Right-wing protesters have staged marches in the eastern German city of Chemnitz – (DPA/AFP/File)
German police this weekend shut down a far-right rock concert in a small eastern town after hearing the crowd shouting the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil.”
The concert, which took place in Ostritz in the state of Saxony on Saturday, featured two bands from “the right-wing scene” and had drawn an audience of “several hundred”, Goerlitz police said in a statement.
Officers stationed outside intervene after hearing shouts of “Sieg Heil” (Hail Victory) coming from the at 11:20 pm (2220 GMT). The gig was brought to an end and the building was emptied shortly after 1:00 am.
Several witnesses also reported hearing the songs.
Federal authorities have opened an investigation, Goerlitz police added.
Under German law, using Nazi-era slogans or publicly displaying swastikas Nazi symbols is illegal.
The town of Ostritz, near the border with Poland, regularly hosts far-right concerts that are often controversial.
Saxony: a far-right German strongholdThorsten EBERDING (AFP)
Last April, hundreds of neo-Nazis gathered in the remote town for a festival timed to coincide with Hitler’s birthday.
Concern has grown in Germany that the rise of the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in recent years has emboldened the far-right and the neo-Nazi scene.
The AfD has been repeatedly accused of belittling the Holocaust and harboring anti-Semites.
The fatal stabbing of a German man in the city of asylum seekers in the city of Chemnitz in August, also in Saxony state, triggered far-right street protests at which some demonstrators performed the straight-armed Hitler salute.
Saxony state has become a hotspot for racist hate crimes and anger at the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers since 2015.
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