Germany mourns Love Parade victims

2010-07-31 17:04

Duisburg - Thousands of mourners paid their respects in Duisburg on Saturday to the 21 victims of the Love Parade disaster, forgetting their anger for a while to remember the dead.

"The Love Parade became a dance with death," Nikolaus Schneider, head of Germany's Protestant Church, told a memorial service attended by several hundred people including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"In the midst of a celebration of the joy of life, death showed his terrible face to us all."

The packed service was beamed onto large screens in and around Duisburg's football stadium and into other churches in the western German city, and was shown live on television.

"I was there, working as a helper and saw it all happen. A friend of mine was hurt," Markus Spanke, told AFP in the stadium. "I will never forget it."

Another young man, Peter, wearing a "2010 Death Parade" T-shirt, said he was there for "a bit of absolution."

'We carried on dancing'

"We carried on dancing, we didn't know what was happening," the 33-year-old said, his eyes red from crying.

A large black cross was set up on the pitch with 21 candles, one for each of those killed last Saturday. Many of those present wore black and were fighting back tears.

Before the service church bells rang out mournfully across the industrial city of half a million people, flags were at half-mast, as they were across the whole of a shocked Germany.

"We were at the Love Parade, we saw everything from the bridge. We can't shake those images of panic from our heads," said Phil Napeirala, 21, from nearby Essen.

"This is bad for the image of Duisburg and for the whole of Germany."

Later on Saturday a few hundred people took part in a solemn march from Duisburg train station towards the narrow tunnel that served as the only entrance - and the only exit - to the festival grounds.

It was inside the packed tunnel - the entrance to which is now a mass of candles, flowers and photos - that the victims died as revellers desperately tried to escape.

The dead included seven foreigners, from Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, China, Bosnia and Spain who had come for one of Europe's top techno events. More than 500 people were hurt, 25 of whom are reportedly still in hospital.

"It's going to take a long time before Duisburg can get back to normal," Reiner, one of the mourners at the football stadium, told AFP.

'Disaster waiting to happen'

One man absent from public view however was Adolf Sauerland, the mayor, who has become a hate figure for his refusal to resign amid accusations that he ignored warnings the event was a disaster waiting to happen.

Sauerland said he did not want to "provoke" anyone with his presence. Love Parade organiser Rainer Schaller, who has vowed the event will never be held again, also stayed away.

An interim police report on Wednesday put the blame on organisers, listing a catalogue of catastrophic mistakes in managing the crowd of hundreds of thousands. Prosecutors have opened an investigation.

An emotional Hannelore Kraft, premier of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told the memorial service that no stone would be left unturned.

"Every catastrophe shakes us and makes us ask why. But for this catastrophe this is particularly true ... How could this happen? Who is guilty, who is responsible? These questions must and will be answered," she said.

But Petra Weber, a 47-year-old housewife taking part in the march, told AFP that now was not the time.

"We have forgotten about our anger for today. Today we are in mourning," she said.

- AFP