AfD leader injured in arson attack in Germany

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla was injured during an arson attack on his car on Monday night. Enemies of Chrupalla set fire to his Volkswagen Caddy that was parked on his property in Görlitz, a town in eastern Germany not far from the Polish border.
 
When attempting to put the fire out, the AfD leader – who last November was nominated by Alexander Gauland to replace him as co-chairman – inhaled toxic fumes and had to be treated at the hospital for several hours for smoke poisoning, German weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit reports.

“Despite the sharpness of the political debate, it is a direct attack on my family. That exceeds all conceivable limits. This escalation must stop,” Chrupalla told German media.

When asked how was doing following the brazen attack, he replied: “Badly.”
Police spokeswoman Katharina Korch said that state police have started to investigate the arson attack as a possible “politically motivated act”.

Alexander Dierks, the Secretary General of the Saxony CDU,  condemned the attack on Twitter, saying: “Violence is never a means of political debate.”

He added there was never an excuse for such attacks.

In Germany, politicians from the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party are more frequently violently attacked than politicians from any other party.

Between October and December of 2019, 112 attacks on offices or facilities of parties represented in German parliament were recorded by the Federal Government. Of those 112 attacks, more than half (62) of the attacks were carried out against the AfD. According to the criminal police service, 58 of the attacks were motivated by leftists.

Furthermore, 87 of the 202 attacks on party representatives or members of a political party in Germany were carried out against the AfD, with 78 crimes seen as politically motivated by the police, according to the Federal Government’s figures.

Last December, Voice of Europe reported of left-wing extremists in Heilbronn, Germany threatening to murder Christina Baum, an AfD MP.

The month before that, Voice of Europe reported on numerous death threats that the son of an AfD politician in Berlin had received from three of his classmates in Berlin-Biesdorf.

Last August, an AfD party official in Krefeld, Germany had his car set ablaze by hooded assailants.

Source:
Voice Of Europe