World Bulletin / News Desk

Politicians across Germany’s political spectrum have condemned the leader of the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party after she was reported to have compared societies including migrants to compost heaps.

Frauke Petry, whose party has made big regional gains this year and is expected to win federal parliamentary seats in 2017, made the comments in a speech in Stuttgart on Monday, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

Taking a stab at the idea that migrants made societies more diverse, she said: “What should we make of the campaign ‘Germany is colourful’? A compost heap is colourful, too,” according to the report.

No one at Petry’s office was available to comment.

Conservatives, Social Democrats and Greens – whose parties have all been shaken by the AfD’s rise – united to condemn the comments.

“The business model of these people is to scare people,” Thomas Strobl, the interior minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg and a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, told FAZ, calling the comments “revolting”.

“Frau Petry’s verbal baiting has reached a new level. People are systematically demeaned and played off against each other,” said Leni Breymaier, a Social Democrat.

source: The Guardian