German opposition backs anti-austerity protest

BERLIN 

Germany’s opposition parties backed on Thursday a major anti-austerity rally organized by the pan-European Blockupy movement in Frankfurt on Wednesday and criticized the German government for its attempts to discredit the protest.

The main opposition Left Party’s co-chair, Katja Kipping, said that more than 20,000 demonstrators peacefully protested the EU’s austerity measures and the inauguration of the new €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt.

“The overwhelming majority of people who took to the streets in Frankfurt yesterday wanted to demonstrate decisively but also peacefully against the austerity measures and they wanted to demonstrate that another Europe was possible,” Kipping said Thursday at a special session of the German parliament, which was scheduled to discuss the events of yesterday.  

Hundreds of protesters were arrested and scores of police officers injured in Frankfurt on Wednesday after clashes that broke out in the early hours of the protests.

Some protesters set up barricades on the streets while others set fire to police cars during the clashes.  Organizers blamed the police for provoking violence.

Kipping distanced herself from the groups that used violence and underlined that these were a minority.

She dismissed government claims that the organizers planned the violent actions in Frankfurt.

Kipping said that the organizers of the protest clearly denounced violence and also worked to defuse tensions during the day.

“The aim of the protests was to clearly demonstrate to the European Central Bank that the opening of such a new, luxury headquarters could only be a source of protest, not celebration,” Kipping stressed.

Opposition Green Party lawmaker Irene Mihalic criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat bloc for blaming all the demonstrators for the violence and not differentiating between peaceful protestors and small, violent groups.

“Now you are trying to discredit the whole protest movement which also includes members of trade unions and democratic parties. You argue that they are all activists who are ready to use violence, who are abusing the right to protest. Then how can you explain the peaceful demonstration of thousands of people in the afternoon in Frankfurt’s city center,” Mihalic said at the parliament.

She also called on the Blockupy movement to clearly distance itself from any group that views the use of violence as legitimate.

Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere blamed the organizers on Thursday for the clashes in Frankfurt, claiming that these groups planned the violent actions weeks before.   

“One who behaves in this manner and abuses freedoms and rights clearly crosses borders that we as a state of the rule of law cannot tolerate,” de Maiziere told lawmakers in parliament.

De Maiziere said 150 police officers were injured during the protests, 55 police cars were damaged and seven others were set on fire.

The pan-European Blockupy movement, an alliance of around 90 anti-globalization and anti-racist political parties, said that more than 200 protestors were injured during the clashes. The movement claimed police provoked protesters through their use of heavy security measures and deliberate use of tear gas.

The movement includes activist groups such as Attac, which advocates the taxing of financial transactions, Verdi, Germany's second-biggest union which has more than two million members, and German political party Die Linke (The Left), which currently holds more than 10 percent of the country's parliamentary seats.

Greek leftist party Syriza, which was elected in January, is also a member of the movement which argues ECB policies are pushing for balanced budgets at the expense of poor people and the middle classes across Europe.

Blockupy highlights the harsh economic measures imposed on heavily indebted Greece since 2010 by the "troika," which is comprised of the ECB, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, as an example of unacceptable and destructive economic practices.