Following an outbreak of riots across multiple cities on New Year’s Eve which saw, among other things, cars set alight as well as police and firefighters attacked, a top politician from Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party blamed the government’s failure to integrate the exceptionally large number of migrants and asylum seekers who have come to the country in recent years.
While speaking to the T-Online news portal on Monday, January 2nd, Jens Spahn, the deputy leader of the CDU parliamentary group called on German politicians to seriously consider why New Year’s Eve ‘celebrations’ have become increasingly violent over the years, in the same places with the same participants, arguing that the problem is “more about unregulated migration, failed integration, and a lack of respect for the state,” Berliner Zeitung reports.
“The attacks on emergency services are unspeakable,” Spahn added.
According to reports from the German press, police and firefighters responded to 3,943 incidents in Berlin alone. Some 41 emergency service providers—police officers, firefighters, and ambulance workers—were injured during the chaos, according to the police. Berlin’s Interior Senator Iris Sprager (SPD) said that there had been “dozens of attacks” carried out against emergency services.
The newspaper BILD reported that the violent incidents were “particularly bad attacks in the hotspot neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Neukölln with a high proportion of migrants.”
Scores of young men in the Kreuzberg were seen setting fire to barricades before attacking the firefighters who arrived to extinguish the fires. In Neukölln, one of the most multicultural districts in the country, dozens of young men fired projectiles at emergency services.
In total, 159 arrests were made in connection with the attacks, a spokesman for the police said, noting that most of the perpetrators were young men or teenagers.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) has called for severe punitive action to be taken against those who attacked emergency services, saying: “These New Year’s messes must be severely punished. A noticeable reminder and, if necessary, imprisonment, are appropriate.”
The conservative, anti-globalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s main right-wing opposition party, condemned the attacks and sharply criticized the ruling left-liberal coalition for its open-borders policies which they regard as having contributed to the violence and mayhem witnessed on New Year’s Eve.
In an official statement released on Monday, January 2nd, the AfD wrote:
Anarchy reigned in Berlin on New Year’s Eve. It was a first foretaste of future everyday life in German cities because although the authorities and the press are adamantly silent when it comes to the specific naming of the perpetrators, the countless videos of that night speak volumes: They are young, violent men with a southern appearance who hardly speak German. And not only can they immigrate unhindered, they also get paid for a nice life by the traffic-light government with tax money.
The conclusion that is now being drawn from the riots is as typical as it is naïve: a ban on firecrackers and cameras on the rescue vehicles should fix it. As if the corresponding clientele would be impressed by these measures. There is only one effective remedy against such scenes: finally protect the borders and deport criminal migrants immediately.
