- Title: GERMANY: Angry Love Parade city residents demand mayor's resignation
- Date: 3rd August 2010
- Summary: PEOPLE FILLING IN AND SIGNING SIGNATURE LISTS (SOUNDBITE) (German) DUISBURG RESIDENT WHO SIGNED PETITION, HENRIETTE KRINGEL, SAYING: "I want the mayor to be voted out. He no longer has the right to be sitting there. He put the lives of all our children in danger. My 24-year-old daughter was in there and I lost a daughter two years ago." PEOPLE SIGNING PETITION / SIGN READING "VOTE OUT MAYOR SAUERLAND - SIGNATURES HERE" (SOUNDBITE) (German) INITIATOR OF PETITION TO OUST DUISBURG MAYOR, WERNER HUESKEN, SAYING: "There is an enormous amount of people (signing). We need 8,000 signatures and we will not give up until we have at least the verifiable 8,000 signatures. We want to exert this political pressure as citizens of this city." PEOPLE SIGNING LISTS SIGN ON TABLE (SOUNDBITE) (German) INITIATOR OF PETITION TO OUST DUISBURG MAYOR, WERNER HUESKEN, SAYING: "We can't wait until the legal questions have been solved. We demand that responsibility be taken and Mr. Sauerland owes it to the citizens of this city." SIGN ON TABLE YOUTHS STANDING AROUND TABLE
- Embargoed: 18th August 2010 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Germany
- Country: Germany
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
- Reuters ID: LVA43ARTSAQSFFOJVFKMX63O9LDO
- Story Text: More than a week after the deadly stampede during the Love Parade techno music festival in the German city of Duisburg, angry residents called for the resignation of the city's mayor on Monday (August 2).
Twenty-one people, aged 20 to 40, were killed and more than 500 injured when hordes of young people pushed through a tunnel into the festival area on July 24 at a former freight rail yard in Duisburg, an impoverished western German city of 500,000.
As public frustration over the political handling of the accident grows, Duisburg resident Werner Huesken began collecting signatures to vote the city's mayor out of office.
"We need 8,000 signatures and we will not give up until we have at least the verifiable 8,000 signatures. We want to exert this political pressure as citizens of this city," Huesken said.
One of the passers-by who signed Huesken's list was Henriette Kringel, a woman in her sixties.
"I want the mayor to be voted out," Kringel said, adding, "He put the lives of all our children in danger. My 24-year-old daughter was in there and I lost a daughter two years ago."
Criticism of Mayor Adolf Sauerland over last month's disaster has grown so intense that he opted to stay away from a national memorial service this past weekend.
Sauerland, a leader in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, has been assailed for ignoring warnings from city planning agencies, police and fire officials. They had warned Duisburg was too small to host the event with a crowd of up to a million people.
Among the dead are eight foreigners from Australia, Bosnia, China, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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