-Caveat Lector-
Racists Scent East German Poll Success
COTTBUS, Germany (Reuters) - It took just seconds for the German neo-Nazis
boarding a tram in the depressed eastern town of Cottbus to find the object of
their wrath.
"Niggers out!" roared the 30-strong mob as they bolted toward a group of 11
African refugees. They punched and kicked the foreigners and hit them with
rocks and bottles for 20 minutes before fleeing. Other passengers looked away
or laughed. Cries for help were ignored.
"It was the most frightening moment of my life," said John Omondi, a Kenyan
refugee. "I thought we were going to die. They told us to get out of Germany.
They kicked us again and again. The tram kept going. No one helped us. They
just laughed."
Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, racism in eastern Germany is on
the rise and it is becoming political.
Cottbus, a fading industrial town 95 miles south of Berlin, has become
notorious for attacks on foreigners. Many say they are afraid to leave the
hostels set up by hospitable federal authorities to house refugees and
asylum-seekers.
The political climate in Brandenburg, one of Germany's poorest states, has
given far-right parties hope of victory in the former Communist east after
failures in the rich west.
In a state election Sept. 5, the far-right German Peoples Union (DVU) hopes to
win at least 5 percent of the vote to claim seats in the state parliament.
Pollsters say support for the DVU has doubled to about 4 percent in the last
two months and could climb further.
EAST-WEST DIVIDES OVER GUILT, WEALTH ARE FACTORS
Western Germans, who spent the decades after World War II in profound
self-examination of their common guilt for Nazi racism, have had tolerance
instilled in them from the cradle. But their eastern cousins' Communist
leaders cast the blame for Nazi atrocities on a minority of right-wing
fanatics, a factor many see as contributing to today's greater acceptance
among the public at large of racist attitudes in the east.
The humiliating collapse of their own state, fueling confused feelings of
inferiority and anger, are also factors behind the rise of a violent neo-Nazi
fringe in the east.
"Cottbus is not a civilized place," said a 28-year-old asylum-seeker from
Togo. "They don't like foreigners. I am called a 'nigger' here everyday."
A man of about 75 recently accosted him with "Go home nigger," he said. Even
frail racists, it seems, have little to fear in Cottbus, a town whose
population is in decline as the unemployment rate soars to 24 percent.
"The foreigners get preferential treatment," said Kerstin, a 28-year-old
Cottbus resident, as she ate lunch at a restaurant in the center of Cottbus.
"You see the slit-eyes shopping everywhere. They take our jobs away and get
our money. And blacks often cause trouble in discos. They all frighten me.
They're always breaking into apartments or stealing cars."
Cottbus authorities admit they have a problem but say their town is no worse
than other parts of eastern Germany, where extremists sometimes boast of
creating "foreigner-free zones" through crude intimidation.
"Cottbus has been given a bad reputation," Mayor Waldemar Kleinschmidt said in
an interview. "We don't want to sweep the problems under the carpet. We have
to do a better job with prevention. But these things happen all over Germany."
ATTACKS TOO FREQUENT TO MENTION
Xenophobic attacks in the formerly Communist east have become so commonplace
in recent years that they only rarely attract media attention. Assaults are
far less common in the more populous west, where nearly 10 percent of the
population is foreign compared to 2 percent in the east.
In the Cottbus suburb of Guben, a 28-year-old Algerian was hounded to his
death in February, crashing through a glass door and severing an artery as he
tried to escape a racist crowd. In the Brandenburg village of Gollwitz, civic
leaders refused to let a group of 60 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union
move into a publicly owned building.
The far-right DVU, which won 13 percent of the vote in neighboring
Saxony-Anhalt last year, hopes to tap into that. It is spending more than a $1
million on its Brandenburg campaign and posters urging "Expel Foreign
Criminals" and "German Money for German Jobs" are everywhere in Cottbus.
"It's possible that the DVU will pull off another surprise in Brandenburg,"
said Juergen Hoffmann of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a conservative
think-tank. "The potential is there. The far-right problem was long overlooked
in the east."
The Brandenburg interior ministry saysCottbus ranks among the worst towns in
the state for right-wing violence. There were five reported acts of violence
in 1998 but experts estimate the true number was five times higher.
"The color of the foreigners' skin has effectively worked as a magnet for the
far-right extremists," police chief Juergen Lueth said in an interview.
"During the Communist East German era, foreigners were hardly ever seen in
public."
But Lueth insisted the police were on top of the situation. "Foreigners have
no reason to be afraid in Cottbus anymore," he said. "Cottbus has awakened up
to the problem and we want to make it clear we are not going to tolerate the
racism. Cottbus is not a swamp for Nazis."
IMMIGRANTS REMAIN FRIGHTENED, PESSIMISTIC
But the town's most popular soccer player, a defender from the west African
country of Benin, recently caused a stir by saying he was leaving Cottbus
because he was tired of being turned away from nightclubs because of his skin.
"It's OK to score goals for Energie Cottbus," Moudachirou Amadouhe told Bild
newspaper, referring to the second division team he played for since 1992.
"But whenever I walk down the street they shout vulgar remarks at me and my
girlfriend."
He has since transferred to a team in the west.
The brutal attack on a streetcar in June has made a lot of the asylum-seekers
crowded into a decrepit shelter on the outskirts of Cottbus wish they could
leave town too. Omondi, the Kenyan who came out of the attack with severe
bruises in his groin, said he still had nightmares.
"The Nazis jumped on the streetcar, came straight up to us and starting
hitting us right away," he said. "The other people on the streetcar just
looked away or laughed. My friend was kicked so hard in the head that he was
bleeding everywhere. No one helped us."
Malik Khalid, 18, a refugee from Sudan, agreed that Cottbus was a dangerous
place for foreigners and found efforts to integrate by attending a German
school disheartening.
"I have no friends at school," he said. "No one will talk to me. Even during
the breaks between classes they ignore me. I try to play soccer with them but
they won't talk to me. They hate me. They just hate me here because I'm a
foreigner."
Copyright 1999 Reuters.All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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