August 19 will remain a day of horror for eight Indian men. They were taking in the sights at a festival in the small town of Muegeln in the state of Saxony, when the holiday mood suddenly turned ugly. The eight men were attacked by a mob of around 50 youths shouting racist slogans. As the men ran across the town square, the youths chased them, shouting “foreigners out”, as locals looked on impassively.
When the Indians sought shelter in an Indian-owned pizzeria, the mob kicked down the doors and vandalised the owner’s car before police arrived and dispersed the attackers.
The Indians, one of whom has lived in the town for five years, suffered facial cuts and severe bruising in the attack, which experts said was racially motivated.
The attack in eastern Germany continues to draw condemnation, with warnings that attacks of this kind were part of a pattern in the former communist region and were likely to happen again.
Stephan Kramer, general secretary for the Central Council of Jews, said there was an “apparently dangerous situation” for foreigners in certain parts of Germany.
The authorities should warn foreigners not to settle in certain eastern German regions, he told the online newspaper
Netzeitung, adding that a long-running discussion about declaring “no-go” areas should be revived.
Kramer said this was not a hysterical response but “bitter reality”. And he accused mainstream politicians of taking up predictable positions without re-evaluating their strategy in combating racism.
The minister responsible for reconstruction in the states of former East Germany, Wolfgang
Tiefensee, spoke of an ‘unendurable excess of violence’. And the parliamentary head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats
(CDU), Volker Kauder, expressed shame.
“I am deeply hurt that something like this is possible in our country,” Kauder told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.
But Saxony’s Prime Minister Georg Milbradt, also a CDU member, warned against pre-judging the issue. The police should be allowed to probe the case, before conclusions were made about the incident, he told national television.
Some 200 demonstrators gathered in Muegeln to express opposition to the attack. The state government of Saxony has pledged to do everything possible to find those responsible.
Chancellory Minister Hermann Winkler spoke by telephone to Indian ambassador Meera Shankar after she voiced concern over the incident and called for steps to be taken to ensure there was no repetition of such violence against Indians. Shankar said an Indian diplomat was being sent to Muegeln to speak to the victims and discuss the security situation with officials in the area.
“It has been ensured that there is no repetition of such a thing,” she told the Tagespiegel newspaper, calling on police to conduct a thorough investigation into the attack. The police stepped up their presence in Muegeln and continued questioning potential witnesses in a bid to track down those involved in the attack.
Former German ambassador to New Delhi Hans-Georg
Wieck, the chairman of the German-Indian Society, condemned the attack and called for those responsible to be punished.
“I was astonished to hear of the attack. I could not imagine that Germans would resort to violence against Indians. Indians have been living in Germany for decades,” said
Wieck.
Some 45,000 Indians are resident in Germany. Many were educated here and have settled down and started families, said
Wieck. Relations with Germans at communal level were good, he added.
‘People with dark skin have a much higher risk of being attacked in east Germany than they do in west Germany,’ said Sebastian
Edathy, a member of the German parliament’s internal affairs committee.
Two men aged 21 and 23 were detained in the aftermath, but later freed by police, who apparently took an hour to appear on the scene despite being alerted to possible trouble.
|
The eight Indians in the eastern German town of Muegeln were attacked by a mob of around 50 youths shouting racist slogans. As the men ran across the town square, the youths chased them, shouting “foreigners out”, as locals looked on impassively |
