Refugees reached Germany.
Extremists cause riots in an eastern city where a center is being built to receive displaced persons
Shattered windows, riot police preventing an attack on a public building and officers torn between understanding citizens’ protest and retaliating from hardliners: these were the images that emerged these days from Gravesmühlen, a remote district in eastern Germany whose local powers have He authorized the construction of housing-containers for 500 refugees.
Windows and doors were broken as a result of police clashes with a group of ultra-rightists and hooligans who came from different parts of the Land of Mecklenburg-Antepomeria. They were joined by a march of 700 citizens who demanded at least a reduction in the number of refugees being moved to an industrial plot next to their homes.
Uphall, a municipality adjacent to Greavesmühlen where the center is to be established, has 1,660 inhabitants. The site for the refugees is next to some recently built single-family homes.
It was known that residents planned to express their unease at the building where decisions on refugees were to be made – which narrowly won the yes vote. 60 policemen were deployed to ensure order. Finally, the operation was reinforced with 200 soldiers after the infiltration of well-known neo-Nazis was discovered.
“The government of Olaf Scholz has to admit that the municipalities are overwhelmed,” Conservative councilor Tino Schoemann told regional public television NDR. “Irregular immigration must be stopped, repatriation must be aggressive,” he said.
Uphal’s far-flung attack is a new warning sign. German right-wing extremism is concentrating forces in the east. This is the half of the country where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) gets the best results, being the only formation of that spectrum with seats in the parliament (Bundestag).
In addition to that single parliamentary branch, the group of ‘Reichsberger’ – ‘citizens of the Reich’ – who do not recognize the constitutional order or the current borders of Germany, is gaining strength.
Two years ago he took advantage of an anti-vaccine protest to try to storm the Bundestag, but was blocked by police. National alarm was set off two months ago when a bizarre coup plot was dismantled, led by a businessman who calls himself Heinrich XIII or Prince Reis.
proud moment
The far-right seeks its moment of pride where there is disquiet among the common citizen. Uphall is one of several semi-rural municipalities, especially in the east, where the Scholz government and regional powers relocate refugees.
The number of asylum seekers is well below the record of one million refugees Germany took in in 2015. Two years later, the AfD became the first far-right force in the Bundestag with seats backed by the xenophobic vote.
The total number of asylum seekers in 2022 was 217,774. This figure does not include the millions of Ukrainians – who are not required to apply for asylum under European rules – who have arrived in Germany since the start of the Russian invasion.
To the problems in locating them is added the population’s fear of applicants who have their applications rejected and which continues in the country, often in the midst of uprooting and criminalization. Cases like that of Palestinian Ibrahim A., 33, who stabbed some teenagers aged between 17 and 19 to death and wounded seven others on a regional train last Wednesday.
He was released a few days ago after a year in provisional prison for another knife attack. He had a history of assault, robbery and sexual assault. He did not know a fixed address, but neither did any place to which he would be deported, since he is stateless. His act was not of Jihadism, but of mental disorder.
