BERLIN (AP) – Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck are taking part in a rally for tolerance and against growing anti-Islam protests in Germany.
The event organised by Muslim groups will take place this evening near Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
It is intended as a response to the growing anti-Islam protests that have been taking place weekly in the eastern city of Dresden.
Yesterday, some 25 000 people took part in a rally there organised by the group Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, or PEGIDA.
Merkel and Gauck have spoken out against PEGIDA, accusing it of seeking to divide German society and capitalising on people’s fears.
Germany has some four million Muslim residents, equivalent to about five per cent of the population of 80 million.