Police in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria are investigating two officers suspected of performing the illegal Hitler salute.

The German constitution makes it a crime to exhibit Nazi symbols and the incident is likely to feed into a heated debate about racism and the rise of the far right after a record influx of mainly Muslim migrants three years ago.

Police said in a statement on Saturday the two policemen had shouted anti-immigrant remarks and made the salute in a pub in the city of Rosenheim on Thursday. It based its information on a witness who was in the same beer garden as the two officers.

A third man, described as a security guard in the police statement, had also taken part and made the salute. The policemen have been suspended.

German politicians have been urging action to combat a rise in hostility toward foreigners after skinheads last Sunday clashed with police in an eastern city where a man was fatally stabbed and two migrants were identified as the main suspects.

Skinheads raised their arms in Nazi salutes, chased people who appeared to be outsiders and wrestled with police in Chemnitz after police identified the suspects as a Syrian and an Iraqi.

The leaking of the arrest warrant for one of the two stabbing suspects to the anti-Islam group PEGIDA raised concerns that some justice officials in the state of Saxony, where Chemnitz is located, were sympathetic to the far right.

“We will not allow the extreme right to infiltrate our society,” Justice Minister Katarina Barley told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday, urging authorities in Saxony to investigate far-right groups.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal immigration policy remains deeply divisive in a country that has taken in more than 1.6 million people over the last four years.

The influx contributed to the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which entered parliament for the first time in an election last year with a campaign that proclaimed Islam to be incompatible with the German constitution.

Some 8,000 people took part in a demonstration organised by the AfD and the anti-Islam group PEGIDA in Chemnitz on Saturday. About 3,000 people attended a rival protest by leftist groups.

Police said on Sunday that the demonstrations were largely peaceful.

Leftist groups will hold a concert in the city on Monday to denounce xenophobia and hatred against refugees and foreigners.

Far-right groups spread “fake news” on social media to mobilise their supporters for violent protests targeting migrants after the fatal stabbing of a German man, said officials in the eastern German state of Saxony where they took place.

German police have arrested a 22-year-old Syrian man and a 21-year-old Iraqi man over Sunday’s stabbing in the town of Chemnitz, which provoked two days of protests, including clashes between far-right and leftist demonstrators.

The stabbing and the protests have exposed deep divisions in German society over the influx of more than one million migrants, mostly Muslims fleeing Middle East conflicts, after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let them in.

On Tuesday Merkel repeated her condemnation of both the stabbing and the protests, saying scenes – depicted in amateur video clips – of migrants being chased through the streets were completely unacceptable in a state based on the rule of law.

Michael Kretschmer, the premier of Saxony and a close Merkel ally, vowed to deal firmly with extremists in his state, long a hotbed of support for far-right parties.

“We believe that at least some of the calls that were circulated online (to join the protests) were based on false information, on fake news,” he told a news conference in the state capital Dresden.

For example, a report circulated widely on social media that the 35-year-old man who was stabbed had been defending a woman from migrants, adding that there was no evidence to support the claim, Kretschmer said.

Local authorities were bracing for further demonstrations in Dresden and Chemnitz on Tuesday, and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said federal police stood ready to provide additional assistance if needed in Saxony.

HITLER SALUTES

Saxony’s interior minister, Roland Woeller, said the protests had drawn far-right supporters and anarchist groups from Berlin, nearby states of Brandenburg and Thuringia and as far away as North-Rhine Westphalia in northwestern Germany.

“We saw a significant mobilisation effect – that means that anarchists travelled from far beyond the region and state borders, especially right-wing violent actors … from the hooligan scene and from the football scene,” he told reporters.

At least five people are facing charges for performing the ‘Hitler salute’, which is banned in Germany, and a comprehensive investigation is continuing, police officials said.

They also said nearly 20 people had been injured in Monday’s demonstrations, where fireworks were thrown.

German security officials are monitoring the situation in close consultation with state officials at a special command centre for combating far-right activism in Cologne, security sources told Reuters.

Many far-right supporters in Chemnitz joined a small but growing party called “Third Way” after a Nazi-inspired group was banned about four years ago. The new party is also under observation by intelligence agencies, according to the latest report by the BfV domestic intelligence agency.

“The fact that we have a Syrian and an Iraqi suspect is no reason – no reason at all – for a general suspicion of all foreign residents,” said Kretschmer.

“We need a jolt in Germany and Saxony. We need broad public support to win this fight.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives faced accusations on Thursday of ignoring the rise of far-right groups in the eastern German state of Saxony after an incident there involving an off-duty police employee at an anti-Islam rally.

Saxony’s interior ministry confirmed late on Wednesday that the police employee had attended a march by anti-Islam group PEGIDA last Saturday and had reported TV journalists covering the rally to police who detained them for 45 minutes.

Video footage showed a well-built man in sunglasses and a hat in the colours of the German flag confronting the crew, waving his hands at the camera, telling them not to film and reporting them to the police.

State premier Michael Kretschmer, a senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), then appeared to defend the police action, tweeting: “The only people who come across seriously in this video are policemen.”

At a time when Germany is struggling to integrate more than a million migrants, the incident has raised concern both about entrenched right-wing sympathies among the police, especially in the former Communist East, and about press freedom.

A deputy leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with the CDU in the federal German government, accused Merkel’s party of complacency about the growth of the far-right.

“The CDU in Saxony has for decades denied or trivialised right-wing radical movements and violence,” Ralf Stegner told Handelsblatt daily.

It has “allowed right-wing thinking in Saxony not only to go unchallenged but also to be acceptable”, he said.

PRESS FREEDOM

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley, also from the SPD, said the events were “very worrying” and had to be quickly and comprehensively cleared up.

“Press freedom is an important part of our society and our constitution,” she said.

Kretschmer has since said he is a convinced defender of a free press and Die Welt newspaper quoted him on Thursday as saying: “I am intent on assessing the situation calmly and in a factual manner.”

Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let in about a million migrants, many fleeing wars in the Middle East, has fuelled support for far-right groups such as PEGIDA and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the main opposition party in parliament.

Saxony, the cradle of the PEGIDA movement, is a stronghold for far-right sentiment. In last year’s federal election, the AfD was the strongest party in the state, pushing Merkel’s CDU into an embarrassing second place.

Kretschmer, who has criticised Merkel’s migration policy, faces a tough challenge in next year’s state election to hold Saxony for the CDU.

Neo-Nazis have a strong tradition in Saxony, especially in the capital, Dresden, where they gather every year on Feb. 13 to mark the Allied firebombing of the city in World War Two which killed 25,000 people and destroyed its baroque architecture.

Asked by broadcaster NDR about the off-duty police employee taking part in a PEGIDA rally, a Saxony police spokesman did not deny there might be supporters of the group in police ranks.

“The police is a cross-section of society. We have all political views,” he said.