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German town seeks explanation for attacks on Indians

Malaysia Sun

Tuesday 21st August, 2007
(IANS)

http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/275373/cs/1/

It is not a scene that residents of the small town in the eastern German state of Saxony like to look back at.

A mob of around 50 young Germans chased a group of eight Indians across the main square, forcing them to take shelter in a pizzeria owned by one of their countrymen.

When the pursuers reached the restaurant, they kicked on the doors and vandalised the owner’s car.

The violence came during a festival in the town of 5,000 Saturday evening, which took a dramatic turn, resulting in injuries to the eight Indians.

Witnesses said some of the mob chanted Nazi slogans with onlookers staring impassively as the gang set about their victims.

The mood in the town was muted Monday.

Locals avoided journalists who had come to learn at first hand what happened in Muegeln, 45 km east of Leipzig and 50 km west of Dresden, Saxony’s two largest cities.

Mayor Gotthard Deuse of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) sought to play down the xenophobic motives of the attack.

‘There is no right-wing scene here,’ he said. If the incident had a racially motivated background, then the assailants must have come from neighbouring areas, he added.

One of the victims, Govinda, said he had never encountered any racial hostility before in Muegeln. The 26-year-old’s friend, Kulvir Singh, said that he, too, had not been harassed in the five months he had lived there.

Now their faces are bruised and swollen and they are covered with cuts from flying glass.

Some locals said that right-wing radicals had announced in advance they planned to come to the festival, an indication that trouble was to be expected.

Mayor Deuse was quoted in the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper as saying that he had received a tip-off from the local youth club and had alerted police to the potential danger.

Right-wing rock groups have staged concerts in the region around Muegeln and there is also a mail order business in the town specialising in right-wing music.

Police would not rule out the attack was racially motivated, but said they were pursuing various lines of inquiry.

‘The whole affair has gained momentum,’ said police spokeswoman Ilka Peter.

Police are now under enormous pressure to find the culprits after coming under criticism for keeping quiet about the incident for more than 20 hours.

Witnesses said it took around one hour for police to arrive on the scene after the violence erupted. About 70 officers eventually restored calm.

Two Germans aged 21 and 23 were detained after the attack, but later released. One of the injured Indians was still in hospital Monday.

Saxony is one of the states formerly part of communist East Germany, which have seen disproportionate rates of violence against foreigners since German reunification in 1990.

The belated police response was reminiscent of events in the neighbouring state of Saxony Anhalt where officers have come under fire for their handling of attacks by right-wing extremists on a group of actors in Halberstadt in June and a Vietnamese family in Burg earlier this month.

The last serious incident involving right-wingers in Saxony occurred in February when a group of about 20 skinheads broke up an anti-discrimination meeting in a cafe and injured two of the participants.

Local citizens groups claimed there was ‘a strategy of silence’ among the authorities when it came to right-wing tendencies in the state and appealed to the state government to stress the dangers emanating from right-wing extremism.

Saxony state premier Georg Milbradt, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said he would visit the town Monday evening for a first-hand look at the situation.