“The low membership numbers cannot discount the danger that emanates from such organizations,” Left Party politician Monika Renner told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
Germany is currently seeing a surge in hate crimes following the acceptance of an estimated one million refugees last year. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany’s intelligence agency, recorded 990 hate crimes in 2014, and 1,408 in 2015.
The BfV also recorded 75 arson attacks on refugee centers in 2015. There were just five such attacks in 2014.
Amnesty International has stated that their researchers observed an 87 percent increase in hate crimes between 2013-2015.
“With hate crimes on the rise in Germany, long-standing and well-documented shortcomings in the response of law enforcement agencies to racist violence must be addressed,” Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s European Union researcher, stated. “There are many factors that point to the existence of institutional racism with German law enforcement agencies. This question needs to asked, and it needs to be answered… This is not a time for complacency, but for law enforcement agencies to take a long, hard look in the mirror.”
The nation has also seen a rise in sexual assault, theft, and rape, especially by people with refugee status. There has been a noticeable uptick since the mass attacks on New Year’s Eve in Cologne.
