AMN
After the Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) historic election result, opponents of the far-right populist party have taken to the streets of Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne in protest.
Angela Merkel is set to remain chancellor of Germany for fourth term- but her party CDU has lost support and she will need to find new coalition partners. The far-right AfD has reason to celebrate as it earned 13.1 percent of votes .
According to DW, around 700 demonstrators gathered on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz on Sunday evening, bearing umbrellas to keep dry and waving anti-AfD signs to protest the far-right populist party’s election result.
Angela Merkel gets fourth term as chancellor of Germany
Just hours before, the Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) earned an estimated 13.1 percent of votes in the German national election, ensuring that the young party would enter the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament.
The crowd was continuing to grow outside the building where the AfD was celebrating their historic election result. Protestors chanted slogans such as, “Racism is not an alternative,” “AfD is a bunch of racists,” and “Nazis out!”
AfD party
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, entering the Bundestag as the third largest party. Its main appeal is its opposition to Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward migrants.
When it was formed in 2013, the AfD’s main thrust was its opposition to bailouts of indebted European Union member states like Greece. But over time, it has become, first and foremost, an anti-immigration party. A recent study by the prestigious Bertelsmann Foundation concluded that this issue is the only one on which the party possesses significant appeal.
The AfD completely rejects Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming policy toward refugees, particularly from the Arab world, which has seen more than 1.5 million migrants arrive in Germany since 2015. The party wants to change Germany’s constitution to get rid of the right to an individual hearing in asylum cases and would seek to immediately deport all those whose applications to remain in Germany are rejected, regardless of whether the countries to which deportees are sent back are safe or not. It also advocates foreigners who commit crimes in Germany being sentenced to prisons outside the country and treating minors as young as 12 as adults for certain offenses.