From Pravda
http://newsfromrussia.com/society/2005/11/07/67122.html
German officials exclude risk of French-style riots
13:28 2005-11-07
German officials played down the risk of the country seeing violence similar to that in neighboring France, even as Berlin police examined whether the overnight burning of five cars in the capital was a copycat crime.
Still, officials with both the outgoing and incoming governments stressed the need to better integrate immigrants into German society. France has seen 11 nights of violence, initially concentrated in immigrant-heavy suburbs, with disaffected youths torching cars and buildings.
"I think we should stay away from drawing premature analogies and making prophecies as to whether similar developments would be possible here," Thomas Steg, a spokesman for outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told reporters. "The situation is not comparable."
Wolfgang Schaeuble, a conservative selected as Chancellor-designate Angela Merkel's interior minister, echoed that in an interview with the Bild daily.
"The conditions in France are different from the ones we have," Schaeuble said. "We don't have these gigantic high-rise projects that they have on the edges of French cities."
Schaeuble cautioned, however, that "we have to improve integration, particularly of young people. That means above all that they must master the German language."
An immigration law that took effect in January aims to have new arrivals integrate into society, making government-funded German language and civics courses obligatory for newcomers.
Steg was tightlipped on the German government's opinion of how events in France were handled, saying "it is not for us to comment on these decisions by the French government."
In the early hours of Monday, five cars were set on fire in Berlin's working-class Moabit district. Police were investigating, the AP reports.
African news report
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1830215,00.html
Cars torched in Berlin 07/11/2005 13:07 - (SA)
Berlin - Five cars were set on fire in a poor district of the German capital on Monday and police said they were trying to determine if there was any connection with the wave of violence sweeping France.
The cars were burned in five separate streets in Berlin's Moabit district, a poor region with a high number of foreigners a few kilometres from the central government district.
Police said nobody had claimed responsibility for the attacks and so far there was nothing which suggested they were copy-cat crimes.
Cars have been regularly torched in Berlin by left-wing extremists on violent May 1 protests which have been a fixture in the city since the 1980s.
Moabit is in former West Berlin and has a high number of Turkish nationals. Turks comprise the biggest foreign minority in Berlin, numbering 118 000 out of a total population of 3.4 million, according to official figures.
There are about 450 000 foreigners living in the German capital.
Comparions between Germany and France
Berlin does not, however, have the same sort of huge, impoverished foreign ghettos as Paris.
Although parts of the city such as Wedding and Neukoelln have major social problems and high unemployment, they have not become no-go areas for police.
Youth unemployment in Germany is less of a problem than in France, according to European Union data. In Germany some 13.8% of people aged 15 to 24 years are jobless, compared with almost 22% in France.
Politicians from all German parties underlined the difference between Germany and France but they warned that steps had to be take to improve integration of foreigners.
"We don't have ghettos like in France," said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Greens member of the European Parliament in comments to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
Cohn-Bendit also stressed that Germany's social welfare network was in far better shape than that of France.
Need to learn German
Wolfgang Schaeuble, a senior member of designated chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said greater efforts were needed to ensure that all young foreigners learned the German language.
"Districts are developing in our cities with high proportions of foreigners which are being cut off from the rest of society," said Schaeuble.
Michael Mueller, a left-leaning member of outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) said the events in Paris showed that Germany could not afford to trim back its social welfare programmes.
"Social conflicts and disintegration are increasing in Germany," said Mueller. -