AfD fails in Görlitz with asylum application

GORLITZ. The Görlitz district council has rejected an asylum application by the AfD by a majority. Only politicians from their own ranks voted in favor of not opening any more reception facilities in the district.

There were 24 yes votes for the issue, 38 district councilors voted no, five abstained. The AfD is represented in Görlitz with 27 seats, the CDU with 23. The party led by Tino Chrupalla had previously asked the Christian Democrats to approve the application.

“In Saxony, several resolutions have already been passed against new or expanded asylum seeker locations, in which the CDU helped the applications made by the AfD to be successful,” said Saxon AfD head Jörg Urban before the vote, according to Radio Lausitz. In the end, however, the CDU did not go along with it.

150 locals and 150 asylum seekers in a village

The background to the debate is a planned asylum home in the small town of Rosenthal, near the Polish border. Soon 150 young men from Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Iraq will be housed there. As many asylum seekers as locals would then live in the 150-strong village.

Chrupalla, who is a member of the Görlitz district council and a directly elected member of the Bundestag, had appealed to the district councils to approve the application against the further opening of reception facilities. The district itself cannot decide that, so the district should come to an agreement with the federal government and the Saxon state government, the AfD boss demanded.

AfD boss Chrupalla sees social peace in danger

“We don’t want to take in any more refugees,” he said during the session, to thunderous applause from the 100 attendees who had been admitted to the debate. The “social peace in the region” is in danger.

The Greens parliamentary group leader Franziska Schubert, on the other hand, had warned of “extreme right forces” such as Pegida or the Free Saxons. “People’s fears are being played with – and the agitators are not concerned with finding objective solutions,” she told the dpa news agency. (quote)