domingo, 15 de novembro de 2015

Germany prays for France — and debates refugees


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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