Figures show attacks on migrants rising sharply in Germany

SBS World News Radio: There has been a surge in the number of hate crimes committed against refugees and migrants in Germany.

Syrian refugees arriving in Germany last year.

Syrian refugees arriving in Germany last year. Source: AAP

Young refugees attacked on the streets, live grenades thrown into migrant shelters and homes burned to the ground.

Those were just some of the 3,533 reported attacks on asylum seekers and migrants living in Germany in the last year.

It amounts to an average of almost 10 hate crimes every day.

This is the first year the German interior ministry has released official data on attacks against migrants, but it marks a sharp increase from previous information by human rights groups.

The Bavarian Refugee Council's Stephen Dunnwald says the rise in hate crimes is not surprising.

"We guessed that the numbers will be high, and we criticised that, during the past years, every single attack of a migrant towards Germans is entering in a big debate in German TV shows and newspapers but the attacks on migrants - on refugees, in particular - they are not really discussed in public."

Figures show 280,000 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, a large decline from the almost 900,000 people in 2015.

The largest group of those arriving were Syrians, followed by Afghans and Iraqis.

In a statement, the Interior Ministry has strongly condemned the attacks against migrant communities.

"People who have fled their home country and seek protection in Germany have the right to expect safe shelter."

But Amnesty International's deputy Europe director, Gauri van Gulik, says the German authorities are not doing enough to keep migrant communities safe.

She says many of the hate crimes have not been investigated thoroughly.

"We actually need to see that kind of physical protection, so more police guarding some of these centres that have particularly been under threat. But always, the best prevention is prosecution of these cases. You know, no-one should be getting away with this type of crime."

German chancellor Angela Merkel has come under attack from nationalist political parties over her policy of welcoming large numbers of refugees.

The Alternative for Germany party has been growing in popularity and is expected to capture around 10 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections in September.

Just last month, a member from a different nationalist party was jailed for eight years after burning down a hall in Berlin housing asylum seekers.

But Ms Gulik says it is not known how many of the increasing number of hate crimes are being committed by organised political groups.

"We don't know exactly who is behind them. We haven't seen conclusions of in-depth investigations into these attacks at a large enough scale. So that's something that the government has to find out. Is this structural? Is there a particular group behind many of them? Is this organised in any way? And that's what the government now has to find out."

 

 


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3 min read
Published 28 February 2017 3:00pm
Updated 28 February 2017 7:03pm
By Jarni Blakkarly


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