Small square brass plates set in the pavement remember Jewish residents of Berlin’s Lichtenberg district who were torn from their homes and killed by the Nazis decades ago. Nearby, the charred remains of a Jewish-run bar destroyed by arson last month attest to a hatred that still burns among far-right extremists. Small square brass plates set in the pavement remember Jewish residents of Berlin’s Lichtenberg district who were torn from their homes and killed by the Nazis decades ago. Nearby, the charred remains of a Jewish-run bar destroyed by arson last month attest to a hatred that still burns among far-right extremists.

The attack on the bar named Morgen Wird Besser, which in English means Tomorrow Will Be Better, underscores the findings of a victim support group that anti-Semitism remains in Germany’s capital 75 years after World War II ended.

Man wearing a skullcap at demonstration against an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin –  (Photo: AP)

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Berlin wanted to accept 300 migrants from Greek islands but the German federal government has denied such a request for the first time.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, of the Christian Social Union (CSU), denied on Thursday a request from the German capital of Berlin to take in migrants, German daily Der Tagesspiegel reports.

In a letter to Berlin’s Social-Democrat (SPD) Senator for the Interior, Andreas Geisel, Seehofer wrote that for legal reasons he is unable to provide the motivation of his decision. He added, however, that in line with the decision of the Conference of Interior Ministers Berlin could “make a major contribution to improving the situation on the Greek islands”. This involves the admission of 243 sick children and their relatives, a total of almost 1,000 people nationwide.

This is the first time that the federal minister of interior has flatly refused the intent of a German state to take in migrants. Though the German capital of Berlin is surrounded by the federal state Brandenburg, it is one of Germany’s three city-states, with its own senate and the governing Mayor (Regierender Bürgermeister) and further eight senators hold ministerial positions. Since the 2016 state elections, Berlin has been led by an SPD-Green-Left party coalition.

In addition to Berlin, which has decided to accept 300 migrants, the federal state of Thuringia also wants to take in more migrants from the congested Greek islands and is waiting for an answer from Seehofer.

Berlin has been repeatedly seeking approval to take in more migrants — Geisel’s last letter dates from mid-June. Since foreign policy is the purview of the federal government, any federal state’s migrant intake plans must be approved at the federal level.

Seehofer’s state secretary Stephan Mayer, also from the CSU, said at the beginning of the year that his ministry had never denied the request of a federal-state willing to take in migrants.

As of now it is unclear what Berlin will do after the refusal. In reply to a question from Tagesspiegel, Geisel’s spokesman Martin Pallgen said that the “willingness to accept 300 people still exists”. This also applies after the rejection from the Ministry of the Interior and “regardless of whether this is done through a state admission program or in another way”.

He explained that by another way he meant either the federal government or the European Commission.

Title image: German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is bothered by a fly during a press conference after a Ministerial conference on combating illegal migration at the Hofburg palace in Vienna, Austria, Thursday, July. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

Source: https://rmx.news/article/article/berlin-s-request-to-take-in-more-migrants-is-blocked-by-german-interior-minister

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German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has announced the government will be cracking down on Syrians with asylum status who go on holiday back to Syria.

Bavarian center-right leader Horst Seehofer said that the government would be looking to strip Syrians who visit their home country on holiday of their asylum status, saying that those who regularly travel to the country cannot make a serious claim that they are being persecuted there, Kronen Zeitung reports.

“We have to deprive them of their refugee status,” Seehofer added and said that the Interior Ministry was monitoring any such activity from Syrians with refugee status living in Germany.

He also said that the government was watching the situation inside Syria closely and said, “If the situation permits, we will carry out repatriations.”

The revelations of asylum seekers and refugees making holidays in their home countries — where they allegedly fled persecution — are not a new development. As early as January of 2017 it was shown that asylum seekers in Switzerland were using welfare cash to go on vacations to Eritrea, despite claiming they risked death if they were ever sent back to the country.

Later that year the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) admitted they were also aware of cases in which refugees had traveled to their home countries and lamented that no laws existed at the time to prevent them from doing so.

BAMF even justified some of the trips claiming that migrants may be returning to their countries because of sick relatives or other issues.

Earlier this year, noted Syrian refugee blogger Aras Bacho complained that he would like to go and visit Syria this summer but was unable to and said he knew at least six other Syrians who want for a holiday in Syria.

“Unfortunately, I was unable to go on holiday to Syria because something very important got in the way, and I hope to catch up very soon during the holidays. Germany is stressful and you need some kind of break,” he said.

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/19/germany-to-strip-asylum-status-of-refugees-who-go-home-on-holiday/

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Populists seize chance to put favorite issue on agenda ahead of EU vote, causing ructions among governments.

A previously obscure 34-page, jargon-filled document is causing political convulsions across Europe — even though it’s not even legally binding.

Italy this week became the latest in a string of European countries to say it would not sign the U.N.’s Global Compact on Migration at a ceremony in Marrakech in just under two weeks. From the Netherlands through Belgium and Germany to Slovakia, the pact has triggered infighting in ruling parties and governments, with at least one administration close to breaking point.

The fight over the pact illuminates how migration remains a combustible issue across the Continent, three years after the 2015 refugee crisis and with next May’s European Parliament election on the horizon. Far-right parties keen to make migration the key campaign issue have seized on the pact while some mainstream parties have sought to steal their thunder by turning against the agreement. Liberals and centrists, meanwhile, have found themselves on the defensive — arguing that the agreement poses no harm and migration is best handled through international cooperation.

Louise Arbour, the senior U.N. official overseeing the pact, said she is surprised by the controversy, as diplomats from 180 countries — including many that have now pulled out — signed off on the text last summer after two years of negotiations.

The initiative was launched at the request of Europe after the migration surge of 2015, Arbour said. The countries now having “second thoughts or misgivings” were very active during the negotiations and “extracted compromises from the others,” she told POLITICO in an interview.

Arbour, a former Canadian judge and U.N. human rights commissioner, said the recent backtracking illustrates a clear “disconnect” between some countries’ foreign policies “and domestic pressures or national concerns that were not included into the process.”

She stressed the compact is not binding and, after its formal adoption next month, “there is not a single member state that is obligated to do anything that it doesn’t want to.”

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, to give it its full name, sets out a “cooperative framework” for dealing with international migration. Signatories agree, for example, to limit the pressure on countries with many migrants and to promote the self-reliance of newcomers. The document states that no country can address migration alone, while also upholding “the sovereignty of States and their obligations under international law.”

That assurance has not been enough to placate many in Europe. Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made anti-migrant policies his signature issue, pulled out while the pact was being negotiated. But the recent wave of European withdrawals was triggered by conservative Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who renounced the pact at the end of October.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (left), Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (center) and his coalition partner Heinz-Christian Strache (right) meet in Vienna to discuss immigration, July 2018 | Michael Gruber/Getty Images

Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party, Kurz’s coalition partner, declared that “Austria must remain sovereign on migration” and said the country is “playing a leading role in Europe.” At least in terms of the pact, that turned out to be true with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Croatia and Switzerland all following Vienna’s lead.

Bratislava, Berlin and beyond

Slovakia is among the most recent countries to withdraw its support for the pact. After an EU summit on Sunday, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said Bratislava would not support the pact “under any circumstances and will not agree with it.”

Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák on Thursday said he would resign after parliament decided to reject the pact. Lajčák was president of the U.N. General Assembly when the migration pact was adopted.

Populist parties in other countries have forced the pact to the top of the political agenda. The Dutch government under Prime Minister Mark Rutte has come under pressure from far-right leaders, including Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet, who refers to the agreement as the “U.N. Immigration Pact.” The government ordered a legal analysis of the text last week to ensure that signing it will not entail any legal consequences. The Cabinet finally decided on Thursday that it would support the pact, but would add an extra declaration, a so-called explanation of position, to prevent unintended legal consequences.

In Germany, the pact has become an issue in the battle to succeed Angela Merkel — the EU politician most associated with a more liberal approach to migration — as leader of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Two of the leading contenders for the post, Jens Spahn and Friedrich Merz, have both criticized the agreement and called for it to be amended.

The German chancellor mounted a spirited defense of the pact, telling the Bundestag last week that the agreement is in Germany’s national interest as it will encourage better conditions for refugees and migrants elsewhere in the world.

Arbour argued that although the pact is not legally binding, it is still worthwhile. “The pact is a major cooperation project … a political initiative to align initiatives for the common benefit,” she said.

But such arguments cut little ice with the WerteUnion (“Union of Values”), a group of thousands of conservative members of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party. It takes issue with multiple sections of the pact, such as a declaration that migrants “regardless of their status, can exercise their human rights through safe access to basic services.” The group argues that as German social benefits are high, such a commitment would encourage migrants to come to Germany.

Michel has been consulting with a handful of European countries to produce a joint statement to be attached to the pact | Leon Neal/Getty Images

In Belgium, the pact has put liberal Prime Minister Charles Michel’s coalition government at risk. The Flemish nationalist N-VA, the biggest party in government, has demanded Belgium withdraw from the agreement. Michel is caught between his commitment to the pact and his coalition partner’s rejection of it — while seeking to fend off a Francophone opposition that will take any opportunity to portray him as a puppet of the Flemish nationalists ahead of federal, regional and European elections next May.

Searching for a way to keep his government afloat, Michel has been consulting with a handful of European countries including Denmark, Estonia, the U.K. and Norway, to produce a joint statement to be attached to the pact, according to Belgian media. Another idea is for several of those countries to join the Netherlands in signing a common “explanation of position,” Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant reported.

Arbour said it’s too late to start making changes to the pact itself. Renegotiating the text or attaching an extra statement is “not what other [countries] have signed up to,” she said.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/migration-un-viktor-orban-sebastian-kurz-far-right-pressure-europe-retreats-from-pact/

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Diana Feldman received an unusual text message from the phone of her 14-year-old daughter, Susanna, late last month.

Written in broken German, the message said she would be back home in a few weeks and that her mother should not try to find her.

Yet the message was not from Susanna. She had already been raped and strangled, and her body was dumped next to some railroad tracks in the city of Wiesbaden in western Germany.

Almost three years earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had faced a crisis. Millions were fleeing the humanitarian catastrophes in Iraq and Syria and heading to Europe, and the enormous flow of people was placing unsustainable pressure on landing ports in Greece and threatening the territorial integrity of the Balkans.

Merkel responded by opening Germany’s borders, subsequently letting in a mix of genuine asylum seekers and economic migrants.

One of the beneficiaries was Susanna Feldman’s killer.

Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, entered Germany in October 2015 with his parents and was a blight from the beginning. According to the BBC, he was allegedly tied to a robbery, possession of a weapon, and sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl in the refugee shelter where he lived (and where he dealt drugs).

Bashar’s asylum claim was rejected toward the end of 2016, but he was allowed to stay in the country while he appealed the decision.

Over 18 months later, when he killed Susanna, a decision on his appeal still had not been made. Days after his crime, Bashar and seven other members of his family returned to Iraq. However, he was tracked down by Kurdish authorities and extradited to Germany.

Bashar has since admitted to killing Susanna.

It’s clearly a tragic case, but it’s also not an isolated one.

Hussein Khavari arrived in Europe in January 2013. He proceeded to throw a woman over a cliff that summer in Corfu, Greece, and was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years in February 2014 for attempted murder. However, he was released after just 18 months, part of a government amnesty aimed at reducing strain on its overcrowded prisons.

Khavari journeyed on to Germany, where he arrived in November 2015, and claimed asylum the following February. He claimed to be a 17-year-old Afghan upon arrival, saying that his father had been killed fighting the Taliban.

In October 2016, Khavari raped and strangled Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old German student, in Freiburg, in southwest Germany. Khavari left his still-breathing victim to drown in a nearby river after his attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.

During his trial, it emerged that rather than being a 17-year-old fatherless Afghan, Khavari was a Iranian. His father was alive and well, living in Iran. Khavari’s asylum claim was also undecided at the time of Ladenburger’s killing.

Another case from southwest Germany, this time in Kandel, saw Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl, being stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend last December. The killer, Abdul D., came to Germany from Afghanistan in April 2016, claiming to be 14 years old. In reality, he is now 20.

Such stories—coming in the wake of the mass sexual assault of more than 1,000 women in Germany on New Year’s Eve of 2015—have a variety of consequences.

One consequence is political. Concern over immigration could lead to the collapse of Merkel’s coalition government. Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, wants to begin turning away refugees who have passed through another European Union country before getting to Germany. Merkel is refusing, concerned about the effects this would have on forging a coherent EU-wide refugee policy.

The coalition is splintering, and if an agreement cannot be reached, a vote of confidence in Merkel—and new elections—could be imminent.

Another consequence relates to security. One recent study demonstrated that violent crime had increased by more than 10 percent in 2015 and 2016. Ninety percent of that increase was because of violent crimes committed by male refugees.

Similarly, the sharp increase to the Islamist terrorism threat in Germany is not primarily from radicalized Germans, but from recently arrived asylum seekers. While some plots were thwarted, those in Wurzburg, Ansbach, Berlin, and Hamburg were not.

In that environment, many Germans have turned to a radical, outsider party that made a platform out of cracking down on immigration. Alternative for Germany got about 6 million votes (13 percent) in September 2017 and is now the third-biggest party in Germany.

That’s not because Germany has a hitherto concealed population of racists who were unearthed in the election, but because Merkel very clearly made a cataclysmic mistake.

Germany did take in too many people. It did not know who they were then, and so, it has no idea who is living in the country now. It was too trusting in accepting asylum applicants’ backstories—and the German Medical Association is still speaking out against checking claimants’ ages.

Germany is not deporting enough of those who have no right to be in the country, or making decisions on asylum appeals quickly enough.

If this were solely a German problem, then perhaps it would be easier to contain. Yet it also extends to Sweden, which is dealing with a surge in crime in areas with high concentrations of immigrants.

One recent study in Sweden showed that more than 75 percent (at a minimum) of those claiming to be children were actually adults. Austria, Italy, and other countries in Europe face similar challenges.

A responsible approach would be for nations to listen to voters’ concerns and craft policies that address them.

Merkel’s desire for an EU-led solution demonstrates the hopelessness of the current approach. An unresponsiveness to democratic impulses in the EU is a well-established theme.

Meanwhile, the numbers continue to grow. About 10,000 new asylum seekers come to Germany every month. The government hopes they will integrate, but has no real idea how to make that happen, and the crisis rolls on.

Source: https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/15/wrought-by-open-borders-killings-by-immigrants-pose-renewed-threat-to-merkels-chancellorship/

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German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Thursday said he reached out to Brussels for permission to extend border control measures on the German-Austrian frontier.

Since the height of the migration crisis in 2015, Germany has imposed border checks on its border with Austria. German authorities currently perform checks at three cross-border highways and other alternating locations on that frontier.

Read more: EU border controls ‘have to remain an exception’

Seehofer cited security and irregular migration as the primary reasons for extending border checks. However, he also criticized the EU’s inability to curb irregular migration at its external borders.

“Deficits in the protection of the EU external borders and the scale of the illegal, secondary migration at the moment allow no other conclusion than that domestic border controls at the German-Austrian border remain necessary,” Seehofer said in a statement released by the Interior Ministry.

Border controls in visa-free zone

Seehofer has been a vocal critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy for refugees, especially those from Syria.

In 2015, nearly 900,000 people entered the country irregularly, many of them fleeing conflict and extreme poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Read more: Job numbers, benefit claims rise for migrants to Germany

Other Schengen countries have imposed temporary border controls, including France, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The latest round of temporary German measures was set to expire in May.

Under Schengen zone rules, countries are not allowed to impose border controls unless “a serious threat to public policy or internal security has been established.” The controls are limited to three-month extensions, although some EU member states are looking to change that.

Germany is a founding member of the 26-country visa-free Schengen zone.

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/germany-requests-border-control-extension-for-austrian-frontier/a-43367693

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