NUREMBERG (EJP)--- Between 1,000 and 1,500 people heeded Sunday the call of Nuremberg’s Jewish community and the local chapter of the German Trade Union (DGB) to demonstrate against the policies of the Iranian government, prior to the FIFA World Cup match Iran against Mexico, in Nuremberg.
Protestors hailed from different political and social backgrounds.
They included human rights, Jewish, student and Iranian opposition groups – flooding Nuremberg’s Jakobs Platz with Israeli flags and anti-fascist banners.
Bavaria’s state minister of the interior, Guenther Beckstein, a member of the Christian Social Party, who was the key speaker, called Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “a criminal who must be kept out of Germany”.
Ahmadinejad has been censured by the German government for his nuclear energy programme, as well his anti-Israel and Holocaust denial rhetoric.
Beckstein pleaded for “more resolve in combating intolerance and anti-Semitism.”
He reminded demonstrators that “if the president comes to Germany, then it will only be his diplomatic passport that would protect him from arrest”.
“Let us show the entire world that Bavaria, Germany and the western nations are firmly anchored on the side of Israel and Jewish citizens,” he said.
Holocaust denial rhetoric is punishable in Germany with a fine and prison sentence.
The new leader of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, has called for Ahmadinejad’s arrest, should he come to Germany.
Claudia Roth, leader of the environmental green party, told demonstrators : “Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial is an insult to the memories of the victims of the Nazi genocide”.
Ulrich Maly, Social Democratic mayor of Bavaria’s second largest city, and host of the Iran-Mexico match called on greater international censuring of Ahmadinejad.
Michel Friedman, a former deputy president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and current television host, called the presence at the World Cup of Iran’s vice president, Mohammed Aliabadi “a scandal.’’
A source at Germany’s foreign ministry, wishing to remain unnamed, told EJP that Ahmadinejad would not be refused entry into Germany unilaterally.
EU travel ban needed
“Either the United Nations or the European Union must block travel by Iranian leaders. Germany would only follow suit, but it would not go out on a limb on its own… There are a lot of dictators out there.”
“Some, in Germany, have the status of “persona non grata”, such as the president of White Russia. But banning the White Russian president from entering the country was a decision reached by the European Union and not Germany alone,” the source said.
Protestors are particularly distraught at recent comments by Germany’s interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said that Ahmadinejad would be welcome if he were to come to Germany to attend the World Cup.
“He is welcome if he should choose to come to the World Cup… However, there would be a several important issues for us to discuss with him,” Schaueble said in a television news broadcast three weeks ago.
“What he said is regrettable but he cannot ban a visit by Ahmadinejad on his own,” the foreign ministry source told EJP.
The source went on to say that sending vice president Aliabadi was “Ahmadinejad’s way of continuing his provocation while at the same time attempting to save face.”
Although Aliabadi has not been recorded as having supported President Ahmadinejad’s belligerent rhetoric, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is studying ways of making any representative of the Iranian president liable for Holocaust denial.
However, the vice president has travelled to Germany as a private citizen and, as thus, has been granted no diplomatic protocol or added police protection – and would in theory not be liable for the policies of his president, the source said.
A small group of right wing demonstrators showed their support for Iran’s president, on the outskirts of Nuremberg – unnoticed by most people and news organisations.
Most seemed to have been allied with the far right wing German National Party (NPD).
German’s former interior minister, Otto Schily, had campaigned unsuccessfully to ban the NPD.
41,000 people watched Mexico beat Iran 3:1