The number of acts of violence against refugees remains at a high level
The Amadeu Antonio Foundation recorded more than 11,200 cases of right-wing violence against people seeking protection between 2015 and 2019. The BKA statistics are therefore incomplete.
Violence against refugees in Germany remains at a high level. This emerges from the long-term evaluation of life in danger by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. Between the beginning of 2015 and the end of 2019 there were a total of 11,257 cases of violence (10,908 assaults and 349 suspected cases), which are documented in the chronicle of anti-refugee incidents by Pro Asyl and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. These include 267 arson attacks, 1,895 physical injuries and 8,765 other assaults, including attempted physical injuries and racist graffiti.
Racism and anti-Semitism are the motives, according to a foreword by the Association of Counseling Centers for Victims of Right-Wing, Racist and Anti-Semitic Violence (VBRG) on the evaluation - "both in the racist street violence from 2014 and in the right-wing terrorism in Kassel, Halle and Hanau". The perpetrators staged themselves as defenders of a Germany whose existence was allegedly threatened by immigration.
According to the evaluation, the months from autumn 2015 to summer 2016 were particularly violent. In Saxony – according to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation the most dangerous federal state for refugees – there were 25 arson attacks, 64 physical injuries and 162 other assaults in 2015. In 2016 there were 15 arson attacks, 104 physical injuries and 346 other assaults. As the starting point of the Pegida movement, Dresden is "the epicenter of the nationwide hate campaign against refugees".
In relation to the number of its 2.5 million inhabitants, Brandenburg recorded the most attacks on asylum seekers in the period examined: 1,212, suspected cases and rallies not included. The main regions of right-wing violence are therefore Cottbus and the Uckermark.
While the public is primarily looking at the organized right-wing movement in eastern Germany, a right-wing scene has also existed in Baden-Württemberg "largely unmolested for decades," they say. In 2015, the most attacks on refugees nationwide took place in the Rems-Murr district, including an arson attack on a planned asylum accommodation. On New Year's morning 2019, unknown persons set fire to the balcony of a house where a refugee family lived in the same county.
Nationwide, the number of attacks fell in 2019 - according to the evaluation, only North Rhine-Westphalia recorded more attacks than in the previous year. On October 9th - the day of the attack in Halle - unknown persons shot at a window of a house in Zülpich in which a refugee family lived. No one was injured.
For 2020, the foundation has counted 1,700 cases so far, ten more than the Federal Criminal Police Office. However, the figures have not yet been fully checked.
