Far-right leader ejected from German state assembly

Schwerin, Germany — A far-right political leader was ejected from a sitting of the state assembly of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania state in Germany on Thursday after he railed against Jews immigrating to Germany.

The debate was halted after Udo Pastoers, who leads six members of the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party NPD in the parliament, called for an audit of the "true costs of immigration."

He then attacked "parasites" and criticised Jewish immigration.

The house speaker, Renate Holznagel, rebuked him. After another NPD deputy objected, she halted the debate and consulted with the other parties. She then told Pastoers he could not attend the rest of the day’s proceedings.

The NDP denies it is Nazi, but its nationalist, anti-foreigner message and its outreach to overtly neo-Nazi groups have made it a pariah for Germany’s mainstream parties.

The NPD had the previous day outraged the other parties by staying seated while the rest of the assembly in the northern coastal state stood for a moment of silence to express sorrow on the 75th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of Germany.

The NPD has no parliamentary seats at federal level and only sits in one other of Germany’s 16 state assemblies, in Saxony.

Mecklenburg-West Pomerania’s Interior Minister, Lorenz Caffier, told Pastoers Thursday that his behaviour the previous day formed grounds for questioning whether the NPD was democratic at all.

DPA with Expatica