Germany: Vicious attack sparks racism debate
01 March 2006
The brutal attack on Ermyas M., a German engineer of Ethiopian origin, has sparked public debate over the high level of racist violence, particularly in eastern parts of the country. Anti-racist and victim support groups, who have worked for decades to fight neo-nazi violence in many German cities, have finally received national media attention. Ermyas was waiting for a tram in Potsdam on 16 April, when two young men started shouting racist abuse at him, attacked him with a bottle and beat him to the ground. They ran away when a passing taxi driver stopped to intervene. Ermyas sustained life-threatening head injuries and is in intensive care in a Potsdam hospital. Two arrests were made.
The attack was followed by a political debate on racism in Germany, also triggered by Federal Public Prosecutor Kay Nehm taking over the investigation from the regional public prosecution. He argued that the attack was a potential threat to the internal security of the Federal Republic which, under the Court Constitutional Act, gives the Federal State powers of competency. Two regional ministers known for their ultra-conservative opinions, Federal Interior Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, and Brandenburg's Interior Minister, Jörg Schönbohm, have since claimed that the attack could not yet be said to have a right-wing extremist background and accused Nehm of giving Brandenburg a bad name. The latter is a typical official response even if evidence points to a racist background: part of the attack on Ermyas was recorded on an answering machine, as Ermyas was leaving his wife a message when he was attacked. The assailants called him a "dirty nigger". Even if perpetrators turn out not to be active in the skinhead scene, the violent racism directed against black people in Germany can be described as structural.
Also in April, a 29-year-old man from Togo was attacked in the east German city of Wismar by three men who surrounded him and beat him up, leading to severe head injuries. In Munich, an 18-year old man from Congo was attacked and suffered severe head injuries after a woman attacked him by throwing beer bottles at him, with the words "piss off you dirty nigger". According to victim support groups, 28 right-wing extremist criminal acts are committed every day in eastern Germany alone, two of which are of a violent nature.
In all of the above cases, the first reaction from the prosecution was to claim that a right-wing background could not yet be established. Before Federal Public Prosecutor Kay Nehm took over the investigation of the case of Ermyas M., the responsible regional prosecutor described the attack as a "particularly gross, extreme, isolated incident". Victim support groups point out that "isolated incidents" such as this occur every day.
One of the most shocking denials of racial motivation was the case of Algerian asylum-seeker Farid Guendoul (alias Omar Ben Noui), who died after being chased and beaten to death by 11 German youths in February 1999, (see Statewatch Vol. 9 no 2). After a confrontation with a black man in a night-club, witnesses said that the gang said they would embark on a "foreigner hunt" in the small town of Guben in eastern Germany. The insistence that the accused were "normal" youths with criminal tendencies characterised the ensuing court proceedings. Only three of the perpetrators were given sentences of between two and three years. All of the defendants were sentenced for bodily harm, not murder or even manslaughter (see Statewatch Vol. 10 no 6).
The denial of structural racist violence in Germany, however, is also increasingly challenged in more official quarters. After the recent attack, former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye said in a radio interview with Deutschlandfunk that certain areas around the capital of Berlin were high-risk zones, and he explicitly warned black visitors to avoid places where they could be the target of racist attacks during the World Cup. "There are sm