German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Wednesday denounced the far-right AfD’s call for mass “remigration,” calling it “ethnic cleansing by skin color and origin.”
His comments came in a heated parliamentary exchange with Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel, three days after the party scored a crushing election victory over Merz's center-right CDU in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
The chancellor took aim at AfD's demand for mass deportations of rejected asylum-seekers and people arriving via irregular channels.
"The word 'remigration' is nothing other than a synonym for ethnic cleansing," Merz said about the AfD's flagship policy.
"Remigration is nothing other than ethnic cleansing by skin color and origin," he added to howls of protest from AfD deputies in the Bundestag.
