Amnesty International, Seebrücke and other organisations called for the rally under the slogan “Firewall instead of arson”.
Hundreds of people have attended a rally in front of the centre-right CDU party’s headquarters in Berlin in protest against the passing of a stricter migration policy which would seek to turn back many more migrants at Germany’s borders.
The new policy was put forward by the CDU leader’s Friedrich Merz and has drawn criticism as it was only able to pass with the backing of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Merz has put migration in the spotlight following a knife attack a week ago by a rejected Afghan asylum-seeker who killed a man and a 2-year-old boy.
The opposition leader presented two non-binding motions in parliament calling for heightened security measures and the closure of German land borders to irregular migration.
The motion favouring more rejections of asylum seekers on Germany’s borders passed by 348 votes to 345, with 10 abstentions, after a combination of opposition parties, including AfD, said they would back it.
Far-right lawmakers applauded the result, while the parliamentary leader of Scholz’s party, Rolf Mützenich, said Merz’s Union bloc had “broken out of the political centre.”
A second CDU-CSU motion with comprehensive reform proposals for a restrictive migration policy and additional powers for the security authorities was rejected by a majority of votes.
The backing of Merz’s proposals by the far-right has raised political tensions in Germany, as the CDU has previously said it intends to keep up a so-called ‘firewall’ regarding cooperation with the AfD.
“We are shocked because the fact that the CDU deliberately pushed a motion through the Bundestag with votes from the AfD is a breach of taboo. This is the start of a crumbling of the firewall that is supposed to protect us from living with fascism and authoritarianism in Germany again,” says Wiebke Judith, a spokeswoman for legal policy at ProAsyl – Germany’s biggest pro-immigration advocacy organisation.
Speaking in the German Parliament before the vote, Merz defended his policy and the support it drew from the AfD, saying: “A right decision does not become wrong because the wrong people agree. It remains right. It remains right.”
The vote comes just weeks before Germany heads to the polls to elect a new parliament, after Scholz’s three-party governing coalition collapsed.
Polls show Merz’s mainstream centre-right Union in the lead with around 30% support, while the AfD is second with about 20%, and Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats and their remaining coalition partners, the Greens, are further back.
