By DPA
Berlin : Calls to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) have resurfaced in Germany, following the mob attack which left eight Indians injured at a town festival.
The leader of the co-ruling Social Democrats (SPD), Kurt Beck, spoke out in favour of such a ban, but other political leaders and the interior ministry voiced scepticism.
The NPD, an anti-immigrant party that has close links to neo-Nazis, is represented in parliaments of two states in the former communist East Germany, which have seen disproportionate rates of violence against foreigners since German reunification in 1990.
One of the states is Saxony, where the Indians were attacked and chased through the town of Muegeln by a mob of about 50 Germans, following a local festival on Aug 18.
Although the NPD was not specifically blamed for the attacks, the party and other extreme-right groups are known to be active in the state and other parts of eastern Germany.
The party has been branded as an ideological breeding ground for neo-Nazi aggression, and Germany’s domestic security agency says it foments racist violence. It is also considered anti-Semitic.
A petition by chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government to ban the NPD faltered in 2003 after the Federal Constitutional Court refused to grant a main hearing in the case because the government had infiltrated the party with informants in high places.
The interior ministry said Friday that although the party met all the requirements to be outlawed, the intelligence service would have to drop surveillance of it if a new attempt were to be made to ban it. The ministry did not want to see this happen, a spokesman said.
Hans-Peter Ulh, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said he would be happy to see the party banned.
“But I fear that such an attempt would fail and that would be a disaster,” he said.
Greens Party deputy Hans-Christian Stroebele said the previous attempt to ban the NPD ended in a propaganda victory for the party, and he feared the same could happen if a new attempt was made.
Some critics have blamed inactivity by the major political parties for the spread of right-wing activity in the eastern states, where unemployment and dissatisfaction is much higher than in the west.
But the latest violence has prodded the government into action. Family Affairs Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced increased assistance to projects aimed at combating right-wing extremism.
“We don’t want to leave the field open to right-wing extremists,” she said Friday after a two-day cabinet conclave in the village of Meseberg, 70 km north of Berlin.
During campaigning before their election to the state parliament in Mecklenburg West-Pomerania last September, NPD activists set up youth clubs in neglected rural areas and distributed 15,000 CDs with songs by right-wing rock bands in a bid to woo young voters.
The state’s Social Democratic Premier, Harald Ringstorff, described the NPD candidates as “wolves in sheep’s clothing”.
The party’s leader in the state, Udo Pastoers, last week caused uproar when he spoke of the party’s “divine right” to power, at a rally marking anniversary of the death of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.
NPD national leader Udo Voight is under investigation for incitement to racial hatred after proposing that war criminal Hess be posthumously nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Founded in 1964, the NPD had its heyday in the late 60s when it was represented in seven state parliaments and narrowly missed clearing the five percent threshold for representation in the Bundestag, the national parliament.
On a national level, the NPD plays an insignificant role. It won only 1.6 percent of the vote in the last general election in 2005. Its current membership is put at around 6,000.
A survey conducted by the forsa research institute this week showed that only two percent of the electorate would vote for the NPD. But the poll also showed that voter potential for the NPD and other extreme right parties such as the DVU or Republicans was 13 percent.