BERLIN: Germany’s government vowed on Tuesday to tackle rising crime by speeding up deportations of migrants, as it tries to stem the appeal of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in state elections this year.
Presenting data showing a 5.5% rise in overall crime last year and a 13.5% increase in the number of suspects with foreign backgrounds, interior minister Nancy Faeser said Germany must improve integration and speed up deportations.
“Foreign offenders must leave Germany much more quickly. The strict deportation rules we have created must now be enforced,” said Faeser, a Social Democrat in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s uneasy three-way coalition. “Anyone who doesn’t stick to the rules must leave,” she said, adding she also had zero tolerance for violent crime which was up 8.6% last year.
Opposition parties, both conservatives and the AfD, have pounced on the figures to call for tougher migrant policies such as tighter border controls and more deportations.
“What the AfD has warned about for years can no longer be hidden … new crime statistics have triggered a debate on ‘foreigner crime’,” said Richard Graupner of the AfD in Bavaria. Most polls put the AfD in second place nationally and on top in three eastern states which hold elections in September.
(REUTERS)
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In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
Talk to him about foreign and strategic affairs, media, South Asia, China, and of course India.
