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Hamburg hit by May Day riots

The worst May Day riots in the northern German city of Hamburg in years continued into the early morning on Friday, causing police to use force to restore order.

Published: 2 May 2008 08:32 CEST
Hamburg hit by May Day riots
Photo: DPA

Berlin and Nuremberg also saw protests turn violent.

About 10,000 leftist demonstrators waged running street battles in the Hamburg district of Barmbek with both neo-Nazis, who had staged marches earlier, and with the police. Eyewitnesses reported rioters pelting police with stones and firecrackers.

The police used water cannons to disperse protesters, but violence continued past midnight as about 200 people continued to build barricades and burn cars and trash cans.

Police arrested 59 people, of whom all but 11 were juveniles. Twenty-six of about 2,500 police involved and an unknown number of demonstrators were injured.

“The naked aggression and violence originated with the rightists,” police spokesman Peter Born told German press agency DDP on Friday in Hamburg.

German press agency DPA cited eyewitnesses to report several leftists were injured after police struck them with batons when they tried to break through a police line.

After peaceful May 1 demonstrations and outdoor festivals, Berlin – traditionally hardest hit by May Day rioting – also saw widespread violence in the district of Kreuzberg. Rioters attacked police with cobblestones and bottles.

The city’s police commissioner, Dieter Glietsch, narrowly avoided being assaulted by rioters, according to a police spokesman.

Still, police told DPA it was the most peaceful May Day in Berlin in 14 years.

One hundred and thirty-eight rioters were taken into custody in Berlin, and 90 police were injured – an improvement over the 115 police injured last year, officials said.

In the southern city of Nuremberg, lesser clashes also broke out alongside another rally by the neo-Nazi NPD party. Police there kept neo-Nazi and leftist groups apart with barriers.

dpa/afp/ddp

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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