By Harriet Torry and Anton Troianovski
BERLIN--A police decision on Monday to ban a regular anti-Islam
march and counter-protests in the eastern city of Dresden on
security grounds drew criticism from opposition politicians, who
slammed the move as a worrying restriction on freedom of
speech.
Local police have banned all public gatherings in Dresden on
Monday, citing death threats sent to a leader of Patriotic
Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, known by its German
initials as Pegida. The group has staged weekly rallies in the
eastern city of Dresden since October, with crowds reaching as many
as 25,000-strong last Monday.
A senior member of the Green Party described the ban as a
"bitter" restriction on fundamental rights, for which the police
should answer.
"The Pegida demonstration is abhorrent, but naturally our
authorities have to make sure that it is possible to make abhorrent
expressions of opinion," Anton Hofreiter, co-chairman of the Green
Party parliamentary group, said early Monday on broadcaster
ZDF.
The far-left Die Linke party also criticized the police
decision. Ulla Jelpke, party spokeswoman on interior affairs, told
WDR radio that authorities need to produce evidence of a serious
attack to justify encroaching on freedom of assembly.
Pegida canceled its rally after police banned all open-air
gatherings in the city Monday, saying the decision was justified by
an acute threat of terrorism. The police said unidentified
individuals had called on potential assassins to mix in with the
Pegida protesters, in order to kill a protest organizer. An
Arabic-language Twitter account had used similar language
describing Pegida demonstrators as enemies of Islam, the police
order said. As there were no clues as to the identity of the
potential attackers, the police said, "there are no appropriate
police measures to repel the existing danger."
Katrin Oertel, one of the Pegida organizers, said on the Günther
Jauch talk show late Sunday that police had informed Pegida on
Saturday of a threat "from the Islamist field" of an attack during
Monday's demonstration against Pegida's most prominent organizer,
Lutz Bachmann.
Pegida asked its supporters via its Facebook page to display a
candle and a German flag in their front windows on Monday
evening.
The cancellation comes as Pegida is attempting to refashion
itself into a more prominent political force. After her appearance
on the popular Günther Jauch show on Sunday night, Ms. Oertel told
reporters at a news conference in Dresden that Pegida leaders were
planning meetings with politicians in the coming days, without
specifying which ones.
"We don't want a revolution," she said. "What we want is a
different relationship between politicians and the people."
Write to Harriet Torry at harriet.torry@wsj.com and Anton
Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com
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