According to official statistics, there were eight cases of intentional damage to Berlin homes housing refugees and asylum seekers in 2024, along with 77 attacks on these individuals. This is in sharp contrast to 32 targeted attacks on individuals and none on homes in 2023.
As the government policy toughens its migration policy and right-wing ideas gain popularity, officials sound the “alarm bell” for the government to act.
A Freedom of Information Request
According to taz, a freedom of information request filed by Green MPs Ario Ebrahimpour Mirzaie and Jian Omar to the Berlin administration’s Interior Affairs body yielded the worrisome statistics released last week.
Omar, the Green Party’s spokesperson on migration and participation, called this an alarm for the government to propose a “clear protection strategy for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.”
Due to the 77 attacks, 34 people required hospital treatment, including 16 women, 14 men, two girls, and two males of unknown age. Thirty-seven suspects were identified; 11 of them were known to police.
Clara Bünger, an MP for the far-left Linke party, agreed with Omar, citing the spread of anti-migration sentiment across the country as the reason for the increase.
“The number of insults, threats, and attacks against refugees has been worryingly high for years and it is outrageous that these conditions are accepted with a shrug by many politicians and members of the public,” she told The Guardian.
Migration and Crime – What are the Correlations?
Migration is named as the primary cause for the rise of right-wing ideology in Germany. The series of attacks in the past year, such as the Munich attack, which killed a mother and her two-year-old child, have caused fear for German citizens.
However, as DW reports, academics at the IFO Institute have proven that “there is no correlation between the proportion of immigrants in a given district and the local crime rate.”
Despite this, migrants have felt the shift in attitudes and policy, resulting in asylum requests dropping 34 percent last year.
Far-Right Violence
The crime rate that leaves migrant victims is a different issue.
2024 saw an approximate 17 percent increase in crimes with far-right motivation, with almost 34,000 offences, including over a thousand violent attacks.
“Politically motivated” attacks on refugee shelters specifically also increased, based on preliminary information from the Interior Ministry, reported The Guardian; from 167 in 2023, the jump to 218 (with potentially more as data is still being processed) is quite steep.
Federal statistics, however, reported a decrease in attacks on individuals nationally from the record high of 2023.
The State Office for Refugee Affairs (LAF) stated that security guards were typically on duty around-the-clock and that they had protection plans in place at all lodging facilities that hosted migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
Stahnsdorf, a small town just outside Berlin, had similar measures put in place before a group of men attacked the local refugee shelter. The security guard was left hospitalised by the beating he suffered after discovering the group attempting a break-in.
What are the Government Policies Past and Present?
In 2015, the EU and Germany especially, experienced a massive influx of refugees, stretching popular sentiment and national resources to their limit. Then Chancellor Angela Merkel famously declared, “Wir schaffen das,” which roughly translates to “We can do it” or “We can manage it.” It began the politics of “Willkommenskultur” or “Welcoming culture” that allowed 1.1 million asylum seekers into the country in 2015 alone.
The critics of this move argued that it greatly contributed to the rise of the far-right, who believed that such a saying invokes the notion that Germany can do anything, even the impossible. As experts told Politico, it was a phrase that “asks to be misused and misappropriated.”
Leading anti-migration party Alternative für Deutchland (AfD), parts of which have been identified by domestic intelligence as “right-wing extremist” factions, has set out ambitious plans to reverse this through “remigration.”
Remigration focuses on the deportation of immigrants convicted of crime but has also been interpreted to mean mass deportations of asylum-seekers, foreigners, and “non-assimilated” citizens.
There is currently an immense divide in German politics: on the one hand, there are the AfD voters, who put the party in an advantageous position of coming second in the recent elections; on the other, those attempting to keep up the “Brandmauer,” or “firewall,” that has prevented cooperation with far-right parties since World War II.
The Friedrich Merz-led conservatives (CDU/CSU), who came first in the election, are attempting to form a coalition with the third-place social democrats (SPD). Their failure would mean gains for AfD, which acquired second place. In an early April poll, the fledgling government was already behind AfD, despite not having formed yet.
While this is due to several factors, not just migration policy, the tendency is there and could mean a lack of government action as it attempts to appease AfD supporters.
