German police sprayed tear gas on several hundred demonstrators throwing bottles and stones at busloads of asylum seekers arriving at an eastern German town in the early hours of Saturday in scuffles which left several people hurt, media reported.
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Maas said authorities will use the “toughness of the rule of law to strike back” against right-wing rioters like those who attacked police Friday night and blocked the road to an asylum shelter in Heidenau near Dresden, intending to stop migrants from moving in.
Police in east Germany clashed late Friday with far-right activists protesting against the opening of a center for refugees, police said. “The buses with the asylum seekers were led to the … shelter”, Dresden police said in a statement.
The protest was hijacked by a group of far-right radicals, many belonging to the militant National Democratic Party (NPD), considered a neo-Nazi organisation.
Politicians quickly condemned the violence. But neither do you want to be a German.
Any migrant arriving on the shores of one country can freely travel to another to claim asylum there. “I am ashamed of these racists in Heidenau”, deputy foreign minister Michael Roth tweeted.
However, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron doesn’t mind the “free movement” principle if people want to work – but is calling for a treaty change to deter EU migrants from claiming benefits for the first four years they are in the UK.
Germany is expected to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, more than any other EU state.
The German government has spoken out strongly against the attacks, with Chancellor Angela Merkel saying there could be “no justification” for them.
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De Maiziere said it was “unacceptable that European institutions continue to work at their current slow pace” in finding a joint solution to the crisis, adding that “too little” was being done to implement decisions that have already been taken. More than a third come from south-eastern European countries like Albania and Serbia.
