Germany's
Merkel says refugees must return home once war is over
NEUBRANDENBURG,
GERMANY | BY ANDREAS RINKE
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel tried on Saturday to placate the increasingly vocal
critics of her open-door policy for refugees by insisting that most
refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there
had ended.
Despite appearing
increasingly isolated, Merkel has resisted pressure from some
conservatives to cap the influx of refugees, or to close Germany's
borders.
Support for her
conservative bloc has slipped as concerns mount about how Germany
will integrate the 1.1 million migrants who arrived last year, while
crime and security are also in the spotlight after a wave of assaults
on women in Cologne at New Year by men of north African and Arab
appearance.
The influx has
played into the hands of the right-wing Alternative for Germany
(AfD), whose support is now in the double digits, and whose leader
was quoted on Saturday saying that migrants entering illegally
should, if necessary, be shot.
Merkel said it was
important to stress that most refugees had only been allowed to stay
for a limited period.
"We need ... to
say to people that this is a temporary residential status and we
expect that, once there is peace in Syria again, once IS has been
defeated in Iraq, that you go back to your home country with the
knowledge that you have gained," she told a regional meeting of
her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the state of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Merkel said 70
percent of the refugees who fled to Germany from former Yugoslavia in
the 1990s had returned.
Horst Seehofer,
leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister
party, has threatened to take the government to court if the flow of
asylum seekers is not cut.
Merkel urged other
European countries to offer more help "because the numbers need
to be reduced even further and must not start to rise again,
especially in spring".
A MILLION MORE
Fabrice Leggeri, the
head of the European Union's border agency Frontex, said a U.N.
estimate that up to a million migrants could try to come to Europe
via the eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkans next year was
realistic.
"It would be a
big achievement if we could keep the number ... stable," he told
the magazine Der Spiegel.
Merkel said all EU
states should have an interest in protecting the bloc's external
borders, and all would suffer if the internal passport-free Schengen
zone collapsed and national borders were closed.
AfD leader Frauke
Petry told the Mannheimer Morgen newspaper that Germany needed to
reduce the influx through agreements with neighboring Austria and a
reinforcement of the EU's external borders.
But she also said it
should not be shy about turning people back and creating "border
protection installations" - and that border guards should, if
necessary, shoot at migrants trying to enter illegally.
No police officer
wanted to shoot at a migrant, Petry said, adding "I don't want
that either but, ultimately, deterrence includes the use of armed
force".
Such comments evoke
memories of Germany's Cold War division, when guards in the communist
East, led by Erich Honecker, were under orders to shoot people
attempting to cross the heavily fortified border into the West.
"The last
German politician who let refugees be shot at was Erich Honecker,"
said Thomas Oppermann, a senior member of the Social Democrats.
(Additional
reporting and writing by Michelle Martin in Berlin; Editing by Kevin
Liffey)
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