Merkel rebuffs Trump’s assertions on refugee crimes in Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected claims by US President Donald Trump that refugees have caused crime rates in Germany to go up.
Merkel said Tuesday that statistics provided had shown that crime was in fact down in 2017 in Germany despite a consistent flow of refugee arrivals into the country over the past three years.
“My answer is that the interior minister presented the crime statistics a short while ago and they speak for themselves,” said Merkel, adding, “We are seeing a slight positive development. We must always do more to fight criminality. But they were very encouraging numbers.”
Merkel has repeatedly defended her decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Trump, who came to office last year on promises of curbing refugee arrivals, said Tuesday in a tweet that Germany was paying a price for liberal asylum policies of the government over the past years.
“Crime in Germany is up 10% plus (officials do not want to report these crimes) since migrants were accepted. Others countries are even worse. Be smart America!” wrote Trump.
He claimed in a similar tweet on Monday that people of Germany were turning against their leadership because of loose migration policies, adding that the policy also affected other European nations that sought to emulate Berlin.
“Crime is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture,” said Trump.
Arrivals in Germany and other European countries subsided after Merkel led negotiations between the European Union and Turkey in March 2015 to curb the flow of refugees.
A January study sponsored by the German government showed that young male asylum seekers had been responsible for more than 90 percent of the rise in violent crime in Germany in 2015 and 2016.
However, overall crime fell 9.6 percent in Germany in 2017, according to statistics published last month.
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