Weidel calls for at least a five-year immigration ban

AfD leader Alice Weidel is calling for "an immediate stop to immigration and naturalization for at least five years". If the AfD were in government, the borders would be closed and controlled, she said at an election rally of the Saxon AfD in Bautzen a few days before the state elections in Saxony. After Solingen at the latest, she was "fed up" with "hollow phrases" and "stupid chatter".

In the suspected Islamist attack in Solingen, an attacker killed three people with a knife at a city festival on Friday evening and injured eight others. The suspected perpetrator is 26-year-old Syrian Issa Al H., who is in custody. The federal prosecutor's office is investigating him on charges including murder and suspected membership of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia.

Weidel painted a dark picture of the situation in Germany. There is an erosion of internal security and "knife crimes every day". The AfD wants to end the "loss of control" and the "failure of the state". A sustainable turnaround on migration and asylum is needed. Weigel also took issue with the coronavirus policy. Those responsible had lied, said the AfD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag. She threatened: "These people in charge should "ask for forgiveness on their knees". The AfD would hold them to account.

Weidel - like her co-chairman Tino Chrupalla before her - was confident of victory in the upcoming state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. "We need a second 1989," she said, referring to the fall of communism in the GDR. If the AfD is in government, there will be an end to "misguided politics". "We want to take responsibility."

Chrupalla also called for a change of course in energy policy with an energy mix of brown coal, nuclear power and Russian gas. The AfD wants a committee of inquiry in the Bundestag into the Ukrainian attack on the natural gas pipelines. At the same time, he swore the Saxon AfD state association, which is classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement, to a change of power. This would require a result of 35 percent plus X percent of the vote on Sunday.

However, the other parties currently represented in the state parliament have ruled out a coalition with the AfD, meaning that as things stand, the AfD does not have a realistic option for power.

According to Saxony's AfD leader Jörg Urban, the aim is to show the CDU the red card in the Free State. The CDU is not the solution to the problems, but their cause. The citizens have finally woken up and will no longer allow themselves to be lulled into a deep sleep. A fundamental political change of direction is needed. "The AFD no longer wants to be the opposition, we want to govern," Urban formulated the claim.

A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony on Sunday. The CDU and AfD have been neck-and-neck in the polls for weeks.