The standoff in the city of Erfurt, Thuringia state, comes as the opposition Alternative for Germany party is soaring in national opinion polls ahead of all other parties.Inside the conference hall from Saturday, AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla will seek to be reelected at the helm of the anti-immigration party.Outside on the streets, up to 50,000 demonstrators from all over Germany are expected to stage rallies and sit-in blockades meant to prevent AfD delegates from even reaching the venue.
Police patrol the venue in Erfurt where the AfD plan to hold their party congress on July 4 and 5 © RALF HIRSCHBERGER / AFP
Up to 2,500 of the protesters are expected to come prepared for violence, according to internal police documents obtained by news weekly Der Spiegel.The AfD's rapid rise has unnerved many Germans, who feel they have a special duty to fight far-right politics given Germany's dark Nazi past.Some have seen a deliberate provocation in the AfD holding its Erfurt conference on the 100th anniversary of a Nazi conference in nearby Weimar, a charge the AfD denies."This is an extremely dangerous party," Noa Sander, spokesperson for the anti-AfD "Resistance" protest alliance, told AFP ahead of the conference in Erfurt, a city of about 220,000 people. "The AfD wants mass deportations and ethnic cleansing," Sander charged in reference to the party's "remigration" demands.
