Right-wing violence and intolerance in Germany - Europe\'s second largest
country - is proving fiercely resistant. After months of public debate and
calls for tolerance the number of victims of such violence appears to
be on the increase. Politicians are calling for ordinary, decent
people to make a stand. They are planning to vote for a banning of the
right-wing extremist NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei) party.  But the
experts say opposition needs to come from those with responsibility -
officials at all levels - to bring the figures down. Petar Hadji-Ristic reports on the fate - and fear -  of a group of Africans in a small German town in former eastern Germany. 
 
 
 
   Arnstadt, Thüringen, GERMANY: A group of young African asylum seekers quartered in a small town in former eastern Germany live in constant
terror of racist attacks, daring show their faces on the streets
only when they are in groups.
        Bruised and shaken, three of them recounted how they were attacked
with fists and baseball bats by a gang of youths shouting racist insults.
When they called the local police for help they were beaten with truncheons, handcuffed and driven to a police station where they endured more racist insults from their attackers, who followed them into
the station.
        \'I saw the brutality of the police,\' said George Fopa, a
25-year-old from Cameroon who has been in Germany for seven months, showing
the mark where he says he was hit with a truncheon.
        \'The police are supposed to protect us, but they didn\'t do that;
they came to beat us,\' he claimed, adding that while they were under police
custody the youths continued to attack them.
        Immediately after the incident the police informed the local press
that the three Africans has pursued the German youths through the streets of
Arnstadt. A police spokesman said the Africans were brought under control
and arrested only with
the help of the Germans who were present in the street in the early hours
of the morning. 
        The local section of the Thüringer Allgemeiner Zeitung carried the
police report almost verbatim, without talking to George and his friends.
        But for the growing political engagement of the African asylum
seekers in Germany fighting for the right to freedom of movement the
incident might never have come to light.
        But it is still unlikely to be added to the list of
right-wing attacks on foreigners which is published yearly by the Federal
Office for the Protection of the Constitution,an intelligence gathering organisation.
  Last year there were 451 registered right-wing acts of violence directed against foreigners.
        \'We are not safe here,\' said Adama Ouattara, an asylum seeker from
the Ivory Coast and one of 12 other Africans from Sierra Leone, the Sudan
and Cameroon living in a hostel in the city with some 150 other asylum
seekers from other countries.
There are some 40,000 refugees in Germany now waiting a decision on their asylum
applications.
	They are divided between all 16 German states. Thüringen, one
of the smallest states,with only 44,000 foreigners in a population of 2.4
million,  has 25 hostels, some of them former Russian and east German military camps.
        Asylum applications are now running at about 90,000 a year. Only
about 3 percent are eventually successful.
        \'We have decided now to go out only in groups,\' said Adama
Ouattara.
        He said even before the incident  in Arnstadt, Thüringen¹s oldest
town with a population of about 30,000, people openly insulted the
Africans whenever they left their hostel – a charge confirmed by walking behind them.
	\'They wind down their car windows and shout \'Nigger\', \'Monkeyboy\', \'Go back to the bush,\' said Adama.
        \'We are not safe here.
        \'I didn\'t know they hated Blacks in this country. I don\'t want to
stay.\'
        The rise in racist violence in Arnstadt may have been sparked
by one of the Africans dancing with a local German girl
at a disco in
October.
        \'They didn\'t like that. Then they started shouting \'Nigger\' and
\'slut\' (Schlämpe). They followed us, swearing all the time\' said
27-year-old Romana Biermann who had been dancing with her friend from
Cameroon who she had met at the disco.
        The German youths hurled beer bottles on the ground and when the
couple left some 15 pursued the Romana and her friends on foot and in three
cars, shouting insults according to John Adana from Sierra Leone, who was
still nursing a
bandaged hand and ankle for some days after the incident.
        \'I went up to one and asked him why he was following us. Another one
ran up to me and repeatedly punched me,\'  said 18-year-old
KenWou Patterson from Cameroon.
        \'I gave him a punch back and he fell down.,\'
        \'Another hit me with stick and they began to kick me,\' he added.
        John Adana said the second attacker was wielding a baseball bat.
\'I tried to block the blows,\' he said showing a bandaged hand
and a bruised back which was later treated by a doctor.
        \'I ran away and called the police on my (mobile) phone,\' he said.
Minutes later he called the police for a second
time, although officers claim they were called to the incident by a
local resident.
	KenWou Patterson said that when one of the youths flashed a knife he
grabbed a toy gun from his jacket and waved it at them and they ran away. He
said he was carrying the toy because of rumours that a group of neo-Nazis
were in
the town.
        All three claim they were beaten by the police when they arrived in
three cars. One says he was hit so hard that the policeman¹s truncheon broke
in two from the force of the blow. They claim that the German youths continued to abuse and attack them in front of the police, and that the police taunted them with racial insults too.
        \'The police were not on our side,\' said Romana Biermann.
        \'I told them what had happened, but it didn\'t interest them.\'
        \'They left the boys alone,\' claimed John Adana.
        The police report claims KenWou¹s toy gun was pointed at them,
but Patterson said that he told them when  they arrived that it was a toy
and they removed it from him.
        The insults and assaults continued
when they were in the police station and in handcuffs, they claim.
        \'A policeman said that I could spent five years in prison for what
I had done, \' added Patterson.
	\'He took his own gun up and mine and pointed them both at me and said:
which one is real? Do you want me to shoot you with this one or this one?\'
Patterson also claims he was put in a cell for ten hours without food and
water.
        A police spokeman later said that a report of the incident, which
was not closed,  would now go before the public prosecutor. He would
normally file charges against the three for resisting the police. He said
three officers and two Germans were hurt as a result of the incident. The
police officers were treated by their own doctors the next day.
        The incident bears similarities with another which is now before the
courts.
 	Eleven youths are accused of hunting down three Africans through the
streets of the town of Guben, in Brandenburg.
One Algerian panicked, and leapt through a glass door to escape. He died
from his
injuries.
        Professor Hajo Funke, a Political Scientist, at the Free University
of Berlin, has supplied German members of parliament (Bundestag) with a
list of similar cases involving right-wing attacks on foreigners in the east
German state which borders Berlin.
        \'The police have played down the cases - or actually denied they
happened. Sometimes it\'s a kind of complicity, a \'we know our guys\'
(mentality),\' he said.
        And he said the police attitude definitely encourages them to do
what they want to do.\'
        Angelo Lucifero, an official with the union nation-wide Trading,
Banking and Insurance Union, based in Erfurt, the capital of Thüringen, has
been fighting a 10 year battle against racist violence
and has played an important role in supporting those fighting to bring such
cases to light.
        \'There are serious cases all over the place here,\' he said.
	 \'Every day it is getting worse. The average citizen looks away, the police sometimes do nothing and the public prosecutor deals with the right-wingers so they have nothing to fear.
	\'There are places - not here in Erfurt -  where there is absolutely nobody
defending those who are threatened.
               \'You could say the state is degenerating into a
formal democracy because it is not taking responsibility for what is
happening and deals with the cases in a racist manner.\'
The demonstrations against the neo-Nazis and right-wing extremism -  one
is planned for Berlin and other cities  on November 9 - are a sign that people are waking up to what is happening, but it is possible that even those who take part can still be racists, he said.
	\'My view is  - and all the studies confirm this - that between 25 percent
and sometimes even 45 percent of the people are racist minded.\'
The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports  that the sudden media attention
given to right-wing extremism in Germany has actually been welcomed by the
neo-Nazis . Right-wing violence increased by 76 percent in August compared
to the previous month , it reported, quoting the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution.  end it