Thousands take to Berlin streets to block neo-Nazi march

news essentials - 22:09 01/05/2010
In an unprecedented show of opposition to the far right, thousands of Berlin residents took to the streets on Sunday to prevent neo-Nazi groups from marching in the city.Extreme right-wing activists had secured authorization to parade through Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district as a counter-demonstration to left-wing May Day celebrations.Instead they encountered tens of thousands of demonstrators, many sitting in the road to block their route, with thousands of police deployed to keep the two groups from clashing.A police spokesman said city authorities had never encountered an event like Sunday's.A few hundred Nazi sympathizers, many with shaved heads and carrying flags adorned with nationalist symbols, were in the end forced to confine their protest to a parking lot on the outskirts of the district.At the protest site, a succession of speakers took the podium to denounce global capitalism and immigration."Thousands of immigrants have stolen German jobs and created poverty and deprivation," one speaker said.But their words were in large part drowned out by locals, who erected loudspeakers in windows overlooking the site to pump out loud music ? including traditional left-wing protest songs and even some Jewish klezmer tunes.Others hung anti-Nazi banners from balconies surrounding the car park.Some 250 far-right demonstrators were arrested for taking part in unauthorized protests, police said.