”Xenophobia at the Heart of German Politics”
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: A German state governor has won applause from fellow conservatives for demanding a crackdown on "criminal young foreigners." Immigrant groups and political rivals say he is playing with fire in a debate that reveals the widespread xenophobia obstructing integration in Germany.

An assault by two foreign youths on a German pensioner has triggered conservative calls for a crackdown on "criminal young foreigners" and exposed deeply entrenched xenophobia that casts doubt on this country's ability ever to fully integrate its 15 million inhabitants with an immigrant background.

The 76-year-old pensioner suffered a fractured skull when he was beaten by a 20-year-old Turkish man born in Germany and a 17-year-old immigrant from Greece on December 20 after he asked them to stop smoking on a subway train in Munich, where smoking is forbidden.

The pensioner recovered after a spell in hospital and recalls how they spat at him and called him a "Shit German" before kicking him in the head. Police arrested the attackers shortly afterwards and the case could have been closed as a cowardly assault by two violent criminals who both have long police records.

But a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, Hesse state premier Roland Koch (more...), seized on the fact that the attackers weren't German and decided to launch a debate about foreign criminals.

"How much are we prepared to take from a small proportion of violent youths, who frequently have a foreign background?" Koch, who is struggling in his campaign to win a third term in a state election on January 27, told mass circulation Bild Zeitung in an interview published last Friday.

"We have spent too long showing a strange sociological understanding for groups that consciously commit violence as ethnic minorities," he went on. Xenophobia at the Heart of German Politics >>> By David Crossland

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EU Xenophobia Report
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The European Union has published a new report on racism in Europe. Germany comes in for criticism on several fronts, including violent crimes and discrimination against foreigners in the job and housing markets.

Racism has become a front-page issue in Germany in recent days after an apparently xenophobic attack on eight Indians (more...) in the eastern German town of Mügeln. Now a new European Union report on racism reveals the full extent of the problem -- and shows that everyday racism in the general population is just as much an issue as right-wing extremism.

The "Report on Racism and Xenophobia in the Member States of the EU" was published Tuesday by the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) -- an agency which was created on Mar. 1, 2007 to replace the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia.

The report shows that violent racism appears to be on the increase in Germany, with reported incidents of racist violence and crime increasing by 14 percent between 2005 and 2006, going up from 15,914 incidents in 2005 to 18,142 in 2006. However the report did say that the figures for reported crimes "should be interpreted with caution," as an apparent increase can reflect better data collection as well as real increases.

Crime with an extremist right-wing motive also showed an increase, going up from 15,361 incidents in 2005 to 17,597 incidents in 2006, a 14.6 percent increase. "The observation of this apparent upward trend in extremist activity in Germany is supported by reports of increased right-wing attacks noted by victim support organizations in eastern parts of the country," the report's authors write.

However the incidence of anti-Semitic crime in Germany remained fairly constant, with 1,662 incidents in 2006 compared to 1,682 in 2005. Racism On the Rise in Germany (more)

Mark Alexander