page_title: Pegida
section_title: Aftermath of Charlie Hebdo and rising tensions
hierarchical_section_title: Pegida / History / Aftermath of Charlie Hebdo and rising tensions
caption_attribution_description: English: Demonstrators yelling "Wir sind das Volk!" and do not want of being exterminated by others in their country.
context_page_description: Founded in Dresden in October 2014, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident, abbreviated Pegida, is a pan-European, anti-Islam, far-right political movement. German Pegida believe that Germany is being increasingly Islamicized and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.
  Pegida wants to curb immigration; it accuses authorities of failure to enforce immigration laws. Pegida has held many demonstrations; often there have been many public demonstrations against them as well. In 2015, Lutz Bachmann, the founder of Pegida, resigned from the movement after reportedly posing as Adolf Hitler and making racist statements on Facebook. He was later reinstated.
  Though nationalism is a central feature, Pegida offshoots have formed in various countries.
context_section_description: While the demonstration on 29 December 2014 was cancelled by the organizers, the movement continued to draw large numbers of participants in early January 2015. After the Charlie Hebdo shooting on 7 January 2015 in Paris, politicians (including ministers Thomas de Maizière and Heiko Maas) warned Pegida against misusing the attack on Charlie Hebdo for its own political ends. On Saturday 10 January 2015 some 35,000 anti-Pegida protesters gathered to mourn the victims of Paris, observing a minute's silence in front of the Frauenkirche.
  On 12 January 2015, Pegida organizers organized a rally of some 25,000 participants. Pegida's main organizer, Bachmann, declared the six central political objectives of Pegida, which include calls for selective immigration and the expulsion of religious extremists, the right and duty to integrate, and tighter internal security.
  On 15 January 2015, a young Eritrean immigrant, Khaled Idris Bahray, was found stabbed to death in his Dresden high-rise apartment. International media correspondents portrayed an "atmosphere of hatred and resentment" and published social media comments of Pegida sympathizers, who had expressed disdain for the dead Eritrean. Pegida's organizers rejected any possible connection. One week later, the police investigation led to the arrest and eventual conviction of one of the victim's Eritrean housemates.
  Dresden police did not permit the demonstration planned for 19 January 2015, due to a definite threat against one of Pegida's leadership members in form of an Arabic-language tweet labelling Pegida an "enemy of Islam". Pegida cancelled its 13th demonstration and stated in a post on its Facebook page that there was an explicit threat against a leadership member, and "his execution had been ordered by ISIS terrorists". Nonetheless, the Pegida demonstrations resumed in full force in the summer and autumn of 2015, with 10,000 demonstrators attending a rally in September.
caption: Pegida demonstration on 25 January 2015
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