Petr Bystron: AFD fraction wants information on shooting practice in South Africa

The trip of the AfD chairman in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Petr Bystron, to South Africa will also be a topic in the AfD parliamentary group. "Mr Bystron is allowed to report on his trip to the next parliamentary group committee, where the program will then be discussed," said spokesman Christian Lüth to SPIEGEL on the trip, which took place at the end of August.

After Bystron's meeting with members of a far-right group in the country, Luth told the news agency dpa that they would have to talk about it. The Bavarian AfD member of parliament had met on a trip to South Africa, the group Suidlanders - and completed a joint shooting training.

In other parties Bystrons behavior caused strong criticism. Before his entry into the Bundestag, the politician was for a time because of sympathy for the right-wing extremist "Identitarian movement" by the Bavarian constitutional protection has been observed. Bundestag Vice President Thomas Oppermann now said that if Bystron really participated in such a shooting training, that would be a case for the protection of the Constitution. "And it must have been his last business trip."

Bundestag confirms travel authorization for Bystron

Bundestag vice-president Claudia Roth told the SPIEGEL: "Petr Bystron makes clear that the inhibition threshold of the AfD to an undisguised closeness and international cooperation with open-racist and violent groups does not decrease, but is finally lifted." Bystron had left with his behavior the sphere of action of the Basic Law.

The mission requested by Bystron was paid by the Bundestag. Corresponding information from the ARD political magazine "Report Mainz" confirmed the parliament. "The President of the Bundestag has approved the individual service trip on the basis of the application," said a spokesman. Earlier, Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee had given a positive vote on the motion.

Bystron is chairman of the AfD in the Foreign Affairs Committee. He confirmed the magazine his participation in the shooting training. The Suidlanders are open to whites only and a racist group.

Bystron himself had told "Report Mainz" that he had no reservations about the Suidlanders. That was an organization of South African civil society. "I feel that this is an organization of mostly white farmers who are worried about their lives and who are organizing to survive in the worst case scenario."

The "Suidlanders" expect a revolution to break out in South Africa - as an unspoken reason for doomsday fantasies, the group appears to be the democratically elected and black-dominated government. They present themselves as the victims of a coming anti-white civil war. Estimates assume several thousand active members. They come mainly from the Afrikaans-speaking minority of South Africa - the minority that was in power until the racist apartheid regime was overcome in 1994.