GERMANY AT BOILING POINT: Furious mob takes to streets hunting and attacking migrants
A MOB of up to 50 stone-throwing neo-Nazis went "hunting" for migrants in the eastern German city of Bautzen yesterday in a repeat of scenes which played out there two months ago.
Allan Hall
Two refugees fled for their lives from the right-wingers who screamed insults and threats after them.
Police
were out in force at the time of the confrontation but apparently did
not act until the refugees began to run from the mob who had gathered at
the city’s Holzmarkt.
One of the asylum seekers was hit by a bicycle ridden by one of his pursuers and suffered a cut from a stone which hit him.
Police rescued a second youth and took him away in a patrol car.
The
town has had a nightly curfew for unaccompanied minor refugees since
the violent events of mid-September when nearly 80 neo-Nazis chased 19
asylum seekers through the streets after exchanging insults in a main
square.
This time the far-right opponents of refugees
took to cars and bikes to chase the migrants who told police they
genuinely felt in fear of their lives.
Like in the previous incident, the confrontation escalated after both groups exchanged verbal insults.
The
incident has highlighted once again the seething resentment that the
far-right has for refugees who are spread out in accommodation centres
across the country.
One week after the initial incident in Bautzen, neo-Nazi youths shouting 'foreigners out!' beat up an elderly man in the town.
The 72-year-old German citizen with Algerian roots was set upon by thugs who punched him to the ground.
They hurled racial epithets at him before fleeing and have so far not been caught.
In
February, a cheering crowd was seen outside a burning asylum-seeker
shelter in Bautzen, clapping and shouting: "Good, that's up in flames."
That
same weekend, a video emerged of neo-Nazis intimidating refugee
children, preventing them from getting off a bus to get to another
shelter in Clausnitz.
Germany recorded more than 1,000 attacks on refugee shelters last year - a five-fold rise over 2014.
Bautzen
mayor Alexander Ahrens met members of far-right groups in October in a
bid to try to learn their motivation for violence.