Refugee news update

This video says about itself:

Germany: Cologne‘s mayoral candidate wounded in knife attack

17 October 2015

A leading mayoral candidate Henriette Reker was severely injured in a knife attack during the election campaign at a weekly market in Cologne, Saturday. Reker was stabbed in the neck, but her condition was stable, police chief Wolfgang Albers said.

From Cologne in Germany, broadcasting organisation WDR reports about a knife attack by a 44-year-old anti-refugee man today. He attacked non-party candidate in the election for mayor of the city, Ms Henriette Reker, with a hunting knife and a second knife, injuring her seriously; and injuring four other people as well. During his violent crime, the xenophobe shouted slogans against Cologne authorities’ policies on refugees, which he considered to be too liberal and for which Ms Reker is responsible.

Apparently, the anti-refugee propaganda by some politicians and some professors in Germany has a bloody impact, inciting stupid people to crimes. According to German site RP Online, the perpetrator in Cologne is a far right extremist; said to have been politically active already for twenty years.

The German government blames the anti-refugee rhetoric of the xenophobic Pegida movement for the knife attack on Ms Reker.

The influx of several hundred thousand refugees has politically polarized Germany. In recent weeks, leading political and media figures have made vituperative denunciations of migrants and called for an ever-greater crackdown on people seeking asylum in the country: here.

From Berlin in Germany:

Refugees arriving in German capital face disastrous conditions

By our correspondents

17 October 2015

Every day up to 500 refugees arrive in the reception centre in Berlin’s Moabit neighbourhood, known as LAGeSo. Their treatment can only be described as inhumane. After weeks of queuing many remain unregistered and they must wait outside the offices in the wind, rain and cold.

Refugees who have travelled for weeks or months to escape war zones in the Middle East, who have often sold all their possessions in order to reach the alleged “safe haven” of Germany find that they are treated worse than cattle, who are at least given shelter from the cold and rain.

Thursday’s summit of European government leaders in Brussels moved to seal off the EU’s borders by means of an agreement with Turkish President Recep Erdogan aimed at preventing more than two million refugees in Turkey from entering the EU: here.

Parliamentary elections will take place in Poland on October 25. In the election campaign, the current opposition PiS (Law and Justice) party and the governing Citizens Platform (PO) are exploiting the refugee crisis in Europe to stoke racism and push Polish politics further to the right. At the same time, differences between the PiS and PO over the country’s foreign policy orientation are being fought out: here.

Britain: Bishops in stinging rebuke to David Cameron over refugee crisis. Clergy release text of private letter sent in September as it emerges that PM snubbed church’s offer of help: here.