Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) wants to specifically focus on the groups of perpetrators in future protests. “We will accompany the announced subsequent demonstrations with a comparable massive police presence and keep a targeted eye on the groups of perpetrators,” he told the “Bild” newspaper.
Dobrindt thus confirmed his assessment from the weekend that the violent perpetrators in the weekend riots came primarily from the left-wing spectrum and from circles of people with a migrant background.
As part of youth protests against poor education, social injustice and rising costs of living, people took to the streets in more than 30 cities over the weekend. The initiative spoke of 180,000 participants, the police of significantly fewer.
The demonstrations were overshadowed by subsequent riots, particularly in Frankfurt am Main. According to the Hessian Interior Minister Roman Poseck (CDU), more than 100 police officers were injured and shops in the city center were looted. Violent incidents were also reported in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.
The organizers of the protests do not want to let the riots and the subsequent debate dissuade them from their concerns. The weekend protests were just the beginning, Veronika Dinter, co-organizer of the Berlin “Gen Z regulates” initiative, told the Evangelical Press Service.
She announced another demonstration with even more participants for November 20th. At the same time, she condemned the police for taking action against young people “as if they were enemies of the state”. Legitimate demands were met with batons and pepper spray: “We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by this.”
Criticism of Dobrindt's classification also comes from representatives of migrant organizations. “Mr Dobrindt and the Union keep finding scapegoats to stigmatize demonstrations,” said Gökay Sofuoglu, the chairman of the Turkish community in Germany, to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”. Young people, regardless of their background, are dissatisfied with politics. However, young people with a migration background are particularly affected because they are excluded or feel excluded. 65 years after the recruitment agreement with Turkey, they still do not have the same opportunities, said Sofuoglu. “Now they are not being taken seriously again,” he criticized.
However, Dobrindt also receives support. The chairman of the federal police department of the police union (GdP), Andreas Roßkopf, defended the allocation of the perpetrator groups. “Our colleagues, who stood up for our constitutional state and did so in an absolutely professional manner, confirm exactly these groups of perpetrators in their reports,” he told “Bild”. It is incomprehensible that parts of politics are trying to gloss over this.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD), however, criticized the general category of “migrant milieu”. "What are migrant groups? Are they people who live in Germany in the third generation and are German citizens? Where do we stop differentiating this?" he asked on ZDF. “This is going in the wrong direction.” The deputy leader of the Union parliamentary group, Norbert Röttgen, also spoke out against such a generalization. There were many foreigners or Germans of foreign descent among the violent perpetrators, he said on N-tv. However, no common milieu can be derived from this: “There is no one milieu of migrants in Germany.”
The Federal Government's Integration Commissioner, Natalie Pawlik (SPD), also called for differentiation. “But this is about the question of why, not of origin,” she told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. It is too easy to simply attribute violent incidents to migrant milieus.
