“Sink! Sink! Sink!” shouts a crowd at a rally of the far-right Pegida movement in the east German city of Dresden. The video of the incident, which has been circling online, is now the subject of a police investigation, state prosecutors confirmed to The Local on Tuesday.
It appears the crowd's chant refers to refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean and comes after speaker Siegfried Däbritz raises the subject of Mission Lifeline, a German volunteer boat which had until recently been rescuing migrants at sea.
“I’m sure you’ve heard what’s happening in the Mediterranean with our all-time favourite smuggler organization…right?” says speaker Däbritz.
“Absaufen!” chant the crowd, which translates in English to “sink.” The chant is repeated seven times before Däbritz interrupts:
“No, no, don’t sink,” he says with a grin. “We need the ship to take them all back again.”
Bachmann and Däbritz are co-founder of the anti-Islam, anti-immigration movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West) which has held weekly rallies in Dresden and other German cities since 2014.
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