Corner after attack: "Don't let me be silenced"

A little over a week after being attacked while putting up election posters in Dresden, SPD MEP Matthias Ecke made a combative statement in his first public appearance. "I will not be silenced," he said on Monday with a clearly visible red and blue shadow under his eye at an SPD Saxony event in Leipzig. The attack had hit him, but not knocked him down, not intimidated him. He had experienced his party as very combative.

On the late evening of May 3, four young attackers aged 17 and 18 had knocked Ecke down when he wanted to put up posters. He suffered broken bones in his face and had to undergo surgery.

Corner attributed the cause of the attack to the brutalization and organized disinhibition in society, behind which were actors from the extreme right. "It's the AfD in Saxony, it's the Free Saxons, it's other networks of the extreme right." They had created a climate in which political opponents were labeled as targets, in which people felt encouraged to take matters into their own hands.

Ecke praised the police's actions in his case. There had been a high level of investigative pressure and the perpetrators had been identified. "A lot really went very well," said the SPD politician. However, he knew that not all victims of right-wing violence felt the same way. He wished that every man and woman in such a situation could have the same experience. "I believe that the state must send a clear signal that it will not tolerate this form of violence," said Ecke. The punishment must follow on foot.

The group had also attacked a Green Party campaign worker a few minutes earlier. On Tuesday evening, just four days later, Green Party politician Yvonne Mosler was also insulted, threatened and spat at while putting up posters in Dresden. On the same evening, the Berlin Senator for Economic Affairs, Franziska Giffey (SPD), was also attacked by a man in a library in Berlin.