Advertisement

Mayor refuses to resign over festival planning

DPA/The Local
DPA/The Local - [email protected]
Mayor refuses to resign over festival planning
Photo: DPA

The mayor of Duisburg refused to step down on Monday despite pressure over the Love Parade disaster that left 19 people dead.

Advertisement

Authorities had reportedly been warned the western industrial city was too small to hold one of Europe's biggest techno music festivals, while security arrangements have been slammed as woefully inadequate.

Scrutiny quickly focused on Mayor Adolf Sauerland. But Sauerland, while admitting he understood why people were angry with him, said he would stay in the job.

''Today and in the coming days it has to be about working through the terrible event and putting the pieces of the puzzle together into an overall picture,'' he said.

Sauerland also earned widespread scorn for saying on Sunday that the safety plan for the festival had been ''solid.''

He was also reportedly pelted with rubbish.

"The cynical reaction of the mayor, who said the victims' behaviour was partly to blame, was unacceptable," wrote daily Neue Rhein Zeitung in an editorial. "His scandalous position was nothing less than a mockery of the dead – of young people who came from afar to party and who died because of your overburdened organisation."

Monday's edition of the daily Stadt-Anzeiger in nearby Cologne said Sauerland had been warned in writing in October 2009 that the grounds were too narrow for the expected crowds but that the concerns went unheeded.

Meanwhile news magazine Der Spiegel said that the festival only had authorisation for 250,000 revellers instead of for 1.4 million people who organisers said had attended.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also