BERLIN 30 Aug (ANA) - Protesters, some carrying far-right symbols, have attempted to storm the German parliament asthey broke through barriers and came close to entering the building before police used pepper spray to push them back.

 

The German government has sharply condemned their actions. Known as Reichstag, the parliament is the "symbolic centre of our democracy", Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told Bild newspaper.

 

"It is unacceptable to see extremists and trouble-makers use it for their own ends," he said.

 

"Nazi symbols as well as Reichsbürger and Imperial German flags have no place in the German Bundestag," said Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The far-right anti-Semitic Reichsbürger movement rejects the German state as a legal entity.

 

The Reichstag is highly symbolic in Germany. In 1933 during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, it was set on fire - an event the Nazis used as an excuse to enact wide-ranging emergency powers and suppress dissent.(ANA)

FA/ANA/30 August 2020------