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1 Hate Crimes in Poland and Germany
A first step in dealing with the larger phenomenon of violent hate crimes is to fill the information deficit about its full extent, the gaps in states’ responses, and the protection required for those under threat.
(Michael McClintock, Humans Rights First)
1.1 Latest Incidents and Developments
1.1.1 Germany
In May 2008 German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble participated in a memorial service for five members of a Turkish family murdered in the West German town of Solingen. They were victims of an arsonist motivated by xenophobia in 1993. Schäuble called the attack a historical turning-point for Germany and stressed that this event should serve as a constant reminder not to neglect efforts to promote a tolerant and diverse society. (1) The Solingen tragedy was part of a broader wave of racist and right-wing violence sweeping Germany in the wake of unification. (2) It has not abated to this day.
In 2000 the Frankfurter Rundschau and Der Tagesspiegel were the first mainstream publications to research and publish all known accounts of homicides motivated by racism and xenophobia in Germany. They republished the report in 2003, exposing 99 brutal deaths that resulted directly from right-wing crimes between 1990 and 2003, and 21 additional cases in which a right-wing motivation was considered likely, but not proven. (3) Victim support organizations in East Germany have recently published their latest figures for the new federal states.(4) In 2007 they registered 861 cases of right-wing attacks that affected 1,869 individuals. (5) By March 2008 German police had already recorded 1,311 right-wing and racially motivated offenses, including 72 acts of violence that left at least 200 people injured. This constitutes the highest number of such incidents accounted for in the first quarter of a year since the introduction of the new data registration system in 2001. (6) (Before 2001 data on bias-motivated crimes were not systematically recorded; this makes data collected prior to this year nearly impossible to compare.)
In most cases the public hears nothing about the specific circumstances of these attacks, the background of the offender/s, or how these violent incidents change the lives of those targeted. Out of the numerous incidents of hate crimes, only a few particularly brutal incidents make national or international headlines. One was the case of a 37-year-old German engineer of Ethiopian descent, who was attacked at 4 am on a street right in the center of Potsdam on Easter Sunday 2006. He was beaten so badly that he nearly died. The federal public prosecutor who was assigned the case said the assailants were motivated by‚ »hatred of foreigners and extreme right-wing inclinations.« (7) Shortly after the incident in Potsdam, a statement from Uwe-Karsten Heye, a former government spokesperson, caused further heated controversies over the severity of racism and right-wing violence in Germany, when he lamented that people with dark skin »might not make it out alive« if they set foot in certain towns, especially in the Brandenburg region around Berlin. (8) About the same time, only a few days before the opening of the World Cup in Germany, a Berlin-based umbrella organization of African community groups and activists drew international attention to the issue of physical safety for blacks and foreigners in East Germany by announcing that they were going to publish a list of »no-go« areas to warn visitors of the threat of hate crimes. (9) In August 2007 pictures of serious injuries suffered by eight Indian men assaulted at a local fair in Mügeln (Saxony) traveled around the globe, followed by further reports on racist attacks in the southern parts of Germany. This caused the same question from the 1990s to resurface as to whether German authorities were doing enough to protect ethnic minorities and foreigners in the country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the events in Mügeln as an »extraordinarily distressing and shameful incident,« which had been »noted very carefully« abroad and could damage Germany’s international standing. (10) Even though migrants and non-ethnic Germans belong to the most vulnerable groups in Germany targeted by right-wing groups, openly anti-Semitic manifestations and incidents have also been on the rise since the 1990s. In the beginning of November 2006, the European Jewish Congress issued a report on anti-Semitic incidents and discourses in Europe during the Israel-Hezbollah War. The section on Germany, compiled by the Central Council of German Jews, describes an »extremely difficult atmosphere for the country’s Jews.« (11) Another report by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Racism, based in Tel Aviv, noticed a dramatic surge in anti-Semitic verbal insults, especially involving Jewish students and youth in the German capital Berlin, where the word »Jew« has become a popular insult in many schools. (12) On 25 February 2007, a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin-Charlottenburg was the target of an anti-Semitic assault by Nazi sympathizers. The perpetrators defaced the building with swastikas and slogans recalling the horrors of the Holocaust. They also threw a smoke bomb into the kindergarten. (13) Another anti-Semitic hate crime received much international media coverage when a 42-year-old rabbi was stabbed in an attack near the financial district in Frankfurt/Main in September 2007. (14) As in previous years, desecrations of Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust memorials as well as vandalism of Jewish sites were reported for 2007 throughout Germany, sometimes several times a week. (15)
The contemporary discussion on violent hate crimes in Germany is still very much focused on the situation in the former communist East Germany, where far-right parties such as the National Democratic Party (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD) made significant gains in recent local and state elections. Right-wing attitudes and violence have developed into an everyday phenomenon in many regions of the East, posing a constant threat to visible minorities and those openly opposed to far-right ideologies. While certain regions such as Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt do stand out for both the frequency and severity of racist attacks and other related attacks, the problem of hate crimes is not geographically restricted to the new federal states.16 According to the last annual report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower-Saxony (two western states) are leading in the statistics for right-wing hate crimes with regard to absolute numbers. In all, 122 cases of violent assaults with a right-wing political motivation were registered by the police in North Rhine-Westphalia for 2007, and 110 in Lower-Saxony for the same year. (17)
Further more, a closer look at the figures reveals that the targets of right-wing assault are not limited to religious or ethnic minorities. In many cities throughout the country, political activists and members of alternative youth cultures are the largest victim group of right-wing violence. (18) In some places, left-leaning youth clubs, contact locations for the LGBT community or other institutions known for the anti-racist and anti-Fascist activities have been repeatedly attacked and damaged. Bremen, a town in the north of Germany, for example, experienced a wave of violent attacks in February 2008 directed against educational institutions that are known for their anti-Fascist and »multicultural« commitment. (19) Referring to incidents of brutal assaults on journalists during a neo-Nazi demonstration in Hamburg on 1 May 2008, the spokesperson of the German Association of Journalists (Deutscher Journalisten-Verband) also warned of a »new quality of right-wing violence and threats« targeting critical representatives of the press. (20) Intelligence agents stated that they have identified a new phenomenon in the German far-right scene: so-called autonomous nationalists who are »significantly more likely to commit acts of violence against political opponents and the police«. (21) Journalisten-Verband also warned of a »new quality of right-wing violence and threats« targeting critical representatives of the press.20 Intelligence agents stated that they have identified a new phenomenon in the German far-right scene: so-called autonomous nationalists who are »significantly more likely to commit acts of violence against political opponents and the police«. (21)
1. Spiegel Online, 26 May 2008.
2. Other serious attacks on Turkish migrants, refugee homes and synagogues, which have become markers for the national reassessment of hate crimes in the 1990’s, occurred in Hoyerswerda (1991), Rostock (1992), Mölln (1993) and Lübeck (1994 and 1997). Following the deaths in Mölln and Solingen, the debate in Germany took a new turn. For the first time since the recruitment of so called »guest workers«, the Federal Criminal Police Office began to record data on racist crimes in 1992 and anti-Semitic crimes in 1993. Bundesministerium des Innern; Bundesministerium der Justiz 2006. Zweiter Periodischer Sicherheitsbericht, Berlin, p. 135.
3. Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 Sep 2000; Der Tagesspiegel, 14 September 2000; Der Tagesspiegel, 6 March 2003.
4. The new federal states of Germany are Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, and Thuringia.
5. Opferperspektive e. V. 2008. Statistik rechter Gewalttaten in Ostdeutschland.
6. Deutscher Bundestag 2008. Antwort der Bundesregierung auf die Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Petra Pau und weiterer Abgeordneter und der Fraktion DIE LINKE: Ausländerfeindliche und rechtsextreme Ausschreitungen in der Bundesrepublik im März 2008, Drucksache 16/9188, Berlin.
7. The Boston Globe, 24 Apr 2006.
8. Opferperspektive e.V. 2008. Der Fall Ermyas M.: Chronik einer Debatte, Potsdam, p. 9.
9. Die Zeit, 17 May 2006.
10. Spiegel Online, 22 Jul 2007.
11. European Jewish Congress 2006. Anti-Semitic Incidents and Discourse in Europe During the Israel-Hezbollah War, Paris, p. 23.
12. Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Racism 2006. Country Report on Germany.
13. Die Tageszeitung, 26 Feb 2007.
14. Frankfurter Rundschau, 10 Sep 2007.
15. Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. Chronik antisemitischer Vorfälle 2007.
16. For a discussion of the differences between East and West Germany with respect to right-wing extremism, see: Rommelspacher, Birgit 2006. Rechtsextremismus in Ost- und Westdeutschland im Vergleich. In: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (ed.). Gegen Rechtsextremismus in Ost und West: Andere Ursachen–Andere Gegenstrategien, Konferenzdokumentation, Berlin, p. 6-21.
17. Bundesministerium des Innern 2008. Verfassungsschutzbericht 2007, Berlin, p. 27.
18. All interviewed victim support organizations in East Germany as well as some NGOs in Lower-Saxony state that alternative and left-wing youth are a prime target group of right-wing violence, besides refugees and migrants.
19. Groh, Leon; Kulick, Holger (eds.) 2008. Chronik rechtsextremer und rassistischer Gewalt 2007/8.
20. Die Tageszeitung, 16 May 2008.
21. Spiegel Online, 3 Jun 2008.
(OPP)
