“I think it arrived some time ago already”, she said, citing previous recent attacks on United States soldiers at Frankfurt airport and an attack on a policeman in Hanover, both of which are believed to have had Islamic extremist motives.
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She argued the extremists wanted to reduce the country’s readiness to take in refugees.
Germanys online community has been in a furor since Chancellor Merkel said she will still stick to an open door policy for refuges, maintaining Germany is still safe, despite the recent deadly attacks there, most of which were committed by migrants. “We stand decisively against that”.
Merkel pledged at a news conference Thursday to do everything to clear up the “barbaric acts”, find out who was behind them and bring them to justice. They want to harm our life and our openness.
‘They see hatred and fear between cultures and they see hatred and fear between religions.
“I didn’t say this as if it were something that we could do easily, otherwise I wouldn’t have said it”, Merkel said in Berlin on Thursday. “Our understanding of freedom and security is being tested”. “We can manage this historic challenge”.
Merkel’s press briefing was meant to respond to the internal and external accusations that her open-door immigration policy was allowing Muslim terrorists to take over Germany, after 15 Germans were killed since the start of the month by immigrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
More than a million of asylum-seekers were registered in Germany in 2015.
“Taboos of civilisation are being broken”, she said.
Recent terror attacks have put more pressure on Merkel for her refugee policy and have fueled anxieties that far-right parties’ political influence will increase. Global treaties, however, forbid countries from returning migrants to places of danger, such a war-ravaged Syria, even if a migrant has been refused refugee status.
The German attacks came with two state elections looming in September, in Berlin and in Merkel’s fiefdom of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an economically depressed state on the Baltic coast. “We will not change our principles”, Merkel stated.
“There is another risk of perpetrators that have not come to the attention of authorities”.
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. It is for that reason, she said, that “internal and external security can no longer be distinguished from each other”. He had been informed two weeks earlier that he was to be deported in 30 days.
The most deadly atrocity was carried out in Munich on 22 July when nine people were shot and killed by a German-Iranian teenager.
Germany has experienced four attacks since mid-July.
Brussels was also hit in March when Islamist militants bombed the airport there, killing 32 people and injuring at least 300 more.
An Afghan refugee launched an ax attack on a train in Wurzburg.
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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.
