Germany
prays for France — and debates refugees
For
Bavaria’s leaders, who want a tougher line on refugees, the Paris
attacks “change everything.”
By JANOSCH DELCKER
11/14/15, 10:46 PM CET Updated 11/15/15, 8:32 AM CET
BERLIN — Even as
Germany pledged support to neighboring France, with Angela Merkel
saying “we cry with you,” conservative politicians seized on the
Paris attacks as proof that the chancellor’s open-doors policy
towards refugees had to be reversed.
Merkel’s Bavarian
allies in the governing coalition have launched an unusually blunt
attack on her decision in September to open Germany’s doors to
Syrian refugees seeking refuge in Western Europe via Turkey, Greece
and the Balkans. Germany now expects between 800,000 and 1.5 million
migrants to arrive on its doorsteps in 2015, stretching its capacity
to house and feed them.
With the head of
Germany’s domestic intelligence service telling one newspaper that
there were contacts between Islamist militants and refugees, Bavarian
state premier Horst Seehofer said Saturday that Germany’s borders
needed better protection.
“We have to know
who is driving through our country,” Seehofer, leader of the
Bavarian Christian Social Union, told a convention of Merkel’s
Christian Democrats. The two parties jointly form the conservative
bloc in a ‘grand coalition’ with the center-left Social
Democrats.
Seehofer referred to
media reports that a “possible accomplice” of the Paris attackers
had been detained a week ago in Bavaria after police found weapons
and explosives in his car.
Also from the CSU,
Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder tweeted that the Paris
attacks “change everything.”
“We must not allow
illegal and uncontrolled immigration,” tweeted Söder, whose
message met a barrage of criticism on social media from people
accusing him of using the tragedy in Paris to stir up sentiment
against the refugees.
While some EU
members, including Poland, responded to the attacks by saying they
were reconsidering their commitments to accept refugees, German
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière urged the media, following an
emergency cabinet meeting, “not to hastily link [the Paris attacks]
to the debate about the situation of refugees.”
The minister said
Germany was investigating whether there was any link between the
arrest in Bavaria and events in Paris, adding: “Germany remains in
the cross hairs of international terrorism. Those who would like to
pray, can pray — I do.”
Domestic
intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen, in a newspaper interview
published Saturday but which appeared to have been conducted before
the Paris attacks, warned that Islamist extremists were trying to
recruit refugees in Germany. He said more than 100 such cases were
known to authorities.
“We are observing
Islamists making contact with refugees in refugee facilities,” he
told the Funke Media Group newspapers. “It’s possible that along
with the refugees, terrorists are coming, but we consider it less
likely.”
Earlier Saturday,
Merkel told France in a statement, looking shaken by the news from
Paris: “We, your friends in Germany, feel so close to you. We cry
with you, and we will fight the battle with you against those who
have done something so outrageous to you.”
“This attack on
freedom is not only aimed at Paris. It’s aimed at all of us. And it
hits all of us. This is why we all, together, will give an answer,”
Merkel said.
Authors:
Janosch Delcker
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