Murder of German police officer inflames migration debate ahead of EU election

03 June 2024 , 19:58

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Focus on immigration and Islamist extremism could benefit the far right in the final days of the campaign.

The grisly killing of a police officer — captured on video by an onlooker and shared widely on social media — has sparked a highly emotional debate in Germany about migration and radical Islamism, just days ahead of the European Parliament election.

The officer, identified as Rouven L., 29, died Sunday after being stabbed in the back of the head allegedly by a 25-year-old man from Afghanistan, who arrived in Germany in 2014.

The political context for the attack could hardly be more sensitive. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party wants to turn this week’s EU election into a referendum on migration policy; the murder could provide just the ammunition it needs.

The AfD has struggled lately with a string of recent scandals that appeared to have halted its political ascent and caused it to slip in polls. But wider concern over migration could provide the party with fertile ground.

“Our thoughts are with all civil servants who have to put their lives in danger every day because of a misguided migration and security policy,” said the AfD’s national co-leaders, Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel. They called for “secure borders and a fortress Europe,” a stop to immigration and the “repatriation” of Afghan migrants already in the country.

Polls show that many Germans remain deeply uncomfortable with immigration, and wish to see a cap on the number of asylum seekers allowed into the country. In one recent survey conducted for German public television, respondents cited refugee, asylum and integration policy as the most urgent issue facing the European Union, with 41 percent citing it as one of the top two problems facing the bloc — more importance than assigned to any other issue.

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In a separate poll, 64 percent of Germans said they viewed migration as relatively disadvantageous for society, while only 27 percent viewed it as a net benefit.

Against that backdrop, AfD politicians have sought to depict the impact of immigration on Germany in nearly apocalyptic terms, as if the country were fighting for survival in the face of violence allegedly perpetrated by migrants.

“How many of us still have to die before we find the courage to live our lives?” Björn Höcke, one of the AfD’s most extreme politicians and its leader in the eastern German state of Thuringia, wrote on X. Höcke was recently fined by a German court for using a Nazi slogan during a campaign speech.

The police officer was killed on Friday on a public square in the southwest German city of Mannheim, where an anti-Islam activist group calling itself the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa was preparing to hold a rally. The suspect attacked people assembled on the square with a knife, injuring several, including Michael Stürzenberger, the founder of the anti-Islam group.

After police arrived on the scene the suspect allegedly approached the officer from behind as he was kneeling over another man, and stabbed his victim. Another police officer then shot the suspect, who was hospitalized.

The police are investigating the attack; a motive has not been established. Authorities said the suspect was born in Afghanistan, was married with two children and lived with his family in Heppenheim, Hesse.

Politicians across the spectrum condemned the attack and warned of the dangers of extremism.

“The police officer who was killed in Mannheim was defending the right of all of us to express our own opinions,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X on Monday. “If extremists want to violently restrict these rights, they must know: We are their toughest opponents.”

Speaking to the German tabloid Bild, Greens economy minister Robert Habeck cautioned that the attacker’s motive needed to be clarified, before declaring that Germany must “fight Islamism with all the rigor of our constitutional state.”

“There must be no tolerance,” Habeck added. “It is a murderous ideology that has nothing in common with our democracy.”

Elizabeth Baker

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