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CRIME

Integration minister rejects including ethnicity in crime stats

Germany's commissioner for integration, Maria Böhmer, has rejected calls to include the ethnic background of criminals in police statistics by her own conservatives, daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Friday.

Integration minister rejects including ethnicity in crime stats
Photo: DPA

“This suggestion could give many immigrants who are willing to integrate in Germany a false signal if the varied causes of criminality are not taken into account at the same time,” Christian Democrat Böhmer told the paper. “Changing criminal statistics without qualified causal research is not appropriate.”

Family problems, loss of perspective, and experience with violence all lead to violence, she said.

Böhmer explained that although these factors affect Germans, crime statistics are still higher for immigrant youth. But she said immigrant organisations are working together to reduce crime in this area.

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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