NOS News•today, 3:50 PM•Amended today, 6:09 PM
A German candidate for the European elections was seriously injured in an attack by unknown persons in Dresden. Matthias Ecke, MEP for the social democratic SPD, was so badly injured that he had to be operated on in hospital, the police said.
Ecke, 41, was attacked by four strangers while he was pasting election posters in Striesen, a densely populated district of Dresden. A few minutes earlier, the group had also attacked a 28-year-old Greens campaign worker, according to police. He was also pasting posters and was injured when he was punched and kicked by the perpetrators.
Because the personal descriptions of witnesses match and the two incidents took place in the same area and shortly after each other, the authorities assume that the perpetrators are the same.
‘Democratic values under attack’
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) called for “joint action against the right” after the attack. He called the attack on Ecke sad. “Democracy is threatened by this. That is why it is never an option to shrug your shoulders and accept this,” Scholz said. “We have to act against it together.”
It is the second time in just a few days that politicians have been attacked in Germany. Last Thursday, two members of the Greens were attacked in Essen, in the Ruhr region.
According to the SPD, other poster teams have also recently faced intimidation, the destruction of posters and insults. The Social Democrats in the state of Saxony, where Dresden is located, partly blame the attacks on the “seeds” that they believe the right-wing populist AfD and right-wing extremists have sown. “Their supporters are now completely out of control and apparently regard us as outlaws,” the party leadership in the state said.
