Knife attacks and other horrendous acts of violence continue to be committed on a daily basis in Germany, as reported by German media in recent days. After a spate of brutal stabbings last week, Germany was once again abundant with knife crime at the weekend—many of the attacks being committed by migrants.
Media outlet Nius.de published a round-up of the latest incidents:
- A couple of Tunisian men, who were drunk and high on drugs, knifed a young Algerian on a train in Hamburg on Friday, June 14th.
- An Afghan man with a knife injured three people at a private party, shortly after killing another man on a housing estate in the northern town of Wolmirstedt on Friday night. Police shot the perpetrator when he was also about to attack them.
- A group of eight men attacked two girls, aged eight and 10, along with their father in Grevesmühlen in northern Germany. The perpetrators’ identities are unknown, but Nius reports that “the attack may have been racially motivated.”
- Also on Friday, a mass brawl broke out at the ground of the local football club in the Frankfurt district of Unterliederbach, in which a man was stabbed and later died of his injuries. Both the 31-year-old victim and the suspects are German citizens.
- A 24-year-old man was seriously injured and had to undergo surgery after a 17-year-old Afghan youth stabbed him, in the city of Ingolstadt.
Germany has a serious knife crime problem: according to the publication Apollo News, almost 14,000 stabbings were committed last year, a rise of 1,500 incidents compared to the previous year—which, in effect, means 38 knife attacks per day.
One recent murder in particular has fuelled the debate on the links between migration and the high number of knife-related attacks. Rouven L.—a 29-year-old policeman—was stabbed several times in the head by an Afghan failed asylum seeker at the end of May. In response, politicians from both the left and centre-right have called for stricter controls on the possession of knives in public.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had stated that ensuring security would be her highest priority during the UEFA European Football Championship hosted by Germany from June 14th—a promise not confirmed by recent events.
In Hamburg, the city that hosted one of the matches on Sunday, police first tried to use pepper spray but later shot and wounded a 39-year-old German man who was armed with a slate hammer and a Molotov cocktail. The events occurred in a crowded area of the city, alarming many tourists and passers-by.
In a not so thinly veiled criticism of the government, Manuel Ostermann of the Deutsche Polizeigewerkschaft police union told daily Bild:
The security situation in Germany is disastrous. Knives, axes or firearms—every day, my colleagues have to deal with life-threatening situations, and politicians have nothing better to do than throw around empty slogans.
Anti-immigration opposition party AfD, which made big gains at last weekend’s European elections, tweeted:
It has been proven that non-German nationals are overrepresented as suspects in knife crimes—especially Afghans. We must therefore finally act! It is unacceptable that the Mannheim attacker and other serious criminals were able to stay illegally in our country for years. Anyone who does not have the right to stay here or commits crimes must be deported—period.
