Police ban right-wing protest over mosque

Published on Saturday 20 September 2008 19:41

GERMAN police yesterday banned a right-wing nationalist group from staging a rally against a mosque in Cologne.

Police spokesman Burkhard Rick said the rally was cancelled because of the security risk posed to officers and other citizens.

The Pro-Cologne group had hoped to protest against plans to build a large mosque in the city's heavily immigrant Ehrenfeld district.

Rick says 3,000 officers were stationed in Cologne to maintain peace between two groups. Just 30 Pro-Cologne supporters had gathered at the site of the planned rally by mid-day yesterday but more than 5,000 counter demonstrators had gathered outside Cologne's famous cathedral for a peaceful counter-rally.

The demonstration was organised as part of a three-day conference decrying what protestors call the city's "Islamification".

Opening events on Friday were severely hampered when hundreds of largely peaceful protesters managed to prevent the group's leaders from holding a news conference in a municipal building.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's appointee for immigration affairs, Maria Boehmer, sharply condemned the nationalist gathering saying "there is no place" in Germany for "far-right groups that pose as grass roots movements, but aim only to discriminate against minorities".