Germany on edge as migrant tensions rise
AS THE world partied on New Year’s Eve, one nation was being warned of an “imminent” threat. But it has bigger problems.
GERMANY is a country on edge.
As the world celebrated on New Year’s Eve, Germans were being warned about the “imminent” threat of a terrorist attack.
Two train stations in the city of Munich were evacuated and police officers in riot gear stood guard in the streets as authorities reacted to a “tip-off” suggesting 5-7 jihadis connected to the Islamic State were planning to strike.
The attack never happened, and the threat appears to have passed, but there is still a climate of extreme tension in Germany, if not all of Europe.
In that tense environment, German authorities have covered up crimes committed by migrants to avoid alarming the public, the national newspaper Bild has claimed.
According to Bild’s investigation, reported in the Daily Mail, migrants are being recruited as cheap drug couriers and petty thieves almost as soon as they register as asylum seekers. They are also allegedly being used to sell stolen goods such as mobile phones, often to other migrants.
The most successful couriers are allegedly being recruited into the mafia and used to bring in new recruits.
The paper said the issue of migrant crime was the main topic of discussion at gatherings of police, city and health officials talking about the drug problem in Frankfurt. But officials have been ordered not to talk about the “extremely sensitive subject” or refer to it in an “offensive manner”.
Bild said officials were told the silence was to avoid alarming the public already concerned about the 1.1 million migrants that have entered the country this year, and to prevent giving material to anti-immigration critics.
Germany, the single largest destination for migrants due to its generous social welfare net, will spend more than $25 billion next year to deal with the influx. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has seen her popularity wane as the open-door policy creates tension among conservatives in her own party.
Many Germans also appear to be having second thoughts. In October, The Washington Post reported on tensions in the small town of Calden following a riot involving more than 300 migrants at a tent city near the airport.
Calden, a town of just 3000 residents, now houses 1400 migrants. The riot, which started when someone cut into a food line, saw rival mobs attacking each other wielding pepper spray and metal pipes.
More than 50 police officers struggled for hours to restore order, and three were hospitalised.
“You know, when the refugees started coming, I was one of those who saw people needing help and I thought we have to help,” Harry Kloska, 46, a skydiving instructor based at the airport, told The Washington Post.
“But it’s been weeks [since the refugee camp opened], and I have a different opinion now. I am not sure that we’re going to be able to do this, to help so many people from so many different countries.”
It comes after Facebook, Google and Twitter agreed to delete “hate speech” posted to their sites in Germany within 24 hours, as the German government attempts to crack down on growing anti-immigration sentiment.
In September, Ms Merkel was overheard confronting Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over the issue, with Mr Zuckerberg replying “we need to do some work” to remove offensive posts, Wired reported.
Earlier this month, a controversial German Islamist preacher who set up his own “sharia police” was arrested on suspicion of links to terrorists in Syria, The Telegraph reported.
Sven Lau, 35, had only a week earlier escaped punishment over the “sharia police” incident, in which he and a group of vigilantes patrolled the streets trying to stop people drinking and listening to music.
Europeans have grown increasingly concerned that Islamic radicals may be entering the continent amid the unprecedented influx of migrants. Those fears appeared to be realised last month when police discovered a Syrian passport near the body of one of the Paris suicide bombers.
New Year’s Eve revellers in Munich were warned of a “serious, imminent” terrorist threat and told to avoid large crowds on Thursday night, as a foreign intelligence tip-off suggested Islamic State was planning attacks with five to seven suicide bombers.
Three weeks ago, Finnish police arrested Iraqi twin brothers who had entered the country posing as asylum seekers in connection with an Islamic State massacre of unarmed prisoners in June 2014, The New York Times reported.
According to the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, the 23-year-olds were suspected of killing 11 people during a massacre of as many as 1,700 unarmed Iraqi soldiers in June 2014 at Camp Speicher near Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad.
The men were identified from an Islamic State propaganda video of the killings.
FEARS IS PASSPORTS USED IN GERMANY
It comes as German security authorities confirm migrants carrying forged passports from the same workshop as those held by two of the Paris terrorists have entered Europe through Germany.
German security authorities believe several people entered Germany during November and October travelling on Syrian passports with serial numbers similar to those in the possession of the terrorist group Islamic State, said Joachim Herrmann, the Interior Minister for the southern state of Bavaria.
Two of the bombers from last month’s deadly Paris attacks were carrying passports with the same serial numbers, he said.
Concerns that people may have been sent to Germany by the Islamic State was the obvious conclusion, he said. “Unfortunately, no one knows where the refugees in question are now,” Hermann said.
He was confirming a report published earlier that week in the Bild newspaper. Citing security officials, Bild said the travel documents included legitimate passports stolen in al-Raqqa, Syria, Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital.
They have been converted for use by persons other than the original holders. Bild also reported that the passports showed the same forging characteristics as those held by two of the attackers in Paris on November 13.
The two were checked as they entered the European Union through the Greek island of Lesbos. It said the passports of the migrants to Germany had been copied by the authorities as their holders entered the country.
No fingerprints had been taken of the holders, who might or might not be genuine refugees.
Another German press report said on Sunday that Islamic State had managed to seize a large number of genuine passports in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
The Sunday edition of Die Welt put the number at tens of thousands. The German authorities confirmed a report in March that around 3800 blank Syrian passports had been seized by Islamic State in al-Raqqa.
REFUGEE INFLUX ‘AN OPPORTUNITY’
However, Chancellor Merkel has called on Germans to see a record refugee influx as “an opportunity for tomorrow” and urged doubters not to follow racist hatemongers.
The past year had been unusually challenging, she said in a pre-released text of her new year’s address, also bracing Germans for more hardships ahead.
But she stressed it would all be worth it because “countries have always benefited from successful immigration, both economically and socially”.
With a view to right-wing populists and xenophobic street rallies, she said “it’s important we don’t allow ourselves to be divided”.
“It is crucial not to follow those who, with coldness or even hatred in their hearts, lay a sole claim to what it means to be German and seek to exclude others.” Merkel has earned both praise and criticism at home and abroad for her decision to open Germany to a record wave of refugees, about half from war-torn Syria.
Germany took in almost 1.1 million asylum seekers this year, five times last year’s total, the Saechsische Zeitung regional newspaper reported Wednesday, citing unpublished official figures.
Merkel, faced with opposition in her conservative camp and popular concerns about the influx, has vowed steps to reduce numbers next year.
Her plan involves convincing other EU members to take in more refugees, so far with little success, and an EU deal with gateway country Turkey to better protect its borders.
Merkel said that “there has rarely been a year in which we were challenged so much to follow up our words with deeds”.
She thanked volunteers and police, soldiers and administrators for their “outstanding” accomplishments and “doing far, far more than their duty”.
Looking to 2016, she said “there is no question that the influx of so many people will keep demanding much of us. It will take time, effort and money.” But Merkel recalled that Germany had mastered past challenges such as reunification a quarter-century ago and benefited from a “robust and innovative” economy.
“I am convinced,” she said, “that, handled properly, today’s great task presented by the influx and the integration of so many people is an opportunity for tomorrow.” She urged Germans to be “self-confident and free, humanitarian and open to the world”.
Amid the world’s greatest refugee wave since World War II, she said, “it goes without saying that we help and accommodate people who seek safe haven with us”.
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