Germany: clashes with the police on the sidelines of an Eritrean music festival

Twenty police officers were injured in Giessen (Germany) during various clashes with participants of a controversial Eritrean music festival, local police said on Saturday. Some “22 members of the intervention forces were injured, in particular by throwing stones”, deplored the police of the Land of Hesse on Twitter.

The police were subjected to stones and bottles being thrown at several places in the city. They responded using tear gas and a water cannon. Several videos posted on social networks show police leading charges against very mobile groups of demonstrators in the streets of this city of around 80,000 inhabitants. No details on possible arrests have been communicated at this stage.

About a thousand police officers have been mobilized since Friday in Giessen, north of Frankfurt, to secure this festival, which had already given rise to incidents last year. The municipality of Giessen also wanted to ban it, but the administrative justice gave the green light to its holding on Friday. Between 2,000 and 3,000 participants are expected at this festival organized until Sunday.

The Eritreafestival is controversial within the Eritrean community itself. Opponents accuse the organizers of being close to the authoritarian regime of this country in northeastern Africa. Eritrea officially became a state in May 1993, two years after breaking free from Ethiopian rule. Since then, the country has been led by Issaias Afeworki, hero of independence, who established a one-party system, without an election, where any opposition is severely repressed.