Germany: Jews urge lawmakers to ban NPD

Key Jewish group urges politicians to outlaw far-right National Democratic Party, calls for Germany to 'wake up.' However interior minister warns banning party 'not as easy' as some might think

Reuters|Published: 04.16.08 , 18:23

Germany's main Jewish lobby group has urged politicians considering a bid to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) to "wake up" to the threat to German democracy.

The Central Council of Jews says the growing respectability of the NPD is fuelling right-wing radicalism more than 60 years after World War Two and the Holocaust.

"Politicians must wake up at last," Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of the council, told Reuters.

"We need a signal to make clear the NPD is trying to destroy Germany and its democratic principles."

Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution says the NPD is racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist and that its statements prove its inspiration comes from the Nazis.

The NPD has about 7,000 members and has seats in two regional state parliaments, both in the former communist East.

NPD officials have praised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Last year NPD leader Udo Voigt said Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, who died in 1987, should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

At a three-day meeting in Bad Saarow, starting on Wednesday, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and ministers from Germany's 16 states will discuss a possible second attempt to outlaw the NPD after a first bid failed in 2003.

The Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), have been pushing for a ban, but many CDU lawmakers say there is insufficient proof of illegal activity.

"Banning the party is not as easy as the SPD thinks. The hurdles are very high," Schaeuble said this month.

Political funding

Last year, state ministers agreed to try to cut off funding for far-right organisations. As a legitimate political party, the NPD gets over $1.6 million in public funding per year.

The government has also boosted funding for education and social projects to tackle the roots of right-wing radicalism.

The previous attempt to ban the NPD failed as prosecution witnesses had worked as informants for intelligence agencies.

But advocates of a ban say the NPD's public statements prove it is hostile to democracy and give sufficient legal grounds.

The party has described the German constitution as a "diktat of the victorious Western powers".

In January, NPD General-Secretary Peter Marx said Germany should remain the land of Germans so future generations were not squeezed into reservations by immigration, as Native Americans have been.

Kramer argues the NPD is the "tip of the iceberg" of a right-wing movement including perpetrators of racist crimes.

"The fact that the NPD is a legal party that has been voted into parliaments gives legitimacy to its beliefs and respectability to its prejudices," said Kramer.

A series of racist and anti-Semitic crimes - including an attack on eight Indians that grabbed headlines around the world last year - have heightened worries about Germany's far right.

Latest figures show far-right crime rose 15 percent in 2006.

Opponents of a ban say it would not solve the underlying problem and that most young neo-Nazis are not in the NPD anyway.

The NPD says it is being treated unfairly, and is planning to protest in Bad Saarow against the attempt to ban it.

"The NPD is excluded from the media. Members are hounded and banned from hotels and their bank accounts are terminated. There is a consensus on the discriminatory treatment of the NPD," it said in a statement.