“I would like to make this urgent plea to avoid drawing such swift links to the situation surrounding refugees”, Thomas de Maiziere said, noting that there have already been “appalling scales of attacks against asylum seekers and asylum seeker shelters”.
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He said that, while the response to terrorism needed to be robust, it also needed to be within the rule of law and with respect for human rights.
Serbian media reported that a suspect in the attacks entered the European Union through the Greek island of Leros on October 3rd and continued to Macedonia and Serbia, applying for asylum in Serbia on October 7th.
Poland’s incoming European Affairs Minister Konrad Szymanski led the charge against the EU saying that Warsaw no longer considered the plan as a “political possibility” in the light of the Paris attacks.
“Do not confuse the perpetrators of criminal acts in Paris with the asylum seekers, with migrants who have good reason to knock on our doors; and do not confuse those who committed these atrocities with those who flee the philosophy and mentality that inspire acts that unfortunately we have seen in Paris”.
The crime scenes in Paris are still being processed, and the names of the dead are just beginning to trickle out, but a few European leaders are already moving to block the tide of refugees crossing their borders after journeying from war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Even before Friday’s attacks in Paris, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a close Merkel ally, likened the more than 750,000 migrants who have come to Germany this year to an avalanche.
On Saturday Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said: “We have been saying that there are enormous security risks linked to migration”. “Poland must retain complete control of its borders, as well as its asylum and migration policy”, Szymanski insisted on the site.
“Why would a terrorist, who is going to blow himself up, have a passport on him?” “This is a key condition, and today a question mark has been put next to it all around Europe”, added the incoming minister, without specifying what he meant by security guarantees.
Zebar Akram, a 29-year-old Iraqi man, was among those streaming through Slovenia toward Austria on Saturday.
“We should not mix the different categories of people coming to Europe”.
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He said such attacks will “only result (in) a new wave of refugees”.
