BERLIN
The anti-capitalist Blockupy movement and German opposition parties blamed the police on Friday for clashes that broke out in Frankfurt this week during anti-austerity protests.
Azize Tank, a lawmaker from the opposition Left Party, told the Anadolu Agency that the police provoked the demonstrators and instigated the violence.
“We have to question whether it was necessary for the police to use such excessive force. Wouldn’t it have been possible to respond in a different way?” Tank asked.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested and scores of police officers injured in Frankfurt on Wednesday after clashes 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.
Tank said she was in Frankfurt as a parliamentary observer during the protests and was herself a witness to the improper response of the police.
“As long as there were no police in nearby, people felt more comfortable. They were peaceful because there was nobody there provoking them,” Tank said.
She underlined that despite clashes in the morning, more than 20,000 protestors gathered in Frankfurt’s city center and peacefully protested the EU’s austerity measures and the inauguration of the new €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) European Central Bank headquarters in the city.
Tank criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat bloc for blaming all the demonstrators in Frankfurt for the violence, and not paying attention to their demands.
She also accused the government of double standards.
“When these kinds of incidents occur in China, or as we have recently witnessed in Hong Kong, they are perceived here as legitimate protests. Immediately, support is extended to the protestors as they are seen to be voicing legitimate demands... But when similar protests take place here, they are not seen as the use of democratic rights,” Tank said.
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.
Police arrested more than 350 protestors on Thursday.
The Blockupy movement spokesperson, who uses the nickname Thomas Occupy, said that the groups had agreed before the demonstration not to use any violence, but the heavy police presence and excessive use of force provoked some of the groups.
“In some parts of the demonstration our consensus was broken… But we did not want that,” Occupy told The Anadolu Agency.
“We have to say that there was also violence from the side of the police,” he added.
Occupy said that at least 200 demonstrators were injured by the gas grenades, and a few hundred more by the use of the pepper spray used by the police.
The pan-European Blockupy movement is an alliance of around 90 anti-globalization and anti-racist political parties. 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 Left Party, 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.
