The TV worker, who asked us to omit his name for security concerns, spoke about the incident in an exclusive interview with Sputnik.
He said that there were no visible physical injuries, but his video equipment was damaged during the attack.
“I was filming from the PEGIDA side. […] And just from behind me there was one guy wearing a hoodie and wearing a mask and he reached to my camera and smashed it into the tree and on the ground. He started punching me and when all the others saw that he was punching me they started punching me and helping this guy,” the man said.
“I tried to take my camera back but they didn’t let me. There were like six or seven of them,” he explained.
Replying to the question about the efficiency of local security forces, he said that they were quite helpful and well-organized.
“The problem for me was that I was on the Nazi side and the police had to respect that. And they didn’t go too much inside,” the man explained.
PEGIDA, which stands for "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West," is notorious for organizing mass demonstrations across Germany against the influx of refugees from Muslim countries. The largest protests usually take place in Dresden and gather tens of thousands of people from various German cities.
