By DPA
Mittweida (Germany) : A leading German conservative politician defended Saturday the town where eight men from India were beaten up and chased last month during a street festival.
The violence in the town to Muegeln, eastern Germany, had diplomatic repercussions, with Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar voicing concern. She sent a diplomat to Muegeln and told a top German official to ensure there was no repetition.
“I find it intolerable that an entire town, an entire district was put under a stigma,” Georg Milbradt, premier of Saxony state, told a meeting of Christian Democratic (CDU) supporters Saturday in Mittweida, another town.
“There wasn’t a pursuit in Muegeln, it was a pursuit of Muegeln,” said the premier, referring to world-wide news reports at the time, later corrected, that the Indians were run down by the mob through the streets of the town.
A police inquiry later found that a brawl erupted on a dance floor between the Indians and German men at the Aug 18 festival.
The Indians ran from the tent to take refuge in an Indian-owned snack bar on the opposite side of the same street. Up to 50 yelling Germans tried to break down the doors until the police arrived and made arrests.
Two policemen and 12 Indians were wounded in the violence, suffering bruises, black eyes and cuts that needed stitches.
Milbradt, whose state has a strong concentration of neo-Nazis, described German media coverage of the Muegeln incident as “superficial” and “biased”.
The police have opened an inquiry against 12 Germans, aged 17 to 35, and one Indian man, aged 41, for their role in the clash. The Indian is suspected of heating up the drunken brawl by slashing a man with a broken bottle.