Ake, a member of the ruling SPD party, was attacked while putting up posters in the city ahead of the European Parliament elections to be held in early June. The city of Dresden is considered an important bastion of support for the far-right AfD party, and is considered one of the cities with the lowest non-German population in the country.
According to the police in Germany, the attackers were young men aged 17-20. According to the SPD party in Saxony, other teams that put up posters that evening were also subjected to attempts at intimidation, destruction of posters and insults. This was not the only incident that evening – two Green Party campaign staff were also attacked. The police believe that the source of all the incidents is the same.
In the last few days we hear about more and more attacks by politicians in Germany, but the brutal attack by Eka causes a public uproar in the country. “We don’t have to accept it,” Chancellor Schultz said. In a speech he gave in Berlin, Schultz said: “Democracy is threatened by something like this, and that’s why renouncing it is never an option.”
The incidents in Dresden are part of a series of attacks on party members ahead of the June 9 local and European elections. Only on Thursday evening, members of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Kai Göring and his party colleague Rolf Fliess, said that they were attacked after an event in the city of Essen. At the end of last week, members of the Green Party were attacked in Chemnitz and Zwickau while they were planting election posters.