The co-leader of Germany's far-left Linke party had a chocolate cake shoved in her face yesterday in a protest against her calls to limit the number of refugees let into Germany.
Sahra Wagenknecht was attacked at a party meeting in Magdeburg by a man who ran up to where she was sitting in the front row shouting anti-fascist slogans.
Along with other protestors he was taken away by security. The MPs sitting around Wagenknecht covered her with their coats and helped her out of the hall.
Wagenknecht has come under fire for saying there are "limits to Germany's capacity" to take refugees and "we can't take one million or more refugees each year" - a stance that puts her at odds with the rest of her party.
A group called Anti-Fascist Initiative "Cake for Misanthropists'' distributed flyers which said her comments on refugees motivated the attack.
#Tortenwurf auf Sahra #Wagenknecht: Argumentativ lediglich ein matschiger Pflaumenkuchen. #fail #linkebpt
Other members of the Linke party immediately condemned the attack.
"This was not just an attack on Sahra, but an attack on all of us," said co-leader Katja Kipping.
The attack is "is neither leftist, nor is it antifascist, it is anti-social, it is sneaky, it is dumb," said the party's deputy Dietmar Bartsch, who was sat next to Wagenknecht as she was hit with the cake.
Delagates applauded Wagenknecht as she re-entered the room. She said to them: "Stupid actions like this will not deter me from being actively engaged into policy-making for the Left Party."
This was not the first attack of its kind. In February a man dressed as a clown threw a cake at Beatrix von Storch, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The "Cake for Misanthropists" leaflets liked Wagenknecht to von Storch.
In a Facebook post, the group wrote that Wagenknecht gave AfD "ideological ammunition", writing "a cake for Wagenknecht is therefore more than justified. Anti Fascism knows no party card!"
Wagenknecht said she found being equated with Mrs von Storch even more insulting than having a cake thrown at her. "This really is an outrage," she said. "This shows total political illiterates were at work."
The 23-year-old cake thrower has been released from police custody, but is being investigated for bodily injury and property damage.
A spokeswomen for the Linke party said it would press criminal charges.
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