Demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Friday at the start of an international “anti-Islamification congress” in the western German city of Cologne, police said. The two-day event has been organized by members of the far-right Pro-Koeln (For Cologne), who were met with whistles and paint bombs hurled by about 100 leftist activists. Counter-demonstrators carried signs with slogans including “Stop the Nazi Congress – Stop Pro Koeln” and a few scuffled with the right-wing organizers. One leftist protester was briefly detained by police, a spokesman said. Those expected at the Cologne congress include Filip Dewinter, head of Belgium's far-right Vlaams Belang party, and Andreas Moelzer, the Euro MP once ejected from Austria's Freedom Party for being too extreme. Also due to add his support to what organisers call Europe's “shared, thousand-year history”, identity and “Western values and Christian traditions” was Mario Borghezio from Italy's anti-immigration Northern League. Mayor Fritz Schramma, whose city council recently gave the green light for the construction in Cologne of what will be one of Europe's biggest mosques, has called on the city's inhabitants to show the far-right “the cold shoulder.” A spokeswoman for the German interior ministry, also criticized the event Friday, calling Pro Koeln an “extremist” group that aimed to undermine good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. Pro-Koeln hopes 1,500 people will attend the high point of the congress, a rally in the city center to defend the continent against an “immigrant invasion” and oppose the mosque, starting at noon (1000 GMT) Saturday. Police say they expect several hundred activists to turn out. Meanwhile, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Confernence (OIC) in a speech at New York's Columbia University Thursday said the “Islamophobia is a new name to an old phenomenon” and urged politicians in Western countries to combat it. “The tendency to divide the world into good and evil, civilized and uncivilized, is inviting hostilities, disputes and instability,” he added.
