Germany: Police attack asylum seekers
01 January 2001
When three African asylum seekers in the city of Arnstadt called the police after they were racially attacked by around 15 German youths in late October last year the officers joined in the assault instead of arresting the perpetrators. More than three months after the attack, no legal proceedings have been initiated, and the Thuringian Refugee Council has received desperate letters from refugees asking to be transferred to another, safer city. The regional police headquarters in Gotha is devising a "security concept" for asylum seekers because of the continuing threats and racist abuse, but the evidence suggests that an increased police presence on the streets is unlikely to provide greater safety for asylum seekers.
Patterson Kenwou and Georges Fopa from Cameroon and John Adana from Sierra Leone were first attacked on 20 October in the local Lindeneck discotheque when Patterson was dancing with his German girlfriend. The group was abused ("monkey, niggers out, prostitutes") by male and female youths so they left the pub to go home. Around 15 local youths followed them and brutally attacked Patterson. After attempts by his friends to free him, the three men were able to scare their attackers off with a toy pistol. Mr Adana called the police, at which point the local youths started to return. Instead of protecting the three asylum seekers, one police officer hit Mr Adana when he defended himself from a renewed attack by one of the youths. The three men were then handcuffed and taken to the local police station, where they suffered further racial abuse from their attackers as well as the police officers, whilst remaining handcuffed. A public statement by the three men reads:
All of us were handcuffed brutally with more beatings received from the police and the gang of Germans [...] The...15 Germans were left unarrested. They moved freely to the police station and mounted another confrontation on us. One of the German aggressors bought hot coffee from an automat in the police station and threw it on the face of John Adana while the rest stood by laughing and insulting us with racist words.
After Adana and Fapo were released, Mr Kenwou was held for another ten hours without food or drink; no charges were brought against him. When he asked if the police could take off the painful handcuffs, he was subjected to more verbal abuse ("You're an animal, you come from the jungle, why are you here anyway? You should go back to Africa"). The same day, the police sent a report to the local newspaper Arnstädter Allgemeine which declared that the three African men had caused trouble, resisted the police and were then successfully arrested with the help of German bystanders.
The everyday reality in the town of Arnstadt is pointed out by some journalists who visited the refugees after the attack. Eben Mancho, a member of the human rights organisation The Voice, Africa Forum and an asylum seeker said:
After we interviewed the refugees in question and left the asylum seekers hostel, we wandered through a shopping mall and were abused. One hundred metres behind the hostel the first car stopped to hurl abuse at us: "nigger, monkeys out" and similar things. Shortly before we reached the shopping area we heard the same abuse from different cars. [A few days later], the same thing happened again.
In another interview, Adama Quattara from the Ivory Coast reports: "We are not safe here. They wind down their car windows and shout "monkeyboy, go back to the bush"...we are not safe here, I didn't know they hated Blacks in this country, I don't want to stay." In January this year, the regional refugee council were approached by other asylum seekers resident in Arnstadt: they asked to be relocated as they had suffered another racial attack in the same discotheque, this time with security staff joining in. The owner barred the victims, not the attackers, from entering the premises again.
Given the extent of official collusion the feeling of fe