BERLIN (AP) -- Police detained dozens of neo-Nazi supporters trying to hold
a rally Saturday, while hundreds of Germans took the streets in an anti-Nazi
protest decrying the rise in racist attacks.
The arrests came after courts banned the extreme-right National Democratic
Party (NPD) from holding a rally in Bad Berka, a resort near Weimar in
eastern Germany, calling it a danger to public safety.
Around 100 skinheads were taken into custody by police as they tried to
attend anyway.
About 1,200 people turned out for the anti-Nazi demonstration in
Duesseldorf, where an explosion July 27 at a rail station injured 10 recent
immigrants from the former Soviet Union, six of them Jewish.
Although police have yet to determine a motive, the possibility that the
grenade was set off by right-wing extremists has triggered a wave of
national soul-searching and demands for action to stop the daily occurrences
of neo-Nazi offenses, ranging from spray-painting swastikas to three fatal
attacks so far this year.
"It's true that Hitler and his followers were beaten military 55 years ago,
but in the year 2000 they're still not politically defeated," author Ralph
Giordano told the crowd.
His remarks were echoed by onlookers, some of whom noted sadly that a rally
demanding tougher leash laws for attack dogs two weeks ago attracted nearly
10 times as many people.
"Sometimes I'm afraid it's already much too late," said Elisabeth Debener,
an 81-year-old retiree who lived through the Nazi era. More than 50 years
later, one of her acquaintances is harassed on the street because of his
dark skin when they walk together to the train, she said.
"We're in a situation in which one has to be afraid," she said.
In the eastern city of Eisenach, more than 300 people gathered Friday night
to show support for two African men who were kicked and spit at and chased
through the town by a gang a week ago.
Nine young neo-Nazis were jailed overnight for threatening to disrupt that
demonstration. Police said their leader, an NPD member, had a banner with an
anti-foreigner slogan hidden under his clothing.
Some 250 NPD attended a rally Saturday that the party was allowed to hold in
Tostedt, east of Bremen.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government is considering having the fringe
NPD declared unconstitutional for agitating against foreigners, leftists and
other minorities.
But Interior Minister Otto Schily expressed serious reservations. Banning
the party runs the risk of sending its members underground and making them
even more militant, he said in Der Spiegel magazine.
Schily also told the magazine he was considering deploying border patrol
officers in areas known to be potentially dangerous "to provide people with
visible state protection."
Federal officials also planned to expand video surveillance at railway
stations under the jurisdiction of the border patrol, Der Spiegel reported.
Train conductors will also be able to alert border patrol officers by code
word when skinheads are on board.
A poll published in Saturday's Bild newspaper found 89 percent of Germans
say the government and justice system don't treat right-wing extremists hard
enough. The poll of 1,100 people provided no margin of error.
Meanwhile, Economics Minister Werner Mueller joined some of Germany's top
corporate chieftains in warning that the recent rise in anti-foreigner and
anti-Semitic attacks threatened to scare off foreign investors and harm the
German economy.
The depressed, former communist eastern states, where much of the violence
has been concentrated, risk falling further behind "if xenophobia becomes a
terrible distinguishing characteristic there," Mueller told the Welt am
Sonntag newspaper.
Bosses of several German companies warned that racist or neo-Nazi remarks
could be grounds for termination.