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CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL is set to join a Muslim community rally later today to promote tolerance, condemn the jihadist attacks in Paris and send a rebuke to Germany’s growing anti-Islamic movement.
President Joachim Gauck will address the vigil starting at 5pm Irish time at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, organised by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany under the banner “Let’s be there for each other. Terror: not in our name!”
Merkel, to be joined by most of her cabinet at the event, has spoken out against the right-wing populist “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, or PEGIDA, and stressed that “Islam belongs to Germany”.
PEGIDA yesterday drew a record 25,000 marchers to its 12th weekly rally in Dresden, located in the former communist east Germany, its flag-waving members holding a minute’s silence for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week.
Their latest protest was met by some 100,000 counter-demonstrators nationwide, who accused PEGIDA of exploiting the French attacks by Islamist gunmen, and who voiced support for a multicultural German society.
Merkel yesterday thanked leaders of Germany’s four-million-strong Muslim community for quickly and clearly condemning the violence committed in the name of their faith in last week’s bloody attacks in Paris.
“Germany wants peaceful coexistence of Muslims and members of other religions” and Tuesday’s vigil would send “a very strong message”, she said at a joint press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
Merkel and Davutoglu had on Sunday joined French President Francois Hollande and other world leaders at a huge Paris solidarity rally in the wake of the massacre of 17 people at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, a subsequent hostage siege and a separate shooting.
’Islamophobia strengthens terrorists’
Announcing Tuesday’s vigil, the Muslim Council and the Turkish Community of Berlin said: “We Muslims in Germany condemn the despicable terror attacks in France in the strongest terms. We want to express our solidarity with the French victims”.
There is no justification in Islam for such acts.
With their vigil, they said, they “want to send a message for peace and tolerance, against hatred and violence and for a cosmopolitan Germany which respects and protects the freedom of expression and religion”.
The statement added, with a view to the new rise in xenophobia expressed on German streets, that “those who voice racist and Islamophobic slogans strengthen the agitators, arsonists and terrorists”.
A commentary on German news site Spiegel Online commended Merkel, who is known to often sit out tricky issues, for finding clear words against Islamophobia, even at the risk of losing voters at the fringes of her conservative party.
“The chancellor is not playing tactical games but in her New Year’s address placed herself at the forefront of the anti-PEGIDA movement,” said the commentary, after Merkel condemned the group’s leaders as having “prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts”.
She has shown a gratifying clear line against Islamophobia.
PEGIDA, launched in October, has grown to set new attendance records week after week and spawned smaller copycat groups nationwide, provoking much soul-searching in a country haunted by its history of Nazi terror and the Holocaust.
The protests have been fuelled by a sharp rise in refugees seeking political asylum in Germany, which has been scrambling to house the newcomers in converted schools, office blocks and container villages.
Germany last year received more than 180,000 asylum applications, a 57-percent spike from 2013, mostly from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia but also from several Balkan countries.
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Exactly what Dublin needs – people living in the city centre. Hope it goes ahead and quickly.
@Gerry Kelly: How long before it is packed full of illegal immigrants
@Gerry Kelly: quickly isn’t in the planning vocabulary.
@Thomas Sheridan: bet you were at that anti immigrant protest where EVERYONE was decked out in a tracksuit, ballaclava and the latest Nikies. Absolutely dirt
@Thomas Sheridan: not illegal
@Housing Hunger Games: I was nowhere near the protests.
I’m one of the silent majority that opposes all these economic migrants. Even Helen Mackente admits that 90% of immigrants are economic migrants. That would make them illegal in any normal country.
Most of the remaining 10% probably fall into the same category.
Historically, Ireland has always had plenty of traitors, stooges, and gombeens. Great to see this tradition kept alive.
@Thomas Sheridan: is this what they call students these days?
@Thomas Sheridan:
No Thomas, you are part of the 0.6% of people who voted for the far right in a general election only 5 months ago, which was less than half what they got in a nationwide election only a few months earlier.
But you need not worry, the 99.4% will continue to completely ignore you.
@Thomas Sheridan: illegal immigration in ireland is one of the lowest in europe. Which makes sense if you take a moment to think about it. How would anyone practically go about actually entering Ireland illegally? We’re an island.
@Thomas Sheridan: also to be mean and absolutely unhelpful, gosh i wish you guys were silent.
It’s a disgrace that it was vacant for so long. Development of vacant town and city centre properties all over the country would go a long way towards solving the housing crisis and improving our communities.
@Brendan O’Brien: hey hey, so your ban has been lifted? Welcome back to…..what is it you christened your accounts on trustpilot?….. Oh yeah, the KING of trolling
@Brendan O’Brien: Fully agree. But it needs a strategic plan, a mixture of carrot and stick. Renovating old buildings is prohibitively expensive. So a plan that puts pressure on owners to renovate (or demolish and rebuild)l, while providing an attractive incentive if they comply, might work. It’s worked elsewhere, so worth a try here.
@Fran Ken: Agreed. The economist David McWilliams has called for punitively high taxes on property owners who allow their town-centre properties to lie vacant and become derelict. Definitely worth a try.
@Brendan O’Brien: so why didnt you organise the development so, as it is so easy
@Brendan O’Brien: That’s only the stick. It won’t solve the problem. They will simply put their property on the market and no sane person will buy it. Then they can legitimately claim they tried. Thus incentives are also needed. We can learn from countries that made this work: Germany and Japan for example
@Brendan O’Brien: Dunno why we cant gentrify like the rest of Europe, put creatives in there for 2 years, then every bored banker will want in.
IPAS within two years.
@Dave Grant: Clown
@Anthony Curran: Yes you are
It’s actually for an IPAS centre I have heard
@Rian O’Callaghan: Yawn.
@Rian O’Callaghan: Well, you could always check on the CoCo’s online planning page.
@Rian O’Callaghan: hearing voices again.
@Rian O’Callaghan: Nah, a new dole office for you to collect your benefits I was told.
@Rian O’Callaghan: where did you hear that? Arbour Hill?
@Brendan O’Brien: Go to sleep BOB
@Athena: Yep 100% IPAS centre so
@Geraldine Donoghue: Are you get help with that so kid
@Fergus O’Donnell: Contractors working on it.
@Tony: Say you live in those places personally never in one once in my life. You on the other hand.
@Fergus O’Donnell: He heard it on Headbanger-gram along with a lot of other fake news for the ignorant bigots
@Hibernicus: Thanks for telling everyone you support the flood into the country of sub human refugees are you one of them?
Tick. Next. Now can the same be done for the museum of propaganda sitting at Montrose, D4.
Hopefully it gets going asap. We’re all sick and tired looking at derelict buildings lying idle for decades.
Its for rich international students/trust fund kids, those places arent affordable for most Irish students
@colm: like it or not international students fees keep Irish universities solvent; otherwise unis would be a greater burden on the Irish taxpayer
I thought housing the general public would be more important than housing students. Such a prime location. It obviously makes more money housing students. Apparently, some countries have a huge void regarding English language teachers.
@Shane Gallagher: students don’t form part of the general public? Do they suddenly morph when they graduate?
@JoeJoe Kilbride: The apartments are for students only Joe, the non student general public are not given any consideration. Deals have been made, with profit being the main reason, of course. I believe homeless families should be accommodated before students.
@Shane Gallagher: how about students with families, mature students or homeless students. Do these not deserve to be accommodated?
@Shane Gallagher: students living in accommodation means they don’t take over the rental market and leave space for the rest of everyone. More space is always better for everyone.
Only for illegal immigrants. Zero chance any Irish will be housed there.
@Ichabod Crane: Clown
@Anthony Curran: You certainly are
@Ichabod Crane: lots of international students housed in similar developments in the Liberties, North Quays and Smithfield. Do you object to these too?
@Ichabod Crane: Source?
Is this news or an advertisement for future residents.
@Phillip Smyth: a lot of death notices and advertisements issued from here in the past.
Stunning building, classic Irish it’s laid useless for so long! Education is big business so a no brainer.
Wait till the nimbys find out
But surely our left-wing student bodies should volunteer these flats for the homeless?? after all there is a crisis isn’t there?
@Paul: Insert rolling eye emoji here.
King gay Brenny back to make sure comments he doesn’t like are deleted
@John: He really is a dreg to society
@Rian O’Callaghan: agreed
I suppose it’s all down to making money at the end of the day, the top “priority”.
@Shane Gallagher: that’s true. Our current economic system and the biggest political question anyone who wants to do good has to answer is “how do i make doing good profitable?”
Personally I find it exhausting.
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