| 
4.2.3.3 Monitoring by Specialized Victim Support Organizations
If we define monitoring in the field of hate crimes as a process whose objective is not only the regular collection of data, but also the systematic evaluation of events and incidents by actively detecting, investigating, assessing, classifying and tracking cases of hate crime, we would find very few NGOs in Germany that are far advanced in doing this kind of monitoring. However, the victim assistance organizations in East Germany belong to these few. Trained and specialized in the support and counseling of victims of right-wing violence, they provide a strong counterbalance to the official police data in the new federal states by independently monitoring hate crimes.
Almost all of these organizations work today under the auspices of the federal states and receive funding from the national program Consultation Networks and Mobile Intervention against Right-wing Extremism and regional state programs. At the beginning of March 2008, eight of these NGOs—some of them with several local offices and branches—were still active in the new federal states:
• ReachOut/Ariba in Berlin
• Opferperspektive in Brandenburg
• LOBBI in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
• Mobile Counseling for Victims of Right-wing Violence/Together (Mobile Beratung für Opfer rechtsextremer Gewalt/Miteinander e.V.) in Saxony-Anhalt
• Counseling Office for Victims of Right-Extremist Violence in the Multicultural Center of Dessau (Beratungsstelle für Opfer rechtsextremer Gewalt im Multikulturellen Zentrum in Dessau) in Saxony-Anhalt
• AMAL in Saxony (22)
• Association for Intercultural Work, Help for Youth and Schools (Verein für Interkulturelle Arbeit, Jugendhilfe und Schule e.V.) in Leipzig and Dresden, Saxony
• Emergency Service for Victims of Right-wing Violence in Thuringia (Thüringer Hilfsdienst für Opfer rechter Gewalt).
The data collection and publications of these NGOs are based on several sources:
• They have direct contact with victims of hate crimes through their counseling and outreach work (described in more detail further detail below.)
• They conduct active research, including regular evaluation of local and regional press, relevant internet sources, newsletters and mailing lists as well as reports and data released by the police and public prosecutors.
• They initiate and evaluate parliamentary inquiries.
• They are well-connected to various regional and local networks, comprising of other NGOs, anti-Fascist groups, youth centers, unions, church groups, local politicians, committed individuals and journalists, from all of whom they receive relevant information.
All victim support organizations publish aggregate information on hate crimes at least once a year. This data is compiled for their region, divided into consultation cases (that is, how many victims were contacted and advised) and research cases (how many incidents they acquired from the sources listed above). They collect and provide information on:
• places of victimization (town/county as well as social surroundings such as public space, public transportation, schools, workplace, home/neighborhood etc.)
• victim characteristics (age, sex, group membership)
• the suspected motives of the crime (racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, hostility towards disabled persons, social marginalization against—for example—the homeless, and political opponents or alternative/non-rightwing youth)
• the character of the offense (damage to property, arson attack, coercion, physical threat, bodily injury, killing/manslaughter); and whether a police record was filed.
For the purpose of data collection, the victim support organizations use a common database which was created in 2002. A comprehensive joint press release was published twice a year on violent crimes with a right-wing political motivation in East Germany (in addition to the press releases the individual projects would publish for their particular region/city) based on this data collection and evaluation. This was a core element of the public relations work that led to the broader public acknowledgement and appreciation of the activities of victim support organizations. Furthermore, these unofficial crime statistics present a constant challenge for government institutions, particularly the police agencies, because the numbers are usually much higher than the official ones, and therefore highlight not only the continuing massive problem of right-wing violence in East Germany, but also the amount of underreporting.
Some of the aggregated data from the CIVITAS projects has been also included in academic studies and reports by supranational bodies and international human rights organizations (see Chapter 1). In some cases, the information collected and published by the regional victim support organizations has also led the police and public prosecutors to initiate investigations. (23) The effects of the data collection and presentation are not easy to measure, but could be summarized as follows:
• For the victims, it is important that the injustice they experienced is documented and published.
• It puts pressure on local politicians, the police and the public in general to confront the problem of hate crimes.
• The systematic and professional documentation helps NGOs to get taken more seriously, especially by state institutions.
According to information provided by our interviews with five of the CIVITAS projects, the main difference between their »unofficial« registration system and the police’s is that the NGOs are concurrently registering incidents of serious threat and coercion, while the police usually categorize such acts of harassment in the category of »other (non-violent) offenses.«(24) Furthermore, the CIVITAS projects’ statistics list incidents of willful damage to property if the circumstances of these attacks suggest that they were committed with the intention of harming and/or intimidating the owners or renters, as is the case, for example, in many arson and other violent attacks against restaurants belonging to migrants or left-wing/alternative youth clubs. And finally, the CIVITAS projects also register incidents that have not been reported to the police because the victims decided not to pursue legal action.
Table 13: Opferperspektive statistics for 2005–2007
Total number of registered right-wing hate crimes in East Germany*
| State | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| Berlin | 115 | 171 | 122 |
| Brandenburg | 140 | 140 | 137 |
| Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania | 62 | 103 | 78 |
| Saxony | 168 | 242 | 306 |
| Saxony-Anhalt | 171 | 200 | 151 |
| Thuringia | 38 | 48 | 67 |
| All federal states in East Germany | 694 | 904 | 861 |
* For the classification criteria, see Chapter 4.3.1.
In 2007 the support organizations registered 1,869 individuals who were directly affected by the 861 incidents. In 717 of these cases, the assaults resulted in bodily injuries. In 495 cases the targets were left-leaning young adults or adolescents. In 265 cases the attack had a racist motivation.
Table 14: Motivation of the offenses 2005-2007
| Motivation | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| Anti-Semitism | 9 | 13 | 8 |
| Homophobic biases | 10 | 10 | 12 |
| Biases against disabled persons | 6 | 7 | 3 |
| Biases against the socially marginalized (homeless, unemployed etc.) | 0 | 5 | 3 |
| Biases and hatred towards »political opponents« (leftwing activists etc.) | 73 | 128 | 158 |
| Biases against non-right-wing persons/youth | 328 | 362 | 337 |
| Others | 15 | 16 | 8 |
| Not evident | 43 | 52 | 67 |
Table 15: Victims affected by age groups
| Age Group (years) | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| 0-13 | 10 | 23 | no data available |
| 14-17 | 156 | 232 | no data available |
| 18-26 | 362 | 475 | no data available |
| 27-40 | 169 | 219 | no data available |
| Older than 40 | 74 | 92 | no data available |
| Unknwon | 22 | 26 | no data available |
| Total | 794 | 1,068 | no data available |
Table 16: Comparison of incidents of right-wing violence registered by the police and by CIVITAS projects (state of Brandenburg)
| Statistics | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| Police (State Office of Criminal Investigations) | 97 | 90 | 93 |
| Opferperspektive | 140 | 140 | 137 |
*Source for all statistics in Table 13-16: Opferperspektive (http://www.opferperspektive.de/Chronologie/519.html.)
22. AMAL in Saxony was the only CIVITAS project that had to halt its work at the end of March 2008 because it was not covered in the new funding program. Some of the other listed NGOs also had to cut down on staff due to reduced financial support from the government.
23. Interviews with AMAL and LOBBI.
24. We conducted longer interviews with staff of Opferperspektive (Brandenburg), ReachOut (Berlin), AMAL (Saxony), LOBBI Ost (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and Mobile Counseling for Victims of Right-Extremist Violence/Together (Saxony-Anhalt).
(OPP)
