PEGIDA faces 1000s of counter-protesters
A debut demo held by a Swedish branch of the German anti-Muslim group PEGIDA has been crushed by counter demonstrators.
Less than 100 PEGIDA protesters in the southern city of Malmö were overwhelmed by some 3,000 counter-protesters on Monday, police said.
The PEGIDA speakers and protesters were fenced in by police in an area surrounded by the counter-protesters.
The protesters were chanting slogans such as "No racists on our streets," and booed and waved banners and flags, making it impossible to hear the two PEGIDA speakers even though they were using megaphones.
PEGIDA's Swedish leader Henrik Roennquist told Swedish public television SVT that about 150 PEGIDA protesters attended the stationary demonstration.
PEGIDA is a German acronym which stands for the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.
Breakaways and offshoots
Efforts by offshoots of the movement to launch rallies in other European countries have led to similar results with marches in Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway.
On Sunday, people in northern Austria marched in their thousands to counter a tiny group of PEGIDA supporters from holding Islamophobia rallies the city of Linz.
A similar move was seen last week when more than 5,000 people showed up in the capital Vienna to stop PEGIDA’s debut rally in the city.
A debut rally held by the Direct Democracy for Europe, which broke away from PEGIDA, attracted just 500 protesters in the German city of Dresden on Sunday.
Led by Kathrin Oertel, a founding member of PEGIDA who quit last month, the group has similar demands including tighter control over immigration, further referendums over policies and increased police spending.
"The goals were the same (as those of PEGIDA) but the ways and means of achieving these goals are no longer the same," she told the crowd in Dresden.
SRK/NT/AS
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