Far-right protest halted before Pride event in Germany
Attendees of Leipzig Pride hold up a heart symbol as they participate in the Pride rally. (Mim Schneider/ Christopher Street Day Leipzig)
Police in Germany have prevented a far-right protest taking place ahead of a Pride event.
Protestors set out to disrupt Leipzig Pride, part of Christopher Street Day, but where stopped by police as soon as they arrived at the city’s central train station on 17 August.
According to Euronews, they were suspected of using unconstitutional symbols – Nazi iconography, such as the swastika, is banned in Germany.
About 1,000 people were expected to take part in the protest.
A video shows some members of the crowd making the Nazi salute while others made the ‘OK’ hand sign; a finger-and-thumb gesture which has been adopted by the far-right as a symbol of white supremacy.
Some were heard shouting: “This is a Nazi neighbourhood.”
About 21,000 people celebrated the Pride event in the east Germany city and the event’s website thanked all participants for sending “a strong and peaceful signal in favour of diversity, equality and democracy, against hatred and hate speech”.
During the Third Reich, queer people were among the minorities targeted by the state. It’s estimated that between January 1933, when Adolf Hitler took power, and the end of WWII in 1945, up to 15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps where they were forced to wear a pink triangle on their striped uniforms. Some historians say up to 60 per cent of them died. Up to 90,000 were sent to “ordinary” prisons between 1937 and 1939.
Transgender people were outlawed and face being forcibly detransitioned or deported to the camps. Lesbians faced less discrimination and were not systemically persecuted although some were jailed as political prisoners. A law known as Paragraph 175 continued to criminalise gay men up until the 60s and remained on the statue books until the 1994.
Rights for the LGBTQ+ community continued to improve after that and earlier this year parliament passed a “self-determination law” making it easier for trans and non-binary people over the age of 14 to legally change their first name and gender.
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