Thousands of Germans belonging to human rights and anti-migrant groups recently gathered to protest against their government's policy on asylum seekers from Syria and other Middle East countries, saying the influx of refugees in their country could pose "great risks to the people and the nation."
Close to 9,000 members of the anti-immigrant PEGIDA movement marched in Dresden last week to denounce Chancellor Angela Merkel's plan to take in at least 800,000 mostly Muslim refugees from Syria and other Middle East countries.
They carried placards that read: "Merkel guilty of ethnocide against her own people'' and "Peace with Russia, get out of NATO,'' the Christian Post reported.
The previous week, around 7,500 protesters from Deutsche Welle also reportedly marched to protest against the German government policy. The marches were said to have been organised by the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident'' group.
"I am convinced that Mrs. Merkel's politics are against national interests. I'm very disturbed about that. It's almost treason. She has forgotten the oath she gave when she was sworn in," said PEGIDA supporter Max Haupt, according to EuroNews.
"[The asylum] won't stop with 1.5 or 2 million. It is an impossible task to integrate these people," Lutz Bachmann, PEGIDA's founder, told supporters during the demonstration, the report said.
The protesters maintained that the arrival of the refugees will endanger Germany as it would mean allowing in potential terrorists and risking the safety of German citizens.
A report by rt.com said the Islamic State has sent its militants to Europe through the influx of refugees and that members of this group are reportedly exploiting the refugee crisis by recruiting incoming asylum-seekers to join them.
However, German authorities reportedly said ''militants would not risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean as they could easily be caught smuggling weapons.''
Meanwhile, ARD television stirred controversy and was accused of provoking anti-Muslim sentiment when it used a fake image of Merkel wearing an Islamic headscarf as it criticised her for her government's open-door policy for asylum seekers, MailOnline said.
The television station defended the image in a statement, saying: "We consider this satirical form of representation to be in keeping with our journalistic values. We reject any insinuation that we would operate Islamophobic propaganda."
"There is no practical way to place a limit on coming refugees,'' Merkel earlier told ARD.
"There is no sense in my promising something that I cannot deliver," she continued. "We will manage. I am quite strongly convinced of that."
In September alone, Germany is said to have received 163,772 asylum seekers, with close to half of them coming from Syria, the Christian Post reported.
Germany has pledged to take in 800,000 refugees this year, higher than any other country responding to the refugee crisis in Syria following the civil war. Recently, New York Times reported that President Obama decided to raise the number of Syrian refugees to be admitted in America to 10,000 in the next fiscal year beginning this October from a fewer than 2,000 this year.
