Alliance of civil society groups call on German government to push for ban of far-right AfD party

(17 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Berlin, Germany - 17 June 2024
1. Banners reading (German) “AfD ban now”
2. Wide of press conference
3. Jens-Christian Wagner speaking
4. SOUNDBITE (German) Jens-Christian Wagner, Director of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial:
“The party, i.e. the AfD and its officials and functionaries, represent positions against human dignity. They represent unconstitutional positions that contradict the Basic Law. And what's more, they repeatedly make ideological and terminological use of the programmes and practices of historical National Socialism."
5. Wide of press conference
6. SOUNDBITE (German) Jens-Christian Wagner, Director of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial:
"The fact that the Nazis were able to come to power at all was due to the fact that the Weimar Republic allowed them to abuse democracy in order to bring down democracy according to their own rules. And that is why the second lesson to be learnt from the Nazi era is that anti-constitutional parties must be deprived of the opportunity to use the means of democracy to abolish it."
7. Wagner speaking
8. Sign reading (German) “Democracy”
9. SOUNDBITE (German) Julia Dück, Campaign “AfD Ban Now”:
"And time is running out. We don't have time, because our society is at a turning point. We are at a turning point that could tip authoritarian. Once the AfD has reached a position where it can translate its inhuman goals into state policy, it will no longer be so easy to turn it around. In other words, time is pressing. That means we have to act now. And that is why we must intervene now."
10. Banner reading (German) “Defend Human Dignity”
11. Mid press conference
12. SOUNDBITE (German) Julia Dück, Campaign “AfD Ban Now”:
"The warnings, demonstrations and actions against the AfD have not helped so far. That's why we need an AfD ban procedure that hinders and stops this party. As an alliance, we have come together to do just that. We want to increase the pressure so that this banning procedure is finally initiated. We are calling on the representatives of the Bundestag, Bundesrat and Federal Government to initiate this ban procedure."
13. Press conference
14. Close of sign reading (German) “AfD ban now”
STORYLINE:
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) repeats the terminology of Nazis, German historian Jens-Christian Wagner said on Monday during a press conference calling for a ban on far-right party.
“The party, i.e. the AfD and its officials and functionaries, represent positions against human dignity" said Wagner, who is also the director of the Buchenwald Memorial.
"They repeatedly make ideological and terminological use of the programmes and practices of historical National Socialism.", Wagner said and added that "a lesson to be learnt from the Nazi era is that anti-constitutional parties must be deprived of the opportunity to use the means of democracy to abolish it."
Germany's ruling Social Democrats recorded their worst post-World War II result in a nationwide vote with 13.9% while AfD finished second with around 15.9% in European Parliamentary elections in early June.
"The warnings, demonstrations and actions against the AfD have not helped so far. That's why we need an AfD ban procedure that hinders and stops this party.", Julia Dück, a campaigner from "AfD Ban Now", said.
AP Video by Pietro De Cristofaro
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