BERLIN: Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) members voted on Monday to expel one of the party’s state leaders who criticized a memorial in Berlin to victims of the Nazi Holocaust and said history should be rewritten to focus on German victims.
The AfD, which has lawmakers in 10 of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments, is expected to become the third-largest party in the Bundestag federal lower house after an election on Sept. 24.
Some senior AfD members say speeches like the one by Bjoern Hoecke, the party leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, damage its image and dent its chances in the election.
Two-thirds of regional AfD leaders voted during a conference call to start a legal process within the party to oust Hoecke, who said in a statement he regrets the party’s decision.
“I am convinced that I have breached neither the statute nor the rules of the party,” he said.
The party’s arbitration body in Thuringia will now have to decide whether to accept the motion, the party said in an e-mailed statement. Should that body reject the motion, the party could turn to its federal arbitration body for a final ruling.
Set up in 2013 by an economist to oppose euro zone bailouts, the AfD has since morphed into an anti-immigration party, drawing support from Germans angry about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to welcome refugees.
Party co-leader Joerg Meuthen, seen as representing a moderate wing in the party, said the Thuringia body was likely to reject the motion as Hoecke’s remarks in a speech did not provide sufficient grounds for expulsion.
Meuthen voted against the motion.
“The expulsion process faces major hurdles,” he told Reuters. “The resolution is excessive.”
The party said the decision was taken after a thorough examination of Hoecke’s speech to young AfD supporters in January in Dresden, home to the anti-Muslim PEGIDA movement.
Hoecke’s remarks that the Holocaust Memorial was a “monument of shame” were cheered by supporters and criticized by politicians, including some who called him a Nazi.
Germany’s AfD votes to expel lawmaker who criticized Holocaust memorial
Germany’s AfD votes to expel lawmaker who criticized Holocaust memorial
Islamist militants show ‘unprecedented coordination’ in Burkina Faso attacks
- The assaults were on several towns in the north and east including Bilanga, Titao, Tandjari and Nare
- The operations targeted military detachments, civilian convoys and market areas
DAKAR: Islamist militants have killed dozens of soldiers and civilians and overrun an army detachment over the past week in coordinated attacks across multiple regions of Burkina Faso, according to internal reports by two diplomatic missions reviewed by Reuters.
The operations by Al Qaeda–linked Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin show the JNIM is increasingly able to mobilize across large swathes of territory at one time, said the reports, which described a list of locations and places that came under assault.
Burkina Faso’s military rulers seized power in a coup in 2022, promising to improve security. But militants’ attacks have increased in the West African country as state forces battle an insurgency that has spread across the Sahel from Mali.
The assaults were on several towns in the north and east including Bilanga, Titao, Tandjari and Nare, the diplomatic reports said. One also described an assault in the eastern city of Fada N’Gourma and flagged another in the northern Ouahigouya area.
“These attacks, which were almost simultaneous and spread across several provinces, demonstrate unprecedented coordination between militants and the junta’s inability to contain the assaults,” said one of the internal reports, which put the death toll at more than 180.
The other gave no toll but said the incidents appeared coordinated and involved several hundred militants serving JNIM and possibly Daesh affiliates.
The operations targeted military detachments, civilian convoys and market areas, it said.
JNIM has said it killed scores of troops from the Burkinabe army in attacks in the past week, US-based SITE Intelligence Group said on Monday.
Burkina authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the assaults or casualty reports.
INJURED GHANAIANS RETURN HOME
In the northern town of Titao, militants attacked an army base and set a market on fire, the internal reports said.
Nearly 80 soldiers and pro-government militia members were killed, one said. The other said about 10 civilians were killed there.
The dead civilians included eight tomato traders, Ghana’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
SITE quoted a media unit for JNIM as saying the insurgents had seized military vehicles, guns and other possessions in the assaults. More than a decade of insurgencies in the Sahel has displaced millions and engendered economic collapse, with violence pushing further south toward West Africa’s coast.
JNIM claimed nearly 500 attacks in Burkina Faso in 2025 and nearly 300 in Mali, SITE’s director, Rita Katz, said in a social media post on LinkedIn.
