Pogrom mood sweeps Germany
A city mayor has warned that a ‘‘pogrom sentiment’’ is sweeping Germany after a Syrian migrant was attacked in a park by three men and whipped with an iron chain.
The incident took place in Wismar, in the northeast of Germany, on Thursday.
Hours later far-Right supporters began heading for Chemnitz, 480 kilometres to the south, where a further demonstration had been arranged.
The 20-year-old victim was walking home through a park when three men, speaking German, stopped him and began hurling racist abuse.
‘‘Two suspects then hit the victim in the face. The third beat him with an iron chain about the shoulder and the ribs,’’ police said.
‘‘That made the 20-year-old fall to the ground. Then the three attackers kicked him.’’
He was taken to hospital with a broken nose and multiple bruises. Police said that they had arrested a 26-year-old man.
Thomas Beyer, the mayor of Wismar, called on the city’s residents to stand up against the far Right, which staged the biggest riots in Germany in 26 years in Chemnitz earlier this week. Immigrants were chased through the streets and beaten. Police officers, outnumbered, looked on as protesters gave the Hitler salute and hurled bottles and fireworks.
‘‘We are all appalled at what has happened here,’’ Beyer said. ‘‘There are reasons for it; partly that some arsonists are at large in Germany and something like a pogrom sentiment is being created.’’
Police from around Germany were drafted into Chemnitz, an industrial city of communist-era apartment blocks, to contain more protests.
Analysts said the far Right had chosen Chemnitz as a testing ground, and that police urgently needed to quash any further violence to stop it spreading. ‘‘It can be seen as a beacon by neo-Nazis in other cities, as a model, and could lead to copycat attempts,’’ Michael Nattke, from the prodemocracy group Kulturburo Sachsen, said.
Immigrants in the city spoke of their fear. ‘‘Some people in a car honked at me and shouted ‘Get out’,’’ Milad, 20, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, said. ‘‘It happens all the time. People say, ‘What are you doing here?’, or shout, ‘Foreigners out’, or call me a Muslim terrorist.
‘‘I’m scared. We’re men, so I’m ashamed to say that,’’ he said, standing next to other migrants under the giant bronze bust of Karl Marx where the Chemnitz protests started. ‘‘Around here foreigners are blamed for everything.’’
Down the street a pavement shrine of candles and flowers marked where Daniel Hillig, 35, a carpenter, was stabbed to death last weekend.
Two migrants, one from Iraq, the other from Syria, were accused of carrying out the killing – setting the scene for the violent protests that followed, which have reverberated across Germany and beyond.
‘‘Ordinary people are being forced to take justice into their own hands,’’ said Kevin Pierzchala, 29, who had just lit a candle in tribute. ‘‘I’ve got nothing against foreigners but if you’re a guest in our country you must obey the laws. I’m not scared of them, I’m trained in martial arts, but young migrants think they have to carry knives with them rather than settle arguments with fists.’’
He said Angela Merkel had ‘‘kicked Germany in the arse’’ with her open-door migrant policy. ‘‘She’s the biggest liar there is,’’ he added.
Two skinheads sitting on a wall near the shrine and drinking beer refused to be interviewed. ‘‘Get out of here, you’re making money from the dead,’’ one shouted.
A note left amid the flowers read: ‘‘Take away their knives or we will drive you out of office.’’
– The Times