State Governor Wants Crackdown on ‘Criminal Young Foreigners’
A senior politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party says Germany has too many “criminal young foreigners” and that immigrants must accept the country’s Christian culture. Critics say he is adopting populist rhetoric to boost his chances in a regional election in January.
A top member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives has said Germany has too many criminal young foreigners and that immigrants must stick to the rules of Germany’s “Christian-Occidental” culture, in remarks that echo the rhetoric of Germany’s far right. The Social Democrats and Green Party have accused him of cheap campaign rhetoric.
Roland Koch, facing a tough re-election battle as governor of the western state of Hesse, told mass circulation newspaper Bild Zeitung: “How much are we prepared to take from a small proportion of violent youths, who frequently have a foreign background?”Koch was responding to the brutal assault on a 76-year-old German man by two young men, one Greek and one Turkish, in Munich on December 20. The pensioner had asked them to stop smoking on a subway train, where smoking is prohibited.
They called him a “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1675 German” and spat at him, then followed him out onto the platform and beat him up, kicking him in the head. He was taken to hospital with a fractured skull and internal bleeding in his brain but is now recovering. A number of people witnessed the attack but did not intervene.
The incident was filmed on security cameras and led to a nationwide outcry during Christmas, with calls for tougher sentencing for young offenders and the expulsion of foreign criminals.
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