Cottbus latest German city to ban new migrants

TMP – 16/02/2018

The German city of Cottbus has announced it will no longer be accepting new asylum seekers and migrants, following reports of multiple assaults committed by migrants in the city.

Anger and fear has risen amongst the city’s residents after a spate of violent attacks largely attributed to migrants.

German police detained two male Syrian teenagers earlier this month on suspicion of carrying out a knife attack on a German teenager, causing severe facial injuries.

A day earlier, Cottbus officials ordered a 15-year-old Syrian and his father to leave the city after he and his two friends were suspected of assault on a German couple. A 51-year-old man and his wife said they were attacked by the teenagers outside a shopping centre.

The small, sparsely populated city has hosted over 3,000 migrants since 2015 when global conflicts caused a surge in migration from Asia and the Middle East.

Coupled with a sluggish economy, the considerable influx has fueled anti-immigrant sentiment among locals, and the city is home to one of Germany’s largest right-wing extremist scenes.

Reports show that anti-immigrant sentiment is now growing among the city’s residents, with an estimated 145 right-wing activists living in the area.

Cottbus is only the latest in a string of German cities to impose a migrant ban. Salzgitter, Delmenhorst and Wilhelmshaven in the northern state of Lower Saxony last year invoked a ban, citing a lack of resources to handle the number of migrants arriving.

This latest ban comes just weeks after a study in Germany revealed a correlation between migrants and an increase in violent crime.

The study used figures from the northern state of Lower Saxony to examine the impact of asylum seeker arrivals on crime in 2015 and 2016.

It attributed a 10 percent rise in violent crimes in the state during those two years almost exclusively to asylum seekers and refugees. However, the study also found that migrants are most likely to be the victims of crime committed by migrants. In 90 percent of homicide cases where a migrant was the suspect, so too was the victim.
The study also found that living conditions in detention centres, where dozens of young men of different ethnicities and religions are held together in cramped conditions, contributed to incidents of violent crime.