2024-08-27 05:07:32
After the terrorist attack in Solingen, in which a member of the Islamic State killed three people with a knife, the Germans are once again dealing with the issue of migration. He was killing an asylum seeker who was supposed to be deported, but in the end it wasn’t. Opposition parties preparing for the September elections in East Germany are calling for a change in migration policy.
At the celebrations of the 650th anniversary of the founding of the West German town of Solingen, a 26-year-old Syrian, identified by the authorities as Issa Al H, attacked. He arrived in the country at the end of 2022 and applied for asylum, writes the Reuters agency. Although he was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria, he could not be reached at the hostel and remained in the country.
The attacker eventually turned himself in to the police. “I’m the one you’re looking for…” he told officers Saturday night. He murdered three people and injured eight others. The terrorist organization Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which published two videos allegedly showing the attacker on the Telegram social network.
In response to the terror attack, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised to step up immigration deportations, curb illegal migration and also wants to tighten gun laws. Nevertheless, the head of the government and his ruling Social Democracy did not avoid strong criticism from the opposition parties.
“Enough is enough,” Friedrich Merz from the opposition CDU responded to what he believed to be insufficient steps taken by the government, and at the same time presented his own vision of asylum policy. For example, he proposes to extend the period after which a foreigner can apply for German citizenship, refugees would also not be able to apply for asylum in Germany if they reached the country through another European Union country. According to Merz, Germany should stop accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan.
The head of the strongest opposition party, which dominates the national opinion polls, would also introduce permanent border controls, the Schengen area notwithstanding. The measure would thus also affect the Czechs.
A similar reaction came from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. “Free yourself and finally stop following the forced path of multiculturalism,” said its leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, according to Politico.
This is the umpteenth knife attack committed by an immigrant in recent months. In June, a man from Afghanistan stabbed three football fans in Wolmirstedt, Germany. At the end of May, an unsuccessful asylum seeker again attacked a police officer in Mannheim, who died as a result of his injuries.
The issue of migration has thus again become the topic of the upcoming elections, which will take place at the beginning of September in three federal states in the east of Germany. According to polls, the anti-immigration AfD leads in two of them, followed by Merz’s CDU.
No large knives in public
German police said there had been dozens of Islamist-motivated attacks since 2000. The largest of them took place in 2012 at the Christmas market in Berlin and twelve people died, including one Czech woman. “The risk of violent acts motivated by jihadists remains high. The Federal Republic of Germany remains a direct target for terrorist organizations,” the Federal Criminal Police Office said in a report at the beginning of the year, according to Reuters.
At the same time, the number of knife attacks in Germany is increasing: between 2022 and 2023, their number increased by six percentage points. Criminal investigators investigated almost nine thousand cases of assault or threats with a knife last year, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. This year there could be an increase again – one of Berlin’s hospitals states that in the first half of this year alone, the staff treated between 50 and 55 people attacked with a knife. This is roughly the same as for the whole of last year.
The need for stricter measures has therefore been discussed in Germany for a long time. The last time Interior Minister Nancy Faeser spoke about them was less than two weeks before the terrorist attack in Solingen. “We will soon present the relevant amendments to the arms law,” she said on August 11. The government in Berlin could ban the carrying of knives with blades longer than six centimeters in public.
“It will happen very quickly,” assured the head of the German government, Olaf Scholz, after the latest attack so far.
However, criminologist Dirk Baier believes that the law will not bring the desired relief, as its compliance is still dependent on the size of the police force. According to him, the education of young people is more important. “The problem will not be solved by laws. It is a social problem and we must respond to it with appropriate social measures,” he is quoted as saying by The Guardian.
You might be interested: An unusual murder shakes Germany. A 12-year-old girl was stabbed by her classmates, apparently out of revenge (March 15, 2023)
In the case, which falls under the jurisdiction of the public prosecutor’s office in Koblenz, underage girls appear as both perpetrators and victims. | Video: Reuters