Alarming rise in attacks against refugees in Germany
Date
12/16/2015 3:52:10 AM
(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Xenophobic attacks against refugees in Germany has almost doubled in a year with police recording 1610 such verbal and physical assaults in 2015.
Attacks targeting asylum seekers their accommodations or volunteers helping them has jumped from 895 in 2014 to 1610 in 2015 according to official statistics made public on Tuesday during a parliamentary session.
Far-right extremists were identified as perpetrators of 1305 such assaults in 2015 which included not only crimes such as arson attacks property damage or hate graffiti but also causing bodily harm or attempted murder.
In 2014 police recorded 895 such attacks and in 482 cases perpetrators were identified as right-wing extremists.
According to police statistics there were 399 anti-refugee attacks in 2013 and only 62 in 2012.
Opposition Green Party’s parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter voiced concern over significant rise in violent and xenophobic attacks against refugees.
“The far-right violence in Germany has reached a new tragic dimension” Hofreiter said in a written statement on Tuesday.
“The interior minister has described the far-right violence as shameful but that rhetoric is not enough. He should act accordingly and make security of refugees one of the key priorities” he said.
Hofreiter also demanded comprehensive reform in preparing crime statistics highlighting that current police records do not capture all far-right motivated crimes.
German police usually record crimes under right-wing extremism if the perpetrators have ties to far-right groups.
Many individual crimes with racist motivations are often not recorded under right-wing extremism when the perpetrators do not have clear ties to right-wing extremist groups.
Germany is facing growing violence against refugees and migrants in recent months as far-right and populist parties exploit growing refugee influx to the country and carry out widespread xenophobic propaganda in weekly rallies across the country.
Germany has received a record one million refugees this year mostly from Syria and Iraq and the refugee influx mostly overstretched communities and municipalities across the country.
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