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Racist attacks in Germany

01 January 1991

Racist attacks in Germany
artdoc August=1992

Three German neo-nazi youths have been jailed for between three
and a half and five years for taking part in a petrol bomb attack
on a refugee hostel in Hunxe, on the lower Rhine. The petrol
bombs exploded in a bedroom seriously injuring two young Lebanese
girls. Seinab Saado, 8, barely survived the attack; she is left
terribly scarred and her lungs are permanently damaged. Her six
year old sister, Mokadas, also suffered severe burns. The public
prosecutor in the case had recommended a sentence of 9 years, but
the judge demurred, arguing that it could not be proved that the
attack was meant to kill.
In June policemen in riot gear surrounded three refugee hostels
near Freiberg, south west of Dresden and screamed racist abuse
before storming the hostels. Several children as well as adults
were injured in the raid. The raid was justified by the Chief of
Police who cited German anxieties about the criminality of
foreigners.
While the number of attacks on refugee hostels has declined in
recent months there has been an increase in street attacks on
black people. A Vietnamese worker, Nguyen Tu, was stabbed to
death by neo-nazi skinheads, in front of dozens of onlookers,
near Berlin. A Nigerian man, who was attacked in Wendisch Rietz,
30 miles east of Berlin, and beaten unconscious before being
thrown in a lake, is still fighting for his life.
One of the few responses to these attacks is the establishment
of government backed re-education centres for neo-Nazi offenders,
such as the Roots project in Marzahn, Berlin, which sees the
fascists as `victims' in need of rehabilitation. Anti-fascists
have pointed out that these centres are helping to facilitate
racist violence rather than prevent it.

Statewatch vol 2 no 4, July/August 1992