A brutal war of words has broken out between the two major parties here over violence committed by youths with immigrant backgrounds, and neither side is backing down.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has found herself straddling the divide, caught between her contradictory roles as party leader during a heated regional election campaign and as the head of a delicate coalition government.
The controversy began suddenly in late December, when a 20-year-old Turk and a 17-year-old Greek were caught on videotape severely beating a 76-year-old retiree in the Munich subway. The pensioner’s skull was fractured in the attack, which shocked the nation. Far from a brief flare-up, the political battle over crime, punishment and ethnicity has only intensified since.
Germany has its difficulties with its immigrant residents, of which Turks are the largest group, but nothing like the kind of raw conflict seen in other European countries, particularly France. Germany’s Nazi past, and, as a result, the pains that mainstream politicians here usually take to avoid even the appearance of overt nationalist sentiment, have tended to keep a lid on the kind of debate pursued more openly by far-right parties elsewhere on the Continent.
Yet there are signs that could be changing. Roland Koch, a Christian Democrat and the premier in the state of Hesse, home to Frankfurt, seized on the Munich attack as an opportunity to push for tougher penalties for juvenile immigrants who commit crimes. Voters in Hesse and Lower Saxony go to the polls on Jan. 27 in closely watched races for their state parliaments, with Hamburg following in February.
At an election rally here on Sunday before thousands of supporters, Mr. Koch made the typical candidate’s speech, touching on roads and schools, chances missed by his Social Democratic predecessors and the successes of his own government. The loudest cheers came when he turned to his theme of law and order.
“Anyone who raises their fist in this country will experience the combined resistance of the entire civil society of this republic,” Mr. Koch said. His position struck a chord with Christian Democratic voters.
Herbert Thiel, 66, who had come from the Hessian town of Eschborn for the rally, said, “The others, their politics are all illusion and utopia, as if all people are the same.” He said that safety was the most important issue in the campaign. Privately, everyone discusses the problem, he said, but not talking about immigrant crime in public “is an unwritten rule.”
Mr. Thiel was far from alone in his thinking at the campaign stop in Wetzlar, where a majority of those who were asked said fighting crime was the top priority. The question for Mr. Koch on election day will be how important the undecided voters think the issue is. The Social Democrats are campaigning on instituting a national minimum wage, also a popular and highly emotional issue here.
At stake in the election is control of the three state governments, as well as their seats in the upper house of the federal Parliament. But beyond the short-term political tussle lies the question of long-term damage to the country’s halting attempts to integrate its newcomers, many of whom were born here but are still viewed as outside society’s mainstream.
Politically, the Christian Democrats have everything to lose, since they already control all three governments. Even if they manage to maintain control, simply losing seats would likely be interpreted as a sign of weakness, as the campaign for the next national elections in 2009 already looms large. Mrs. Merkel hopes to win a large enough share of votes to break up the marriage of convenience with the Social Democrats known as the “grand coalition.”
She struck a more measured tone when she spoke at the rally after Mr. Koch. “Violence in this country, whoever is responsible, is not acceptable,” Mrs. Merkel said. She asked for a discussion “in all calmness” with the Social Democrats.
When the debate first flared up, Mrs. Merkel seemed to steer clear of the controversy. Then a few days later she stepped up to support Mr. Koch. “It cannot be that a minority in this country creates fear in the majority,” she said, leaving wiggle room as to whether she was referring to immigrant youth specifically or to young people generally.
Mrs. Merkel pointed to the high share — 43 percent — of violent crimes committed by those under 21, and the fact that close to half of those were by what she called “foreign youths.”
Critics argue that the problem lies in disproportionately disadvantaged backgrounds, and that poor German youths are as likely to commit crimes as poor Turks or Russians. Statistics show that juvenile crime rates fell in 2007 from the prior year, but the debate has been more rhetorical than statistical.
Immigrant groups, Germany’s Jewish community and in particular the rival Social Democrats have called Mr. Koch a populist xenophobe and worse. Peter Struck, parliamentary floor leader for the Social Democrats, went so far as to accuse Mr. Koch of being “glad at heart” that the Munich subway attack had happened, a charge Mr. Koch denied.
Critics say the racial overtones cross the line. A campaign poster in Bavaria showed a still image from a surveillance video of the attack, in which the one attacker in the frame is a black silhouette. The victim’s image is cut out, making him a pure white shape. Where he slumps on the ground are written the words, “So that you are not the next.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/world/europe/14germany.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
JPTF 15/01/2008
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