German
opposition leader ramps up immigration rhetoric after knife attack
Friedrich
Merz says he will boost border controls if he wins power in next month’s
elections
Germany’s
election: who are the key players and what is at stake?
Kate
Connolly in Berlin
Thu 23 Jan
2025 17.16 GMT
Germany’s
opposition leader has pledged to strengthen border controls and step up
deportations if he becomes chancellor after elections next month, a day after
an Afghan man was arrested over a knife attack in which two people died.
Friedrich
Merz, whose conservative CDU/CSU alliance is leading in polls, said he would
not allow attacks like the one in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on
Wednesday to become a “normal affair”.
The suspect
in the attack, who was arrested shortly afterwards, is a 28-year-old Afghan man
with a history of psychiatric problems and violence. The man’s asylum process
had been closed at his request after two years, according to Bavarian
authorities. He had said he would leave Germany of his own will last month, but
had not done so, and had continued receiving psychiatric treatment.
Merz said
that “all illegal immigrants” should be turned back at the border, including
people seeking protection from war or political persecution, and that he was
ready to issue a “de facto ban” on entry for all those without valid entry
documents.
He called
for an increase in the number of migrant detention centres, citing the
suitability of empty warehouses, converted shipping containers or disused
barracks.
He added
that people caught by police for criminal acts who had been asked to leave but
had refused to do so “must be taken into custody … and deported as quickly as
possible”.
Merz also
sharply criticised EU asylum and migration laws, calling them “dysfunctional”,
and called for a sharp departure from the bloc’s Schengen principle of free
movement. He vowed to introduce permanent controls on all of Germany’s nine
borders with neighbouring countries if he is elected on 23 February.
The
Aschaffenburg attack was the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany,
fuelling calls for tougher security measures and boosting the standing of the
far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is in second place in the
polls.
The
chancellor, Olaf Scholz, whose SPD party is lagging in third in polling,
convened a late-night meeting on Wednesday with his interior minister, Nancy
Faeser, along with the heads of the country’s domestic intelligence service,
the police and social welfare representatives.
He condemned
an “unbelievable act of terror”, saying he was “sickened and weary of seeing
such acts of violence occurring here every few weeks, committed by perpetrators
who have come to us in order to find protection here”.
He insisted
that authorities should work “round the clock” to find out why the attacker had
not been deported as had been planned.
Faeser
admitted that the EU’s Dublin system, whereby people who enter the EU in one
country should have their cases processed in that country, was not working, at
the same time as defending her ministry’s deportations record.
She also
warned Merz of making political hay out of the attack, arguing it played into
the hands of the far-right.
Local MP
Andrea Lindholz of the CSU said the town was in a deep sense of shock. She said
the lack of joined-up thinking between police, social services, intelligence
agencies and other authorities was in part to blame for the attack.
“We must be
able to ensure that our authorities are better networked,” she told broadcaster
DLF, adding that the attack had underlined how “completely overburdened our
system is due to the high number of historical illegal immigrants”.
Aschaffenburg’s
mayor, Jürgen Herzing, drew parallels with other recent attacks, but warned:
“We cannot and should not ever blame an entire national group for the attack of
an individual … despite anger, grief and thoughts of revenge, let this not
spiral into violence and hate.”
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