Thursday, March 01, 2018

The Hate Crimes

 There were 2,219 attacks on refugees and refugee homes in 2017 in Germany, new Interior Ministry figures revealed which translates to more than five a day. 

The attacks broke down into 1,906 attacks on refugees and 313 on homes, with more than 300 people injured as a result. The crimes listed in the statistics included bodily harm, property damage, defamation, hate speech, trespassing, arson and causing an explosion.

This is a third fewer than in the previous year, when the authorities counted more than 3,500 attacks.

Bernd Mesovic, legal director at refugee rights organization Pro Asyl, said the reduction in crime rate was only superficially good news. "For one thing, in the year before, 2016, we had the highest ever number of shelters and people who had to be sheltered," he told DW. "Since then, quite a few refugee homes have been closed again, and fewer homes probably lead to fewer opportunities for attacks. On top of that, a lot of these attacks must have happened outside the homes — so in the street — which does show a certain lack of inhibition." Long waiting times leave asylum seekers "frustrated and demotivated, because they still only live in temporary housing, and struggle to establish contacts." This exacerbates the risk of crime among refugees as well as attacks on them, because it means people are kept in mass homes in communities far away from urban centers. "Usually, wherever these homes were closed, and people are distributed around communities, we find the problems have calmed down," he said.

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