Leftist radicals fought Thursday in two
German cities with riot police who were thwarting attempts to disrupt May Day
parades by the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), DPA reported.
In Hamburg, five cars were set on fire and volleys of stones shattered many
windows. Police used water jets mounted on heavy trucks to open up a route for
an estimated 1,100 far-rightists. Leftist leaders said they mustered 10,000
protesters at the scene.
The anti-immigrant NPD, which has sought to present itself as a voice of the
poor, staged labour-day parades through an old-time working-class district of
Hamburg and through Nuremberg, the city adopted by dictator Adolf Hitler as the
home of his Nazi Party.
The NPD, believed to have 7,000 card-carrying members, has seats in two of Germany's 16 state parliaments, but none at federal level. Attempts to proscribe the
NPD because of its alleged pro-Nazi views have never succeeded.
Thousands of police were sent to the two cities to prevent clashes between the
NPD and the "Black Block," a loose movement of several thousand
German anarchists who last June led violent demonstrations against the Group of
Eight (G8) summit in Heiligendamm, Germany.
In both cities Saturday, the NPD marched between cordons of riot police
ordered to enforce the NPD's right of free assembly. Anti-NPD protesters
far outnumbered boot-wearing rightists in both cities.
Both NPD parades ended with the political enemies getting only a few chances
to brawl, but dozens were injured in the mayhem.
Police officers bore the brunt of the attacks in Hamburg, scene of the day's
worst rioting, as they hemmed in angry NPD youths and chased
stone-throwing leftists who tried to ambush the marchers from nearby streets.
The Hamburg parade started hours late, after police had to clear roads of
sit-in protests and fire brigades had to extinguish bonfires and suppress smoke
from burning piles of tyres lit by the leftists.
In Nuremberg, 1,500 NPD supporters paraded on empty streets but were
pelted with eggs and bottles during a final rally, as some of nearly 10,000
anti-NPD demonstrators managed to get within striking distance after
scuffles with police lines. Four police were injured.
At the same time, mainstream labour and religious groups held peaceful rallies
at more distant locations in the two cities to denounce the NPD. German Social
Democrats and labour leaders called Saturday for renewed efforts to outlaw the
far-right party.
Bavaria state's premier, Guenther Beckstein, who comes from Nuremberg, told a
peaceful anti-NPD rally far from the clashes that his government would use
undercover agents, court challenges and youth education programmes to undercut
the NPD wherever it could.
Nuremberg has created a guided tour of Nazi crimes in the ruins of a former
Nazi Party park on the city fringe.
Berlin, the capital city, where activists associated with the Black Block
have rioted on previous May Days, remained largely calm. The "revolutionary"
group held a peaceful march against "oppression and imperialism."