This Saturday, September 16, clashes broke out between opponents of the Eritrean regime, pro-government activists and the German police during an event organized by an Eritrean association in Stuttgart (Germany). A total of 228 people were arrested, according to a report released on Sunday.
A surprising brawl on German streets. Around a hundred opponents of the regime in Eritrea attacked German police officers and supporters of the African country’s government on Saturday evening at an event organized by a power-oriented Eritrean association in Stuttgart (Germany).
According to local police on Sunday, 228 people were arrested in the clashes, 26 police officers, four participants in the event and two opposition members were injured. In videos shared on social networks, groups of around ten people clashed with wooden slats, nails, metal rods, bottles and stones.
According to the authorities, about 80 to 90 participants gathered at the meeting of Eritrean associations, while about a hundred opponents were identified in this brawl. The latter refused to go to a demonstration site designated by the police before disrupting the demonstration organized by the Eritrean Association.
Almost 300 mobilized police forces were in a “buffer zone” of an “Eritrean conflict fought with massive violence” on the streets of Stuttgart, according to the city’s deputy police director, Carsten Höfle. “Neither the extent nor the intensity of the violence could be predicted,” he concluded.
A violent Eritrean festival in July
Last July, around twenty police officers were slightly injured on the sidelines of a controversial Eritrean music festival in Gießen, north of Frankfurt. This incident led to the arrest of around 130 people.
As a reminder, Eritrea officially became a state in May 1993, two years after breaking away from Ethiopian rule. Since then, the country has been led by Issaias Afeworki, the independence hero, who established a one-party regime without elections and in which all opposition is strictly suppressed.