|
Germany's ethnic Sorbs are also being targeted by extremists in its eastern state of Saxony, according to Premier Stanislav Tillich. Anti-Islam protests in Dresden, he said, were turning against "everything different."
Premier Tillich warned on Wednesday that xenophobic attacks on the Sorbian community in Saxony's Lausitz region had reached a "new dimension." He demanded that "every" incident, including slogans sprayed on street signage in Sorb areas, be investigated.
His remarks precede a meeting of interior ministers from Germany's 16 federal states or "Länder" on Thursday in Cologne. Their agenda will focus of refugee arrivals, especially from war-torn Syria, and ways to counter xenophobia.
Tillich (pictured above), who is himself Sorb and conservative ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said during his youth in the former communist East Germany he had experience hostility, even at football matches.
German society, he said, was now preoccupied with rising refugee numbers and "some misuse this situation and rail against everything different."
Sorb youth frightened
"That prompts some to become abusive toward Sorbs. I regard that as alarming," he told the newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.
Last month, a police surveillance unit chief in Lausitz, Bernd Merbitz, said Sorb youth were frightened after recent verbal attacks by protagonists, some who were masked.
Sorbs of Slavic origin settled in Lausitz 1,500 years ago and also live in the Spree region in Brandenburg State around Berlin. In all, they number about 60,000.
They are one of four ethnic minorities with special rights in Germany, alongside Frisians, ethnic Danes, and both the Sinti and Roma - falsely described as "gypsies."
Far-right captilizing, says Tillich
Tillich accused the far-right NPD party, which until recently held seats in Saxony's parliament, and the recently arisen AfD anti-EU party of initiating a series of anti-Islamic protests.
They had seized on worries among citizens about how to integrate and accommodate newly arrived refugees and thereby sought to "make political capital" out of the refugee's fate, he said.
What was needed was face-to-face clarification with citizens and education, Tillich added. "We need to remove the insecurity in peoples' minds."
Last Monday's anti-Islam rally in Dresden drew 10,000 people and 9,000 counter demonstrators including members of Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities, left-wing and anti-fascist groups and students.
Emergence condemned by interior ministers
The rally was condemned by Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who told Germany's parliamentary TV channel Phoenix "we have no danger of Islamization." He recently noted that foreigners in Saxony made up only 2 percent of the eastern state's population.
Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas called on all mainstream political parties to distance themselves from "these protests."
"We can't be silent if a xenophobic atmosphere is being built on the backs of people who have lost everything and come to us for help," Maas said, referring to refugees.
The head of the regional states' interior ministers' conference, Ralf Jäger, who is the Social Democrat intenior minister in North Rhine-Westphalia state said a probe was being launched into the make up of the anti-Islam groups.
Dresden's protests were organized by a group with the acronym PEGIDA that loosely translates as Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West." Two months ago, its initial match drew only 200 protestors.
Rise in asylum-seeker numbers
Last Saturday, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said 230,000 asylum seekers were expected in Germany in 2015, up from a predicted 200,000 this year.
In some areas, former army barracks and schools buildings have been requisitioned to house those arriving.
Germany has long become home to about three million people of Turkish descent, who form Germany's largest so-called ethnic minority.
ipj/rc (dpa, epd, KNA, AP)
|
Poem
Manşetler
Spor
Son Dakika
Haber
Yerel Haberler
