Three acts of seemingly random—and certainly horrific—violence on Monday, June 10th, collectively raise the question: what is going on in Germany?
The country, which is about to begin hosting the European football championship, has seen around 60 knife attacks per day in recent years.
One of those which took place earlier this week was fatal. A 23-year-old woman was “suddenly” stabbed by a “previously unknown person” during an evening jog in Schermbeck on the Lower Rhine, according to national media. Officials are still appealing for information about the unidentified attacker.
But the alleged attackers involved in the other two instances of sudden violence, which were not fatal but did result in the victims receiving severe injuries, were caught and have been questioned.
A 32-year-old Turkish citizen was arrested on Monday evening following a knife attack on a regional railway in Saarland. This saw a 21-year-old “suddenly attacked” by a man reportedly unknown to him. He was stabbed in the throat and left “seriously injured.”
Also, at noon in the city of Frankfurt, a 41-year-old Ukrainian woman sitting on a park bench was stabbed in the “head and neck from behind with a cutter knife,” according to NIUS. While trying to escape, she is said to have stumbled and the perpetrator “continued to stab her.” A 19-year-old Afghan was later arrested in connection to the crime and is now being investigated for attempted murder.
Responding to this attack, AfD politician Georg Pazderski insisted that “Germany has a problem with violent illegal migrants.”
Journalist Julian Reichelt added that Germany has “become a country full of horror stories.”
One particularly dramatic portrayal of this occurred just before the turn of the month when a knifeman brutally stabbed a vocal critic of Islamism, a police officer, and several bystanders at a rally in Mannheim city centre. A spokesman for the group that organised the rally and which is opposed to what it describes as the “Islamisation” of Europe said: “This was not an attack, but an act of terror.”
