Germany is failing victims of racist violence
Demonstrant trägt bei einer Protestaktion in Berlin ein T-Shirt mit dem Porträt des ermordeten NSU-Opfers Habil Kılıç
© Florian Schuh/dpa
9 June 2016 – The German government is ignoring its human rights obligations by not adequately protecting refugees and other people of colour from discrimination and racist attacks. This is the conclusion reached in the recently published Amnesty report "Living in Insecurity: How Germany is failing Victims of Racist Violence". Even five years after their failure to effectively investigate the racist murders perpetrated by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), German law enforcement agencies appear unable to decisively crack down on racist violence, which more than ever is being directed towards refugees and other people of colour.
"Never before in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany have there been so many reports about racially motivated attacks," said Selmin Çalışkan, the then Secretary General of Amnesty International Germany.
"The picture in Germany could not be more contradictory than it is at the moment: On the one hand, we have a brilliant and compassionate 'welcome culture’, nurtured by the phenomenal commitment of tens of thousands of volunteers and professionals. On the other hand, we are seeing racist sentiments being expressed with alarming unscrupulousness."
And often, such prejudice manifests itself through violence: "These appalling attacks result in the traumatisation of refugees and asylum-seekers, who have already had to live through war and persecution before fleeing to Europe," said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s EU Researcher and lead author of the report. "On an almost daily basis, people are being threatened or verbally and physically assaulted, or there is an attack on a refugee shelter."
Selmin Çalışkan: "Amnesty is calling on the Standing Conference of State Ministers of the Interior to agree upon a Germany-wide framework strategy to protect refugee shelters from racist attacks."
At the same time, German law enforcement agencies need to recognise racist crimes for what they are and make sure they are prosecuted accordingly. The report highlights several cases of how, for example, members of the police force often do not realise that they are dealing with victims of racist violence.
Amnesty-Researcher Marco Perolini & Amnesty-Generalsekretärin Selmin Çalıskan bei der Berichtsvorstellung am 9.6.2016 in Berlin
© Amnesty International, Foto: Christian Ditsch
"The German law enforcement agencies have learned little from their failures in dealing with the NSU murders. What is more, there is clear evidence that German authorities are facing a big challenge: institutional racism. Institutional racism is the failure to treat everyone professionally and appropriately, regardless of the colour of their skin, their cultural background or their ethnic origin," said Çalışkan.
Amnesty therefore calls on the German government to launch an independent investigation to establish the extent to which institutional racism within the German law enforcement agencies, and particularly within the police force, hampers the effective investigation of racist criminal offences.
Take action! Sign our online petition to the Federal Minister of the Interior and the State Ministers and Senators of the Interior, calling on them to protect people in Germany from racist violence
You can find the English version of the petition here
The report’s key messages in English can be found here
Further information on the topic in English can be found here
