. In Plauen, however, everything went quietly, said a spokesman for the Zwickau police department.
Several hundred Pegida supporters gathered on Dresden's Neumarkt near the Frauenkirche, to which the head of the movement, Lutz Bachmann, who was classified as a right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, briefly addressed them. Young people in particular protested against the assembly of the self-proclaimed "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West" with almost the same strength.
Press release State Police Inspectorate Jena
