Unfortunately we can not ask the victims of the recent attacks whether they see it exactly the same way.
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Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, right, and Bavaria’s Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann attend a meeting of the Bavarian cabinet, in Gmund, Germany, Tuesday, July 26, 2016. In the most recent attack, .
The German attacks came with two state elections looming in September, in Berlin and in Dr Merkel’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and a year before a general election. The weekly magazine claimed D.
But she said there would be no reversal in the policy of taking in migrants. More than 1 million asylum-seekers were registered in Germany in 2015, although the influx has since slowed dramatically.
Her comments were made at an annual summer press conference that was brought forward from August to address the terror wave. We are tested in the way we live; our understanding of freedom and security is being tested.
Merkel, then, called for a stricter “warning system to alert authorities” of potential terrorists during refugees’ “asylum process or integration measures”.
Germany would do “everything humanly possible” to ensure security, she said, although there would have to be a “thorough analysis” before specific new measures were drawn up. “Fear can’t be a good counsel for political action”, she said in Berlin.
The Syrian asylum seeker who injured 15 people on Sunday when he blew himself up outside a music festival venue in the southern German town of Ansbach, had been due for deportation to Bulgaria for more than a year. Three of the four attackers were refugees, two had connections with the Islamic State.
Three of the four attackers were asylum seekers, and two of the assaults were claimed by Islamic State. “These acts happened in places where any of us could have been”. She added that Germany owes that to the victims, their relatives, its own security and also “to all the many innocent refugees”.
“It makes a mockery of the aid workers who have offered help and it makes a mockery of other refugees who truly are seeking safety from violence and war”, Merkel said.
The last time, the German public heard directly from her, was last Saturday, one day after the shooting rampage in Munich.
“It is very important to me that the principle of proportionality must be guaranteed in all circumstances”, she said.
“I am still convinced today that “we can do it” – it is our historic duty and this is a historic challenge in times of globalization”.
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“Angst can not be the guide for political action”, Merkel said, setting out a nine-point plan to respond to the attacks, including measures to recruit more staff for security agencies and an early warning system for the radicalisation of refugees. “All our prophecies have been proved right”, he said.
