New far right anti-immigrant sentiment hits German streets
DRESDEN, Germany — Ahmed, a 36-year-old Moroccan, hoped to find a better life in Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany. But these days in Dresden, he said, he is afraid to walk the streets.
This urban phoenix rebuilt from ashes after World War II is the center of a movement against immigrants — Muslims in particular — that has shocked much of the rest of Germany even as anti-immigration marches have spread to 10 cities nationwide. Downtown Dresden, Ahmed and other immigrants here say, has become a no-go zone for them on Monday nights, when the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West — or Pegida, in German — stages its weekly rallies.
