Germany warns against labeling all refugees following recent attacks
A German minister has rejected claims that recent attacks in Germany involving refugees have resulted in blanket suspicion toward the asylum seekers.
“We must not place refugees under general suspicion despite individual cases that are under investigation,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Monday.
He warned Germans against indiscriminately branding all refugees a security threat after a string of assaults in the country, some involving asylum seekers, over the last week.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokeswoman, Ulrike Demmer, expressed the government’s shock over the recent incidents in the country but echoed similar warnings about the way the public should handle the refugees following the attacks.
“Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees,” Demmer said, adding, “This fact corresponds with ongoing investigations indicating that the terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large.”
The remarks came after a man, believed to be a 27-year-old Syrian refugee, set off a bomb late Sunday near a music festival in the southern town of Ansbach, killing himself and wounding a dozen others.
The attack was the latest in a string of deadly assaults last week which started with the deaths of nine people during a mass shooting by a teenager in a shopping mall in the city of Munich. That was followed by another machete attack in the city of Reutlingen southwest of Germany, which led to the death of a pregnant woman while two others were injured.
Officials said the Syrian attacker in Ansbach faced imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered as an asylum seeker. They ruled out strong links between the attack and terror groups in the Middle East. Similar statements were issued regarding the two attacks in Munich and Reutlingen, with officials denying any terror motive in the assaults.
Last Monday, another teenager, registered as an Afghan asylum seeker who wielded an axe and a knife, wounded four passengers on a regional train, before injuring a passerby. The asylum seeker, who the officials said could be a Pakistani national, was killed by the police.
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