In an effort to address rising divisions driven by extremist groups, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said fighting racism in Germany is her government’s “deepest concern” as she vowed to tackle a spate of far-right extremist attacks.
Ms Merkel met representatives of migrant organisations on Monday to reassure them that ministers were taking the threat posed by right-wing extremists seriously.
The meeting came two weeks after a 43-year-old German man shot dead nine people with immigrant backgrounds at a shisha bar and a kiosk in the town of Hanau before killing his mother and himself.
Germany’s federal prosecutor said the attacker, who has been named only as Tobias R, had posted material online, which showed a “deeply racist mindset”.
Ms Merkel said at the time that the shootings had revealed a “poison” of racism in Germany.
The deadly attack last month was the third in the country to be carried out by a right-wing extremist in less than a year. A liberal politician was murdered in his home in Kassel in June last year. Just four months later in October, two people died in the eastern city of Halle after a gunman targeted a synagogue.
Ms Merkel said the government had implemented a package of measures following the synagogue shooting.
“We hope this will have an effect,” she said, adding that “this doesn’t change the way you feel”.
The Chancellor said that everyone in the country deserved to feel safe “regardless of their skin colour or faith”.
Ms Merkel joined Interior Minister Horst Seehofer at the meeting, who announced the creation of an independent expert group on Islamophobia at the weekend.
Mr Seehofer, who leads the Christian Social Union (CSU) party, himself has come under fire for comments he has made about Muslims. He has previously declared that “Islam does not belong to Germany”.
Last week, a network of 60 migrant-related organisations published an open letter to Ms Merkel accusing her Christian Democrats party (CDU) as well as her coalition partners the CSU and the SPD of tailoring their migration and integration policies to win back voters who support the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
Concerns over the AfD exploded across German politics last month when the party helped elected a new leader of Thuringa state. The move was dubbed a “pact with Fascism” and forced the resignation of Mrs Merkel’s designated successor as leader of the biggest national party, the CDU.
The migrant network the BKMO said that Germany was exercising “massive structural racism” towards 23 per cent of the country’s residents, who are from a migrant background.
State governments across Germany are considering a raft of constitutional initiatives that that would insulated institutions from far-right political forces. A new amendment in Saxony-Anhalt expressed prohibits the “revitalisation or dissemination of National Socialist ideas, the glorification of the National Socialist system of rule, and racist and anti-Semitic activities”.
Source: The National
