Thuringia: Hundreds at Christopher Street Day in Eisenach

Several hundred people celebrated Christopher Street Day in Eisenach on Saturday. 90 people attended a counter demonstration. There were no major incidents.

Hundreds of people took to the streets of Eisenach on Saturday for Christopher Street Day (CSD). The police said there were 650 participants in the parade, while the organizers gave a figure of 750. According to the police, 90 people attended a counter-demonstration from the right-wing spectrum. The event ended after about half an hour.

Demonstrations proceed peacefully

According to a police spokesman, there were no incidents. The two events will not directly coincide. The officers issued two expulsions and recorded one violation of the assembly law. The organizers spoke of “minor disturbances on the sidelines by Nazis.” The demonstration is peaceful and loud and shows that the CSD is political.

The Left Party’s state parliamentarian Katharina König-Preuss had previously condemned the intimidation and threats by Nazis and demanded that the security authorities protect them from extreme right-wing violence. According to her information, a militant neo-Nazi who belongs to the martial arts group Knockout 51 is one of the initiators of the counter-protest in Eisenach.

Right-wing protests against CSD

Recently, there have been repeated protests by right-wing groups against CSD events. In the run-up to the demonstration in Eisenach, civil society groups had also called for support for the parade and expressed concern about the right-wing counter-protest.

Christopher Street Day commemorates the uprisings of the queer community on Christopher Street in New York in 1969. It is about the equality of homosexual, transsexual, bisexual, queer and intersex people.

MDR (kah/cfr)/dpa