With Germany stunned by a series of bloody attacks, Chancellor Angela Merkel called Thursday for an “early warning system” to detect radicalisation among asylum seekers even as she insisted the nation still had a moral duty to offer sanctuary to those fleeing war.
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Merkel held a news conference in the middle of her summer break to set out her intention to continue with the migrant policy that has seen over a million refugees seek asylum in Germany in the past year.
The worst recent attack was in Munich on 22 July when nine people were killed by a German teenager of Iranian extraction.
“Germans hit back at Merkels we can make it line by posting statements such as unfortunately we cannot ask the victims of the recent attacks whether they see it exactly the same way“.
Referring to series of deadly attacks in France, Belgium, Turkey and the USA state of Florida as well as Germany, she said, “Taboos of civilisation are being broken.These acts happened in places where any of us could have been”.
Two attacks in Bavaria – an axe attack last week near Würzburg and a suicide bombing on Sunday in Ansbach – were carried out by a refugee and failed asylum seeker respectively.
The attacks have reignited a debate about how to deal with criminal asylum seekers and about the policing of Germany’s borders. For two of the assaults Islamic State claimed responsibility. The attackers were asylum-seekers who hadn’t grown up in Germany.
Critics say Germany’s Bundeswehr is neither trained nor equipped to participate in police operations during terrorist attacks.
The attacks have increased misgivings within Merkel’s own conservative political bloc – made up of her Christian Democrats and its Bavarian sister party CSU – about her promise of sanctuary to all those fleeing the civil war in Syria.
“That two men who came to us as refugees are responsible for the acts in Wuerzburg and Ansbach mocks the country that took them in”, Merkel said.
The attacks have burst any illusions in Germany that the country is immune to attacks like those claimed by Islamic State in neighbouring France.
“I have the feeling that I am acting responsibly and correctly, and no other feelings”, she said.
“We are talking about a huge litmus test, not just for Germany but for the whole of Europe”.
“I didn’t say 11 months ago that it would be an easy thing we could manage in passing, otherwise I wouldn’t have had to say that sentence”, she said.
She argued the extremists wanted to reduce the country’s readiness to take in refugees.
Just hours before that attack another 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker killed a woman in Reutlingen, attacking her with a knife almost two feet in length.
One Twitter user posted a pair of hands covered in blood, quoting Merkel with, “We have already accomplished a lot”, using the #MerkelSommer hashtag.
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Merkel’s methodical response is in stark contrast to that of French President Francois Hollande, who has rushed to the scene of recent attacks.
