A regional leader of Germany’s right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party remains unmoved and has reiterated his ‘Germany for Germans’ call, previously leaked from a party chat, local media report.
Andre Poggenburg had shared his stance in a WhatsApp group chat with around 200 members while on his way to a Bundestag election campaign meeting, Die Welt reported.
After the conversation had been leaked to German media, the politician stood his ground.
“Of course, a country should 'belong' to those who have lived there for decades, in many generations,” Poggenburg wrote in an opinion piece cited by a number of German media.
“I did indeed make the statement ‘Germany for Germans,’ also multiple times in public, and I wholeheartedly stand by this wording,” he added.
Furthermore, the politician advocated “extension of external borders” to curb migration, later clarifying that he meant the “actual working EU borders.”
Having called the union’s frontiers “barely existing,” he suggested introducing some “training courses on national defense,” in an apparent effort to prevent refugees from reaching the continent.
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With some 1.3 million migrants and asylum-seekers streaming into Germany since the start of 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is seeking a fourth term in Bundestag elections this September, has been widely criticized for her so-called ’open door' migration policy not only in Germany, but also across the EU.