Neo-nazi violence against refugees in Germany

This video from Germany says about itself:

Back in 2011, VICE Germany gained exclusive access to Jamel—a small town often called a “Nazi village” by the press. Jamel may have only housed around 35 permanent residents, but it skewed pretty heavily toward neo-Nazis and extremists who are mostly members of the far-right NPD political party.

Not just nazi violence in the eastern Ukraine and in the western Ukraine … also in Germany.

From daily The Independent in Britain:

Neo-Nazis lay siege to asylum-seekers hostel in Freital as race hate rears its ugly head once again in east Germany

A small town has witnessed ugly scenes as neo-Nazis besiege the Hotel Leonardo, an illustration of the country’s mounting xenophobia

Tony Paterson

Freital, Sunday 12 July 2015

Once a model Social Democrat community where the poor in Germany’s Weimar Republic found help and support, the small town of Freital, just south of Dresden, has become a byword for German racism and intolerance.

Its target is Hotel Leonardo, or rather, the 300 or so asylum-seekers who are now virtual prisoners in the former conference hotel. Thanks to local hostility the building is under a round-the-clock police guard and surrounded by a 10ft-high wire fence. Police patrol cars have blocked off access roads.

Twenty nine-year-old Ibrahim Alalelayan, a medical student who arrived in Germany a fortnight ago after fleeing Deraa, his war-torn home town in southern Syria, says he does not try to go into Freital. “I prefer not to leave the safety of this place,” Mr Alalelayan told The Independent as he stood in the hostel lobby with other frightened refugees 9 July. …

His anxiety is justified. Since March this year the hotel has been the scene of angry anti-foreigner protests in which the rule of the lynch mob has held sway. Up to 1,200 Freital residents and neo-Nazi hangers-on have gathered outside the hostel on weekday evenings chanting slogans such as “Filth out” and “This is no place to flee to”.

The often-intoxicated mob threw eggs and shot fireworks at the hostel claiming that Freital was “defending itself”. The small groups of local refugee supporters who tried to show sympathy with the asylum-seekers had to be protected by riot police.

On 6 July, local xenophobic fury erupted again at a meeting held by the regional authorities in Freital which had been designed to defuse anger and open a reconciliation process. The meeting was abruptly brought to an end as Markus Ulbig, the region’s conservative Interior Minister, was shouted down and mob rule took control. “They are all illegals,” shouted one woman resident. “We will burn down the hostel,” screamed another. …

Accommodation marked out for asylum-seekers has been set ablaze across Germany since late last year. The most recent arson attack was carried out at a future hostel in the east German city of Meissen last week. … In Freital alone there have been a number of incidents including an assault on an asylum-seeker, and an attempt to firebomb refugee accommodation. …

In Freital, where many say the rise of Communism in East Germany and the disenchantment that followed sparked today’s right-wing backlash, anti-foreigner feeling has been encouraged by members of the region’s Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamification of the West) movement. The group has staged mass demonstrations attracting up to 20,000 people in Dresden earlier this year. Lutz Bachmann, the Pegida leader who posed on Facebook wearing an Adolf Hitler moustache, lives nearby. …

Ines Kummer, one of Freital’s few Green Party city councillors, said she had been threatened and shouted at by residents for showing support for the asylum-seekers. “Right-wing nationalism and anti-foreigner attitudes have taken root in this part of Germany,” she told The Independent. “Around here the established parties, like Ms Merkel’s ruling conservatives, have not condemned the prevalent racism; they chose to brush it aside. Now it’s too late.”