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Germany: racists attacks

01 January 1994

Germany is to be summoned before the UN Human Rights Commission over attacks on foreigners by right-wing extremists. The complaints have been filed by individuals, rather than by another state, and it is unlikely that Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel will appear before the full committee to answer the charges.

CARF magazine recorded 52 racist killings - 41 connected to the far right - in Germany in 1993, double the figure for the previous year. Official figures from the German government record a decline from 17 in 1992 to 8 last year.

Despite attempts by the German government to underplay neo-nazi violence the attacks continue. In one recent incident, at the end of January, a hooded neo-nazi gang attacked a house reputed to have been used by left-wing activists at Klotze, east Germany. Three of the occupants were seriously injured after being beaten by baseball bats. Five of the attackers have been arrested.

In a separate incident two nazis, the leaders of a fifteen strong gang that beat-up a US athlete when he came to the assistance of a black team-mate they harassed, have been jailed. The incident took place in the Oberhof winter sports centre, in eastern Germany, last October. Tino Voelkl was jailed for one year and Silvio Eschrich got 32 months. Five other members of the gang face similar charges and will be tried at a later date.

Elsewhere, two German neo-nazis received sentences of between eight and fourteen years after beating to death a man they believed was Jewish. The two skinheads, Andreas Wember and Michael Senf, killed the man in Wuppertal, in the north-west, in November 1992. They did not receive life sentences because they were drunk at the time of the attack.

Recent police raids on nazi groups, in Brandenburg and elsewhere, have been directed at the Direct Action/Middle Germany grouping, an offshoot of the Society for the Promotion of Middle German Youth. The raids uncovered bayonets, ammunition and bulletproof vests and provided evidence of extensive links between German far-right organisations.

CARF, January-February, 1994; Independent 17.1.94, 18.1.94, 8.2.94.