Refugees should not be accommodated in gymnasiums in Greifswald, instead a container village should be built. Residents are up in arms against the plans, and when the city’s mayor attends a meeting of the district council, he needs police protection. Various right-wing extremists are among the protesters.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in Greifswald against a planned container accommodation for 500 refugees. According to the police, around 500 people gathered in the evening at the place of the planned accommodation in the Baltic Sea district. In the evening, the meeting of the district council took place in a school in the immediate vicinity. For a short time, Greifswald’s Mayor Stefan Fassbinder also took part. When the Green politician left the school building, the police had to protect him from the demonstrators with a chain of officers. It had briefly become “dangerous” for him, said a police spokesman. Calls to move to the politician’s house had previously been circulating on the Internet.
Due to the large crowd, access to the meeting had to be limited. There was a crowd at the school gate. At the meeting, Fassbinder said he too would like more time to discuss accommodation. The plans only became known last week. “The schedule was originally different,” said Fassbinder. But the district put pressure on it. The district council spoke unanimously against the planned accommodation. “We don’t want the accommodation at this location,” said CDU chairman Uwe Liedtke. One wants to help refugees, but the dimensions and the location are wrong. Citizens criticized, among other things, the location in the immediate vicinity of a school.
The Vorpommern-Greifswald district council has meanwhile cleared the way for the plans. A narrow majority of MPs approved an emergency proposal from the administration so that the district could set up such accommodation in Greifswald with around 9 million euros. 25 MPs voted in favor, 19 against, 10 MPs abstained. “There is not enough free living space for decentralized solutions,” said District Administrator Michael Sack from the CDU. In addition, it was decided by a large majority that the district would not use gyms or sports halls as emergency accommodation for the time being.
Greifswald has not yet taken in the most refugees, Sack said after being heavily criticized for the plan by Left and SPD MPs. In Western Pomerania-Greifswald, the small town of Torgelow has so far taken in the largest number of migrants. According to Sack, the district must accommodate the refugees that the country assigns to it. He had asked the cities about this and received two offers for land from Greifswald. In Greifswald, the main committee still has to approve the plan on Thursday. Around 200 refugees arrived in the district in the first two months of the year.
According to preliminary information from the police, there were at least 20 people among the demonstrators against the accommodation in Greifswald who could be assigned to the right-wing extremist scene. The meeting was also not registered, but advertised in advance, which is why criminal proceedings were initiated. At least 30 counter-demonstrators protesting against racism also gathered. According to the police, they are investigating an act of resistance against the protective measures for the mayor. In addition, there is said to have been a dangerous physical injury between the two groups of demonstrators after the meetings.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, there have been several protests, some of them violent, in recent weeks against the accommodation of refugees. At the end of January, riots caused a stir at a meeting against the construction of accommodation for 400 refugees in Upahl, a town of 500 in the north-west Mecklenburg district. The police had difficulty preventing people from gaining access to the district council building in Grevesmühlen, where construction was being discussed. According to the police, representatives of the right-wing political spectrum were also on site.
