Germany: 2006 Record Year For Racism, Average 1,000 Assaults Per Month
MSNBC (Reuters) reported today a tragic record that anti-racist NGOs warned was about to be set in Germany. The anti-racist group Gesicht Zeigen [in Deutsch] said on Tuesday:
"I wonder why we only find out in October that 2006 will probably become a sad, record year for right-wing attacks," Uwe-Karsten Heye, head of Gesicht Zeigen and once spokesman for former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told a news conference.
How bad was it in Germany in 2006? Official reports say:
Figures from Germany’s BKA federal police, released earlier this month, showed attacks by far-right groups rose 20 percent to 8,000 assaults in the first eight months of 2006 compared with the same period last year.[Gesicht Zeigen] counted more than 1,000 incidents of an anti-Semitic nature in both June and July, Heye said.
In July, far-rightists in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German politicians and anti-racist groups.
In another incident only two weeks ago, teenagers in the same state forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade around school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.
The German government has allotted $30.1 million in funding for "projects enhancing tolerance and diversity", but has cut some existing programs designed to prevent attacks.
8,000 attacks. Eight months. 1,000 attacks per month. They're alredy calling this the worst year since World War II? And they're going to fix that with $30 million?
