Far-right German politician suggests G20 rioters should have been shot

Rioters set a waste bin on fire during a protest on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg. | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images

The Facebook post by a state-level AfD lawmaker was deleted after a few hours.

A member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been criticized for suggesting that G20 protesters should have been shot, the daily Die Welt reportedThursday.

Christel Weißig, a 71-year-old AfD politician and member of the regional parliament in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, wrote a Facebook post on the morning of July 8, in the aftermath of the G20 summit in Hamburg. The summit was at times overshadowed by rioters who clashed with police, looted stores and set cars ablaze.

“Looters are shot immediately, why is that not the case here?” Weißig wrote, before deleting the post a few hours later.

The AfD’s parliamentary group in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern confirmed the post, issuing a statement saying that Weißig had reacted emotionally to the riots in her hometown. “Using an exaggerated question, she wanted to draw attention to the fact that the state is powerless in the face of such inhumane violence,” the statement read.

Other state-level politicians were outraged by the remark. The state’s interior minister Peter Caffier (of the Christian Democrats) accused the AfD of seeking to introduce “sharia methods.”

Weißig is not the first AfD politician to call for perceived troublemakers to be shot.

In January 2016, in a Facebook exchange that received international attention, deputy AfD leader and MEP Beatrix von Storch said German authorities should be allowed to use firearms against refugees illegally crossing the country’s borders, including against women and children.

Von Storch’s comments were later backed by AfD leader Frauke Petry, who said officers should “use firearms if necessary,” adding that “no policeman wants to fire on a refugee and I don’t want that either,” but that police “must stop refugees entering German soil.”

Source: http://www.politico.eu/article/hamburg-germany-far-right-german-politician-suggests-g20-rioters-should-have-been-shot/