Germany's PEGIDA vows to rally again after attack threat

Germany?s ?anti-Islamization? movement PEGIDA vowed at its first press conference Monday to take to the streets again next week after a march was cancelled over a terrorism threat.

Asked about plans for future rallies in the eastern city of Dresden, the leader of the populist group, Lutz Bachmann, said that ?next Monday obviously there will be another one, that?s the state of play right now.?      

Police in Dresden had banned all public open-air gatherings within city limits for yesterday, citing the ?concrete threat? of an assassination attempt against the group?s leaders.

PEGIDA instead urged followers to light a candle in their window and hang up the black-red-gold German national flag.

Amid criticism about the curtailing of the the right to demonstrate, Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that the fundamental right to freedom of assembly ?must wherever possible be protected?.

PEGIDA spokeswoman Kathrin Oertel said that in future ?we won?t be deprived of the right to assembly and free speech.?

The self-styled ?Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident?, founded three months ago, have drawn up to 25,000 people on to the streets in weekly rallies they dub ?evening strolls?.

At the press conference, Bachmann and Oertel sought to reach out to what they have long dubbed the ?lying press? and to moderate the group?s image, saying it was not against foreigners or Islam but against ?Islamization.?

They distanced themselves from crude racist slurs, signs reading ?Islam=cancer? and the presence of neo-Nazis at past rallies, insisting that most of their supporters are citizens fed up with contemporary politics.

In a list of six core demands, they called for immigration reform...