Thousands walk with coffin of murdered Polish mayor

FILE PHOTO: Gdansk's Mayor Pawel Adamowicz speaks during the 27th Grand Finale of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity in Gdansk, Poland January 13, 2019. Agencja Gazeta/Bartosz Banka/File Photo via REUTERS

By Pawel Goraj

GDANSK, Poland (Reuters) – Carrying flags and candles in cold streets, thousands of Poles walked on Friday beside the coffin of Gdansk’s former mayor Pawel Adamowicz who was stabbed on stage at a charity event.

The murder of a liberal critic of the ruling party’s anti-immigrant policies highlighted the charged atmosphere in parts of eastern Europe where populist leaders have fanned nationalist sentiment.

A car drove Adamowicz’s corpse slowly through the Baltic coast city from the museum of the Solidarity movement that helped to bring down communism in Poland 30 years ago.

From there, it passed schools, monuments and other places significant in 53-year-old Adamowicz’s life, en route to the city’s main church, St Mary’s Basilica, for burial on Saturday.

The streets, in some places covered with thin snow, were blocked, as crowds paid tribute to one of Poland’s longest-serving mayors who ran the city since 1998 and beat the candidate of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in October.

“We all feel great emptiness after the mayor has gone, mostly because he left in such a way, such a town, such a moment. I think that a certain stage of history, of humanity, is over,” said mourner Ewa Wasinska-Stelter, 46, a teacher.

Adamowicz was attacked on stage during one of Poland’s biggest annual charity events and died the following day.

Polish authorities have arrested a 27-year-old former convict, named only as Stefan W., over the killing. Speaking on stage, the attacker accused the mayor’s former party of putting him in prison, where he said he was tortured.

He was freed last month after serving 5-1/2 years for attempted bank robbery.

Authorities have also detained at least 10 people in recent days over calls on social media to murder and other acts of aggression in the wake of Adamowicz’s death.

Critics blame Poland’s politicians for cranking up hate speech in public life.

Adamowicz was one of 11 Polish mayors targeted with fake death certificates by a far-right group called All-Polish Youth in 2017, after signing a declaration to welcome refugees in opposition to government policy.

Support for the conservative PiS fell to 30 percent in the wake of Adamowicz’s death, according to a poll conducted by Kantar Millward Brown for Gazeta Wyborcza daily, from 33 percent in November. The biggest opposition grouping Koalicja Obywatelska has 25 percent.

As well as encouraging migrants to seek refuge in Gdansk, Adamowicz was known for backing a campaign to defend rule of law against what activists consider efforts by the PiS to increase political control over the judiciary and other bodies.

(Writing by Marcin Goclowski; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

How a mother’s tough choice gave her son a potential U.S. asylum advantage

Catarina Miguel, aunt of Yaiser, who was separated from his mother at the U.S. Mexico border and is in detention, is interviewed in the room she has ready for him at her home West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., in this still image from video, taken August 10, 2018. REUTERS TV/Zach Fagenson

By Kristina Cooke and Reade Levinson

SAN FRANCISCO/WEST PALM BEACH (Reuters) – For two months in detention after being separated from her 14-year old son by U.S. border officials, Catalina Sales worried about how he was doing and when she would see him again.

On July 25, they were finally brought back together at a facility near El Paso, Texas. The reunion was happy but brief.

Sales, who entered the United States illegally on May 30, made a difficult choice: She refused to sign a paper agreeing that if she were deported, her son Yaiser would accompany her back to Guatemala. She wanted to give him the chance, she said, to pursue asylum in the United States even if she is sent back.

Because of that, she and her son were separated again after just two hours together, and he was sent back to the Florida children’s facility where he had previously been held.

The decision that kept them separated also gave her son a better chance of being allowed to stay in the U.S. legally, a Reuters analysis of data from the courts’ Executive Office for Immigration Review suggests.

FILE PHOTO: Immigrant children are led by staff in single file between tents at a detention facility next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S., June 18, 2018. Picture taken June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Immigrant children are led by staff in single file between tents at a detention facility next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S., June 18, 2018. Picture taken June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

More than 2,500 families were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border in the spring as part of a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal immigration that ended in June. By separating them from their parents, the government rendered the children “unaccompanied minors,” which conferred certain advantages on them under U.S. immigration law, including a different, more child-friendly asylum process not available to children never separated from their families.

Additionally, a network of immigration lawyers specializing in children often agree to represent unaccompanied minors for free. And should they fail at an initial hearing with an asylum officer, the children have the opportunity to present their claims anew before an immigration judge.

Overall, although this was not something Sales could have known when she made her decision, unaccompanied children from the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras win their immigration cases more than twice as often as others from those countries, Reuters’ analysis found. In the last three years, 40 percent of unaccompanied children from the countries were allowed to remain in the United States compared to 19 percent for others from the countries.

There is no record of how many separated parents have opted for their children to pursue separate asylum proceedings even if it meant leaving them behind. But at least six other reunited families with Sales in El Paso on July 25 made the same decision she did, according to Taylor Levy, legal coordinator at the Annunciation House in El Paso, which is working with the parents.

Both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Health and Human Services, which arranges care for children in immigration custody, declined to comment on the Sales’ case.

On Thursday, a San Diego federal judge said the form given to separated parents to sign did not constitute a legally valid waiver of their children’s asylum claims and ordered their deportations temporarily halted until the issue was resolved. The form “was not designed to advise parents of their childrens’ asylum rights, let alone to waive those rights,” wrote Judge Dana Sabraw in his order.

‘HE WANTS A BETTER LIFE’

After being reunified that day in El Paso, parents and children were loaded on a bus and asked to sign papers agreeing to be deported with their children. Those who refused to sign, including Sales, were led off the bus, according to interviews with four detainees and a court filing, leaving their children behind.

Sales said that after speaking to Yaiser for two hours on the bus, she realized she could not sign papers that might forfeit her son’s chance to remain in the United States and study instead of returning to Guatemala, where they were unsafe and Yaiser had fewer educational opportunities.

“He told me that he wanted to stay, that he didn’t want to go back, but that he wanted me to stay with him…. I felt sad,” Sales told Reuters by phone from the immigration detention facility where she is being held. “The simple truth is he wants a better life.”

Sales remains hopeful that both of them will eventually be granted asylum and allowed to stay in the United States. If her asylum claim is unsuccessful, she hopes her son’s will succeed, and that he can live with his aunt and uncle, who have applied to sponsor him.

In an interview with Reuters from the Florida facility where he is being housed, Yaiser said that he and the other re-separated children on the bus that day were sad when their parents were taken away again.

“We started crying because we couldn’t say goodbye after we’d only seen them for a short time.”

Two other fathers on the bus with Sales told Reuters they felt pressured by immigration officials to choose the option of being deported with their child.

“They told us … this was the only option,” said one of the fathers, who spoke on condition that he be identified only by his initials, S.T.

At a July 31 congressional hearing, ICE official Matthew Albence denied that officials were coercing people into agreeing to deportation.

Albence told Congress that many parents want their children to stay in the United States. “A great many of these individuals do not wish to have their child returned home with them,” he said. “The reason most of them have come in the first place is to get their children to the United States” and many have spent their life savings to do so, he said.

The government said 154 parents had decided against reunification as of August 16, according to a court filing. The filing doesn’t include the parents’ reasons.

‘IT WOULD BE SAFER’

Another father on the bus, identified in court documents only by his initials J.M., spoke to Reuters about his reason for not agreeing to be deported with his 16-year-old son.

“The problem with Honduras is that they recruit them for gangs, and I didn’t want that for him,” he told Reuters from detention. “Of course, I would have preferred to be with my son, but I made that choice for his well-being. I have to accept that.” His son was returned to the Casa Padre youth shelter in Brownsville, he said.

During their reunion on the bus, Yaiser told his mother he wanted to stay in the U.S. to study and make her proud, Sales said. But he also told her he hoped she could stay with him because “it would be safer.”

Yaiser’s attorney, Jan Peter Weiss, visited him at the Florida facility on Saturday. “He is very sad,” said Weiss. “He asked about his mother every other sentence. ‘Is my mother alright? What do you think is going to happen to her?’”

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, the law firm representing Sales, declined to comment for this story.

(Reporting by Reade Levinson in West Palm Beach and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Salvador Rodriguez in San Francisco and Tom Hals in Delaware; Editing by Sue Horton)

Sweden’s far-right eyes election gains as gang violence rises

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand at the scene of an explosion after what is believed to have been a robbery attempt on an ATM, in Genarp, southern Sweden March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency/File Photo

By Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A surge in gang violence has stirred anti-immigration sentiment before an election in Sweden, putting a far-right party on course for big gains in one of Europe’s most liberal countries.

Dozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.

In the latest bloodshed, three men were shot dead and three were wounded outside an internet cafe in the city of Malmo on June 18. A fourth man was shot dead days later and another man survived because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

With public calls growing for tougher policies on crime and immigration, support has risen for the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that wants to freeze immigration and to hold a referendum on Sweden’s membership of the European Union.

Their worried mainstream rivals have started moving to the right on crime and immigration to try to counter the Sweden Democrats’ threat in the Sept. 9 election. But so far, they are playing into the hands of the far-right.

“Right now they (mainstream parties) are competing over who can set out the most restrictive policies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose Green Party is part of a minority government led by the Social Democratic Party.

“It clearly benefits the Sweden Democrats.”

Opinion polls put the Sweden Democrats on about 20 percent support, up from the 13 percent of votes they secured in the 2014 election and the 5.7 percent which saw them enter parliament for the first time in 2010.

The Sweden Democrats’ rise on the back of anti-immigration sentiment mirrors gains for right-wing, populist and anti-establishment parties in other European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

Immigration has risen back up the political agenda since far-right parties entered coalition governments in Austria and Italy, and will be discussed at a summit in Brussels this week.

Though the Sweden Democrats are unlikely to win power, the growing popularity for a party opposed to the EU is a concern for Brussels although Swedes broadly support EU membership, polls show.

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

BACKLASH

Five years ago, Sweden saw itself as a “humanitarian superpower” that generously welcomed migrants, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

But as in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has been cracking under pressure from her coalition partners to tighten immigration curbs, Sweden’s government now faces a backlash over the scale of immigration.

About 400,000 people have sought asylum in the wealthy Scandinavian country of 10 million since 2012, and it took in 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015 alone. Some voters fear schools, hospitals and welfare services cannot cope, and Sweden’s reputation for tolerance and social equality is threatened.

The Sweden Democrats still trail the Social Democratic Party but has overtaken the main opposition Moderates in many polls. All mainstream parties have ruled out working with them.

But they could emerge from the election as kingmakers, and a strong election showing could force the next government to take their views into consideration when shaping policy.

Their policies include a total freeze on asylum seekers and accepting refugees only from Sweden’s neighbors in the future. They also want tougher penalties for crime and more powers for police, and say tax cuts and higher spending on welfare could be funded by cutting the immigration budget.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democratic party, has described the situation as “pretty fantastic”.

“We are dominating the debate even though no one will talk to us,” he told party members.

RUTHLESS CRIMINAL UNDERCLASS

There were 129 shootings in Stockholm in 2017. Nineteen people were killed in the attacks, almost twice as many as in 2016, according to official figures.

In Malmo, where about 45 percent of the 330,000 inhabitants have an immigrant background, police say three or four gangs are operating. Swedish media say nine people have been shot dead in the city this year after 21 in the previous two year-period.

A 2017 police report into Sweden’s most deprived areas pointed to a heavily armed and ruthless criminal underclass.

All the areas identified by police are socially deprived suburbs with large immigrant populations, places where poverty and long-term youth unemployment are big problems.

Among these is the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, where two men walked into a pizzeria packed with families in January and shot a man dead in what police said was a gang killing.

When it was built in the 1970s, Rinkeby was a symbol of modernity, part of what became known as Sweden’s Million Homes project to replace run-down inner-city slums with clean, well-planned suburbs with their own schools, shops and healthcare facilities.

With ninety-one percent of its 16,000 inhabitants born abroad or to parents born outside Sweden, only half of them working, the area is now synonymous with failed integration, unemployment and social exclusion.

Police say people in Rinkeby live in fear of a group known as the Death Patrol gang.

“A few individuals have kept an entire neighborhood terrified,” said Mohamed Nuur, 26, a local Social Democrat politician. Witnesses of the pizzeria shooting were afraid to testify against the suspects, he said.

Rinkeby was one of several suburbs in northern Stockholm hit by riots in 2013 which fueled debate about how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and the influx of immigrants, issues raised by urban violence in France in 2005 and Britain in 2011.

“RIGHT-WING PATH”

Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

The Sweden Democrats have succeeded in linking the two in the minds of many voters, even though official statistics show no correlation between overall levels of crime and immigration.

Sweden has one of the highest levels of lethal gun violence in Europe, World Health Organisation data showed. But while the number of foreign-born citizens has risen for decades, murder rates are roughly flat.

The government denies it has lost control but Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has not ruled out sending the military into problem areas.

Moving to the right, he has tried to deal with the threat posed by the Sweden Democrats by saying immigration – down to 26,000 in 2017 – should halve from last year’s level.

The government has also proposed tougher punishments for gun crimes and sexual assaults, wants to stop financial support for undocumented foreigners, put more of those whose identity is unclear in holding centers and accelerate repatriation of failed asylum seekers.

The Moderates have also toughened their stance on crime and immigration, promising a crackdown on welfare for asylum seekers and a ban on begging. Both main parties say Sweden will not return to liberal asylum rules suspended in 2015.

“Sweden is going down a more right-wing path,” said Nick Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University said. “It is almost impossible to avoid according some sort of influence to a party with around 20 percent of the vote.”

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Hungary approves ‘STOP Soros’ law, defying EU, rights groups

Two soldiers stand in front of the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, May 29, 2018. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

By Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s parliament on Wednesday approved a package of bills that criminalises some help given to illegal immigrants, defying the European Union and human rights groups and narrowing the scope for action by non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a vocal critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migrant policy and has led eastern European opposition to EU quotas that aimed to distribute asylum seekers around the bloc.

Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party tightened its grip on parliament in an April election fought on a fiercely anti-immigration platform that demonised U.S. billionaire George Soros and liberal NGOs he backs. Orban accuses Soros of encouraging mass immigration to undermine Europe, a charge Soros denies.

Under the new law, officially called “STOP Soros”, individuals or groups who help migrants not entitled to protection to submit requests for asylum or who help illegal migrants gain status to stay in Hungary will be liable to prison terms.

“The Hungarian people rightfully expects the government to use all means necessary to combat illegal immigration and the activities that aid it,” Interior Minister Sandor Pinter wrote in a justification attached to the draft legislation.

“The STOP Soros package of bills serves that goal, making the organisation of illegal immigration a criminal offence. We want to use the bills to stop Hungary from becoming a country of immigrants,” he said.

Parliament, where Fidesz has a two-thirds majority, also passed on Wednesday a constitutional amendment to state that an “alien population” cannot be settled in Hungary – a swipe at Brussels over its quota plan.

TOUGH STANCE IS VOTE-WINNER

Immigration has become a major concern for voters across the European Union, helping to propel anti-migrant populists to power in Italy and Austria and threatening to fracture Merkel’s three-month-old coalition in Germany.

Orban has drummed up support for his tough measures by exploiting Hungarians’ memories of the large numbers of mostly Muslim migrants fleeing conflicts in the Middle East who surged into the country in the summer of 2015.

The vast majority of them moved on to wealthier western European countries, but Orban has branded the migrants a threat to Europe’s Christian civilisation and built a border fence along Hungary’s southern borders to deter more from coming.

Hungarian statistics show 3,555 refugees living in Hungary, a country of 10 million, as of April. Only 342 people were registered as asylum seekers in the first four months of this year, mostly from the Middle East, and 279 were approved.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group that often represents migrants, said on Wednesday the narrowing definition of who counts as a refugee essentially means nobody entering Hungary by land would be entitled to such treatment.

“Instead of giving protection against persecution, the Hungarian government has decided to join the ranks of the persecutors,” Helsinki Committee Co-Chair Marta Pardavi said.

The Orban government expects possible legal action by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, over the new law.

Two leading European rights bodies, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have criticised Hungary’s new law as “arbitrary” and vague and said it contravenes European law.

The Venice Commission, an expert body at the Council of Europe, had asked Hungary to refrain from approving the new law until a report it co-authored with the OSCE is published.

Orban has also tightened state control over the media, major business sectors and the courts since taking power in 2010.

In other constitutional changes approved on Wednesday, parliament agreed to set up a new judicial branch for administrative cases that critics say may increase political influence over judges. Another change narrowed the right to free expression and assembly.

(Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Gareth Jones)

‘America First’ protesters face off with opponents at California beach rally

People protest during an America First rally in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., August 20, 2017. REUTERS/Sand

By Olga Grigoryants

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (Reuters) – Anti-immigration demonstrators faced off against a much bigger crowd of counter-protesters in the Southern California town of Laguna Beach on Sunday, as police kept the opposing sides apart.

Around 2,500 people in total showed up for what became a raucous shouting match but did not descend into the kind of violence seen at this month’s clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one person was killed.

A demonstrator faces off with a counter-protester during an America First rally in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., August 20, 2017.

A demonstrator faces off with a counter-protester during an America First rally in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., August 20, 2017. REUTERS/Sandy Huffaker

Police erected barricades along the oceanfront to deter car attacks like the one in Charlottesville which killed a woman when a suspected white nationalist drove into the crowd.

Dozens of anti-immigration protesters rallying behind President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “America First” were escorted by police through opposing demonstrators who chanted: “Shame” and “No white supremacy”.

Trump’s opponents blame him for boosting far-right sentiment, forcing the president to deny he tacitly supports racists.

“We are not a white supremacism movement but an ‘America First’ movement,” said Beverly Welch, 56, a health assistant protesting against illegal immigration. “We’re trying to save our country.”

Police later declared the remaining protesters an unlawful assembly and forced them to disperse. They made three arrests.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of people protested in Boston against a “free speech” rally featuring far-right speakers.

 

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

May Day rallies across U.S. to target Trump immigration policy

U.S. President Donald Trump appears on stage at a rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Labor unions and immigrant advocacy groups will lead May Day rallies in cities across the United States on Monday, with organizers expecting larger-than-usual turnouts to protest the immigration policies of President Donald Trump.

The demonstrations could be the largest by immigrants since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, activists say, and some immigrant-run businesses plan to shut down for some or all of the day to protest the administration’s crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.

“To me, it’s offensive the policies this president is trying to implement,” said Jaime Contreras, vice president of the Service Employees International Union’s 32BJ affiliate, which represents cleaners and other property service workers in 11 states.

“It’s a nation of immigrants, and separating immigrant families because of their immigration status, it goes against what we love about this wonderful country.”

May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, has typically been a quieter affair in the United States than in Europe, where it is a public holiday in many countries.

In New York City, immigrant-run convenience stores and taxi services in upper Manhattan will close during the morning rush hour between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., in a protest reminiscent of those staged on “A Day Without Immigrants.”

At lunchtime, fast-food workers will join elected officials at a rally outside a McDonald’s restaurant in midtown Manhattan, calling for more predictable work schedules.

In the early evening, organizers expect thousands of demonstrators to gather at a rally in Manhattan’s Foley Square for musical performances and speeches by union leaders and immigrants living in the country illegally.

In Los Angeles, organizers expect tens of thousands of people to gather in the morning at MacArthur Park before marching downtown to a rally before City Hall.

Heightened precautions were also in place in Seattle, where officials were on the lookout for incendiary devices and gun-carrying protesters after a January shooting outside a political event and an incident during May Day 2016 when a protester threw an unlit Molotov cocktail at police.

Some Trump supporters said they would also turn out on May Day. Activist Joey Gibson said he and other conservatives will travel to Seattle to defend against what he described as communist and anti-fascist groups who have in the past faced off with police in the evening, after the conclusion of the usually peaceful daytime marches.

“We’re going to go down there to help build courage for other people, especially conservatives,” Gibson said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York and Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Frank McGurty and Mary Milliken)

Police injured in protests against right-wing AfD party congress

Activists protest against Germany's anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AFD) before the AFD's party congress in Cologne, Germany, April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

COLOGNE, Germany (Reuters) – Two police officers were injured and a police car was set ablaze during protests in Cologne on Saturday, police said, as some 600 delegates of the deeply divided anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party met to discuss policy for September’s national elections.

AfD co-chief Frauke Petry suffered a crushing blow at the start of the congress when delegates voted down her motion calling for efforts to forge alliances with other parties in future rather than seeking to be a long-term opposition force. Her critics deny any split along these lines in the party.

Petry announced on Wednesday after a months-long power struggle that she would not lead the national election campaign of the party, a pariah in the German political landscape that has seen its poll numbers wane over the past few months. [nL8N1HR3UX]

A spokesman for the Cologne police said the situation in the city was “very dynamic” and “fairly aggressive” in some areas.

Over 4,000 police, many clad in riot gear and some on horseback, were braced for riots with as many 50,000 protesters expected, including about 1,000 hard left activists.

The spokesman said police stopped about 100 protesters early on Saturday for identity checks, but they were not detained.

Broadcaster n-tv showed a group of around 50 people clashing with police on horses, and a television correspondent said police used pepper spray against some of the demonstrators.

The AfD, which rails against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million migrants over the past two years, is polling between eight to 10 percent support ahead of September’s election.

That is enough to give the party seats in parliament for the first time, but well below peak support seen in late 2016.

In her opening speech, before which she received a standing ovation from some party members, Petry signaled she was willing to make compromises on her controversial motion for the party’s future strategy.

Petry has upset many within the party by introducing a motion in which she said the AfD should aim to join coalitions in future and govern, instead of being a “fundamental” opposition party that only made provocative statements.

But a majority of delegates voted around mid-day on Saturday against discussing her motion.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Markus Wacket in Berlin and Reuters TV, and Michelle Martin in Cologne; editing by Ralph Boulton)