German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Tuesday that death threats to him and his family had become a regular feature of life.
The city of Lauterbach has faced growing hostility over government coronavirus restrictions since he took over the ministerial post last year.
What did the minister say?
Lauterbach, a trained epidemiologist, said he can no longer park his car outside his home in Cologne, and that he needs permanent personal security with him to get out.
“I continue to be threatened, and I also receive horrific death threats to my children,” he said. Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger Newspaper. “Unfortunately, I cannot go out in the evening without personal security.”
Lauterbach has been targeted repeatedly by opponents of his government’s coronavirus measures.
Earlier this year, investigators uncovered an anti-state group that was said to be planning to kidnap Lauterbach.
Warning that COVID remains a risk
Lauterbach warned last week that Germany was heading for another surge in COVID-19 infections and criticized the relaxation of quarantine rules in several German states.
Measures to tackle the pandemic in Germany are generally agreed upon at the national level, although individual states have a large degree of autonomy.
Past threats and violence
Death threats related to lockdown restrictions and vaccination rules have previously been sent to other German politicians including the premier of the eastern German state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer.
However, scientists and medics also became targets, including pioneering virologist Christian Drosten and Lothar Wheeler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s infectious disease control agency.
Germany has a history of violence against political figures, and recent years have seen politicians targeted by the far right.
The murder in 2019 of regional Christian Democratic (CDU) politician Walter Lübke led to the conviction of a 48-year-old neo-Nazi.
In 2015, CDU member Henriette Rieker was stabbed by a right-wing extremist during her successful campaign to become mayor of Cologne.
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rc/sms (AFP, dpa)
