Hate crimes on the rise in Germany
BERLIN—Arson attacks on refugee shelters, assaults, swastikas sprayed on walls—as Germany has taken in record numbers of asylum seekers, it has been rocked by a xenophobic backlash that authorities apparently are unable to stop.
With a million arrivals expected in the European Union’s most populous nation this year—about half of them from Syria—Chancellor Angela Merkel has rallied Germans to welcome the newcomers and vowed to crack down on hate-mongers.
While vast numbers of Germans have volunteered to help refugees, there has also been a rise in antiforeigner sentiment that has buoyed the populist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere once again warned last week that the rise in hate crimes, ranging from property destruction to attempted murder, was “shocking and unacceptable.”
In September, Merkel—who herself had endured xenophobic protesters’ ugly verbal slurs during a visit to a migrant shelter—vowed that attacks targeting asylum seekers would be punished “with the full force of the law.”
Yet, according to a survey by news weekly Die Zeit, of the 222 most serious attacks on shelters reported this year, only four cases have resulted in convictions so far.
“If the state really wants to ‘act with the full force of the law,’ it should do considerably more,” the newspaper asserted.
“The fact that there have been no deaths yet is plain luck,” said Timo Reinfrank of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which works to counter neo-Nazism, extremism and anti-Semitism.
Racist attacks in Germany have multiplied since the summer, which saw a massive surge of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrive via the Balkans and Austria in just a few weeks.
From June to September, Germany recorded an average of three xenophobic acts a day against asylum seekers’ facilities, according to government figures provided to lawmakers.
“This violence is not only committed by neo-Nazis,” said Reinfrank. “It is perpetrated increasingly by supposedly ‘concerned citizens’ who give vent to their racism.”
Authorities and nongovernment groups fear that things may get worse in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, despite their pleas not to confuse Syrian refugees and jihadists.