Outrage after German far-right AfD party gives children ‘racist’ colouring book featuring burka clad women and men with bones in their hair in a public swimming pool
- Alternative for Germany handed out colouring book featuring ‘racist’ caricatures
- The book depicted a swimming pool filled with women wearing full-body veils
- It also featured black people with bones in their hair harassing female bathers
- Another image had people with guns, knives and a Turkish flag in their hands
- AfD had defended it but then apologised saying it was ‘an organisational mistake’
A group of far-right politicians are being investigated by German police after a ‘racist’ children’s colouring book with denigrating depictions of Muslims and black people was distributed.
Far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) were holding an event in western Germany when the book featuring caricatures with bones through their hair and gun-toting people next to a Turkish flag was handed out.
In an image entitled ‘We are washing ourselves away’, men with bones through their hair could be be seen grabbing and harassing at fleeing women from a swimming pool and one image showed a hand with a knife.
The same image pictured women in burqas in the pool. Another image featured people with guns, knives and the Turkish flag in their hands.
A page from the colouring book with banner ‘We bathe it out’, where a hand holding a knife can be seen while people with bones in their hair are harassing women in the swimming pool
A page of the colouring book with people waving Turkish flags, while holding guns in their hands, in a street full of cars
The colouring book entitled ‘North Rhine-Westphalia To Colour In’ was distributed at a regional AfD event in North Rhine-Westphalia on Monday.
Initially the party defended the book, saying it was meant as a ‘satirical view of the region’ and was created for adults, not children.
But the regional branch of the AfD party today apologised and said it had made ‘a mistake’ handing out a colouring book at a public event.
Pages of the book spread quickly on social media, causing widespread outrage.
German Social Democrats (SPD) leader Thomas Kutschaty called the book ‘racist’ in a tweet saying: ‘The #NoAfD has published a racist colouring book. Now they want to incite children with their inhuman ideology. This book belongs in the recycling bin.’
Police in the city of Krefeld said officers are investigating a complaint of incitement to hatred filed against the AfD’s parliamentary group.
The force tweeted that they are were looking at the matter saying: ‘We are aware of these children’s colouring books.
‘We already have a complaint against the AfD parliamentary group for racism.’
The front cover (above) of the xenophobic colouring book distributed by the far-right group Alternative for Germany (AfD)
Bjoern Hoecke, Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leader speaking during the right-wing anti-Islam movement Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) demonstration in Dresden on Monday
Reportedly, the right-wing populist political party ‘Alternative for Germany’ sees the criticism of the colouring book as an attack on freedom of expression through art and the right to use satire.
AfD leader Markus Wagner told local media: ‘We landed another hit there. Art doesn’t just have to come from the left.’
He added: ‘If Antifa extremists attack freedom of art, there can only be one answer. We will increase circulation!’
The party later said it had been ‘an organisational mistake’ to print the book in its current form and hand it out, it said, adding that the project had been cancelled.
‘Although the majority of the sketches remain within the scope of the project, there are some that are definitely not okay and of course do not reflect the opinions of the parliamentary group,’ it said in a statement.
German Social Democrats (SPD) leader Thomas Kutschaty called the book ‘racist’ in a tweet saying: ‘The #NoAfD has published a racist colouring book. Now they want to incite children with their inhuman ideology. This book belongs in the recycling bin’
Police in the city of Krefeld tweeted that officers are were looking at the matter saying: ‘We are aware of these children’s colouring books. ‘We already have a complaint against the AfD parliamentary group for racism’
Founded in 2013, the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam AfD, populist group has shaken up Germany’s political landscape and is now the biggest opposition party in the national parliament.
A speaker for the North Rhine-Westphalian parliament said they were investigating if the book was paid for with public funds.
A local politician from the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), Thomas Kutschaty, tweeted that the AfD had ‘published a racist colouring book’ that belonged in the bin.
Green party youth member Jonas Stickelbroeck, who posted pictures of the colouring book on Twitter, told the Bento news website he was shocked by the stereotypes depicted.
He said the book exposed the AfD ‘for the racist party that it is’.