German city that’s banning refugees

Freeze on new arrivals in bid to stop rising violence

A GERMAN city is closing its doors to refugees in a bid to stem rising violence between warring groups.

Cottbus, which is home to just over 100,000 people, has taken in around 3,000 asylum seekers since 2015 – making up 3 per cent of the population.

The influx has led to an increase in trouble involving migrants and Right-wing extremists. Last week two Syrian youths were arrested on suspicion of slashing a 16-year- old in the face with a knife near a tram station. Days earlier three Syrian asylum seekers aged 14, 15 and 17 had attacked a man and his wife outside a shopping centre.

These incidents in the university city, about 75 miles from Berlin, came after a group of neo-Nazis attacked refugees on New Year’s Day. And over the weekend around 100 masked far-Right extremists marched in an illegal demonstration through the city centre, heightening tensions further.

Brandenburg’s state interior minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter told German broadcaster RBB that the ban on new refugees would be in effect ‘ for the next few months’.

The authorities are also taking extra safety measures including increased video surveillance and more uniformed and plainties clothes police officers on the streets. A Cottbus police spokesman said officers were being sent on daily foot patrols from late afternoon to evening ‘for as long as it serves its purpose ... at least over the next two weeks’.

Germany has been suffering heightened tensions over immigration since Angela Merkel’s 2015 declaration that any Syrian who reached the country could claim asylum. She acted after Europe experienced its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, with millions arriving on the shores of Italy, Greece and Spain.

However the subsequent influx left the German authori-

‘For the next few months’

close to breaking point, with more than a million migrants having arrived in the three years since her pledge.

Cottbus is not the first place in Germany to impose a refugee ban. Last year the towns of Salzgitter, Delmenhorst and Wilhelmshaven in the northern state of Lower Saxony said no more would be welcome. Local governments said at the time they lacked the capacity and resources to properly integrate more new arrivals.

Figures from 2016 show the number of suspected crimes committed by refugees, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in Germany for that year rose by 52.7 per cent to 174,438.