After the excesses against emergency services on New Year’s Eve in Berlin, the horror is great. The anti-racism commissioner of the federal government criticizes what she sees as the blanket judgments made by the Union and AfD about people with a migration background. At the same time, it calls for the perpetrators to be punished quickly and consistently.
After the riots on New Year’s Eve, the German government’s anti-racism commissioner, Reem Alabali-Radovan, warned against general suspicion of migrants. “We have to judge the perpetrators based on their deeds, not based on their suspected origin, as some are now doing,” said the SPD politician of the Funke media group.
Alabali-Radovan warned against generalizations: “Anyone who now reacts with general suspicion towards people with an immigrant background contributes to the further stigmatization and division of our society instead of fighting the social causes of the problem.” Alabali-Radovan called the acts of violence on New Year’s Eve “disgusting”. They would have to be punished quickly and consistently with the full severity of our constitutional state.
Previously, Union faction leader Jens Spahn had made a failed integration policy partly responsible for the escalation. Politicians in Germany must seriously ask themselves why the New Year’s Eve celebrations keep escalating in the same places with the same participants, said the CDU politician. “It’s more about unregulated migration, failed integration and a lack of respect for the state, rather than fireworks.”
The German police union called for an investigation into the origin of the perpetrators. Many of the attackers came from the “migrant milieu,” said union boss Rainer Wendt. After New Year’s Eve, many emergency services were under the impression that “groups of young men with a migration background were far overrepresented in these riots”.
The AfD accused authorities and the media of ignoring the connection between the New Year’s Eve riots and alleged perpetrators with a migration background. Politicians must “finally make it clear that the people who came to our country seeking protection and are now showing their complete contempt for our traditions and values ??and are becoming criminals have no business being in Germany,” explained Party Deputy Stephan Brandner.
The federal government initially did not provide any information as to which groups were responsible for the attacks. A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said that “there is still no overview of suspects”. She referred to the general situation report for 2021, which recorded around 88,600 assaults on police officers. Of the known perpetrators, 84 percent are male and 70 percent are German citizens.
