German city reels from far-right violence after fatal stabbing

A fatal stabbing and the arrest of two migrant suspects have sparked violent street clashes and mob attacks on immigrants in the eastern German city of Chemnitz.

Police have struggled to keep order in Saxony’s third-largest city on two consecutive nights and, on Monday evening, about 18 demonstrators and two police were injured during a riot. Police made 43 arrests for assault and are investigating 10 people for giving the illegal Hitler salute.

The clashes followed the death early on Sunday morning of a local 35-year-old man on his way home from an open-air party. The man, a carpenter and father of one, was stabbed after an apparent scuffle and died a short time later in hospital.

Two other men were injured in the attack and police said they had on remand two suspects – a 23-year-old Syrian and 22-year-old Iraqi national.

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News of their detention, and their nationality, prompted attacks on migrants in Chemnitz with eyewitnesses reporting shouts of “get lost”, “you’re not welcome here” and “we are the people” – the 1989 East German slogan co-opted by the xenophobic Pegida group.

Liberal migration policies

On Tuesday the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) said the violence was a direct consequence of Germany’s liberal migration policies which it has criticised since 2015-2016. Bundestag AfD co-leader Alice Weidel posted on social media: “The slaughter goes on.”

That prompted Saxon state premier Michael Kretschmer to attack what he saw as AfD exploitation of the situation in Chemnitz, known as Karl-Marx-Stadt in East German times.

“It’s tasteless what is being done on the back of the victim, the political instrumentalisation is disgusting,” he said, calling on “decent” Saxons to stand up against xenophobia and racism in the state. He insisted the mob was not made up of locals but bussed-in extremists.

But extremist researchers have criticised the Saxon state government for turning a blind eye to a serious extremism problem in large swathes of the state.

“Not acting, looking away and sugar-coating the massive right-wing extremism is part of the problem,” said Samuel Salzborn, a far-right researcher to local broadcaster MDR.

Role of police

Criticism has focused, too, on the role of the police in events since Sunday. Police insist they remained in control on Monday evening, when fewer than 600 officers in riot gear formed a human shield between two camps totalling about 7,000 people.

Police say more people came to the demo – flagged on social media – than were registered, including people “linked to the far-right political spectrum and the violent football scene”.

Germany’s police union blamed an under-resourced police force for difficulties maintaining order and dismissed as “far-fetched” claims that some police in Saxony sympathised with far-right groups.

Reaction

Events in Chemnitz have shocked Germans across the country. President Frank Walter Steinmeier warned that “self-appointed vigilantes” endangered the social peace.

Chancellor Angela Merkel extended her sympathies to the family of the dead man but warned that anti-immigrant intimidation “has nothing to do with our rule of law”. Her interior minister, Horst Seehofer, offered Saxony assistance from federal police if required.

With a population of 247,000, Chemnitz has an 8 per cent foreign national population – below the national average of 11 per cent. It is home to about 6,000 refugees, asylum seekers and others, also below the per capita average.

But locals say they are concerned by groups of young men who gather in the city centre each evening.

“I’m not saying they’re all foreigners,” said Manfred Billias to MDR, “but you can’t head in without being afraid something will happen.”

After reporters complained of being harassed by extremists in Chemnitz, Germany’s journalist union DJV warned its members they were “viewed by violent right-wing extremists as opponents and not as neutral observers”.

“That has to be clear, too, to police who have among their tasks enabling journalist reporting,” it said in a statement.

A year before Saxony elects a new government, a new poll shows the AfD gaining even further support in the eastern German state. The far-right party is now the second-largest grouping with 25 per cent support, more than double the 9.7 per cent it scored in 2014 and just five points behind the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU).