WATCH: Pegida March Sees Thousands Of Anti-Islam Protesters Take To German Streets

Around 20,000 marchers took to the streets of Dresden this week to protest against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plans to settle up to one million migrants in Germany this year. 

Somewhat underreported and underplayed by the German media, the PEGIDA march against Islamisation of Germany took place on Monday.

Die Welt reports:

Pegida CEO Lutz Bachmann announced to his followers the creation of a party that wanted to compete both at the local as well as at state and federal level. In Leipzig there came the same violent clashes between anti-Islam Legida, but also counter-demonstrators and police.

Already in the past few weeks, the number of demonstrators has increased in Dresden. The parades of “patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West” (Pegida) are every week in Dresden, after they had been only every two weeks previously, alternating with Leipzig and Chemnitz.

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Later, counter-protests saw firecrackers, and the police intervened using physical force with tear gas and batons. Finally, the Assembly Office of the City of Leipzig resolved the incident. According to estimates attended the Legida march, attended by some 500 people, was offset by some 1,000 counter-demonstrators.

According to police the counter-protest was not peaceful, but it resulted in a sit-in, and participants had thrown equipment on the road. A water cannon was used. It was, according to the spokesman, also partially used to resisting counter-demonstrators. Figures on arrests, dismissals and similar measures were not initially available.

Critics of Chancellor Merkel’s migration policy have noted that Germany’s social ills will continue to worsen with the implementation of a strategy that will see hundreds of thousands of migrants settled in German cities this year. Already, two German women have been evicted from their homes to make way for migrants. Mrs. Merkel’s rankings in German political polls continues to decline and her own coalition party’s figures have spoken out against her strategy.