In Hanau’s
shisha bars, migrants fear causes of the shootings run deep
Political
pledges of action to deal with far-right terrorism are met with scepticism
Philip
Oltermann Hanau
@philipoltermann
Sat 22 Feb
2020 21.29 GMTFirst published on Sat 22 Feb 2020 16.00 GMT
Days after
terror struck in the heart of its community, something like normality returned
to the streets and cafes of Hanau yesterday. On Freigerichtstrasse on the
eastern side of town, people once again gathered in one of the multifunction
spaces that act as sports bars, betting shops and shisha stores, to have a
smoke or a hot drink with friends.
“Am I
scared? I guess it is scary,” said the Romanian woman who runs the venue. “But
more importantly, would you like a cup of tea?”
Germany’s
government has promised to crack down on rightwing extremists, offer better
protection for Muslim communities and look into tightening gun laws in response
to Wednesday’s attack, in which 43-year-old Tobias Rathjen shot dead nine
people at a shisha bar and a kiosk in the town before turning his gun on his
mother and then himself.
In a
24-page document the killer uploaded to his website before the shootings, he
laid out his racist motives. Certain ethnic groups from Asia, Africa and the
Middle East had to be “completely annihilated”; the population of Germany
needed to be “halved”, he wrote.
The
shootings in Hanau were the third attack in Germany by rightwing extremists in
nine months and the one with the highest death toll. Walter Lübcke, a
politician who took a liberal stance towards refugees, was murdered at his home
near Kassel in the western state of Hesse on 2 June last year. On 9 October,
two people died in the eastern city of Halle when a gunman tried to force his
way into a synagogue.
The victims
at the Midnight shisha bar and the Arena bar included German, Turkish,
Bulgarian, Romanian, Bosnian and Afghan nationals. One was a 35-year-old
pregnant mother of two. Germany has vowed to make money available to support
their families.
Horst
Seehofer, the interior minister and former leader of the Bavarian Christian
Social Union party, said on Friday that the threat of rightwing extremism,
antisemitism and racism was “very high in Germany”, and promised concrete steps
to better protect minorities, for example by increasing the police presence
outside mosques. There would also be tighter security at railway stations and
airports, he said.
In an
interview with the tabloid Bild, Seehofer proposed tightening the gun laws to
include regular checks on the mental health of those holding a weapons licence,
though other conservative politicians were quick to push back against such
proposals.
The Green
party, which is running second to Angela Merkel’s CDU in the polls, called for
further measures, such as a crisis management taskforce made up of external
experts. “Rightwing extremism has lost all inhibitions in Germany,” said Katrin
Göring-Eckardt, the Greens’ parliamentary leader.
Both the
Greens and the centre-left Social Democrats have called for Germany’s domestic
intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,
to start monitoring the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland.
In Hanau’s
Turkish and Kurdish communities, there was scepticism about the solutions
offered by politics. Politicians like Seehofer had allowed racist sentiments to
go unchallenged in recent years, said 30-year-old Newroz Duman. She pointed to
a comment the Bavarian politician made in 2018, describing migration as “the
mother of all problems” and saying he understood the anger that fuelled
far-right demonstrations.
At Thursday
night’s wake on Hanau town square, there were some who felt the causes behind
the attack went much deeper in German society. “Merkel says racism is a
poison,” said Hasan Budak, 54. “But the real poison is that we have people who
work five days a week and still have to claim benefits to survive. They end up
looking for scapegoats and turn on people who look foreign. We have to
take away the fascists’ arguments.”
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