ANNABERG-BUCHHOLZ, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel was greeted with shouts of "traitor" by a rowdy group of right-wing protesters in east Germany on Thursday as she defended her decision to allow hundreds of thousands of refugees into the country.
Roughly five weeks before an election in which she is expected to win a record-tying fourth term, Merkel veered from her stump speech, acknowledging "difficult times" in 2015 when a flood of asylum seekers, many from the Middle East, entered Germany.
It was her first campaign stop in eastern Germany, parts of which have been fertile ground for anti-immigration politics.
"Many people were worried. They said to themselves: 'What about us? Are we still important or are only the refugees important'?" she told a crowd of several thousand in the central market square in Annaberg-Buchholz, a town in the state of Saxony near the Czech border.
Saxony was the focal point of anti-Islam protests that erupted in Germany during the refugee crisis. The anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is particularly strong in the state and dozens of its supporters turned up to shout down Merkel. ...
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-merkel-idUSKCN1AX263
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