Pig with Merkel’s name found on mosque site
A dead pig with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's name smeared onto it was found on the building site of a mosque in Leipzig, police said.
|||Leipzig - A dead pig with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's name smeared onto it was found on the building site of a mosque in Leipzig, police said on Thursday.
An investigation has been launched into the matter and police said they are treating the act in the eastern German city as politically motivated.
The words “Mutti Merkel” were scrawled onto the carcass in red paint, police said.
“Mutti” is the German word for “mum” and is often used to refer to the German leader.
Merkel has come up against scorn from right-wing, Islamophobic groups over her decision to allow 1.1 million migrants - many of them refugees fleeing war in the Middle East - into the country in 2015.
This is not the first time that the site in Leipzig has been targeted. In 2013, the severed heads of five pigs were found there after weeks of protests against the construction of the mosque, which will have minarets.
Leipzig is situated in the eastern state of Saxony, where a recent spike in xenophobic attacks against migrants and refugees has prompted concern at a national level.
DPA