Germany In the midst of enemies
WELT ONLINE/Europe News ^ | August 01 2008 | Kristian Frigelj

This article is about Germany’s Muslim no go zones. Enclaves, villages, towns, and neighborhoods that are no longer under German control where the police and native German’s fear to tread. The German press is too PC to mention race or religion of those that are at war against their nation and citizenry.

Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2008 1:14:34 PM
German original text: "Unter Feinden" (Unter – Under Feinden – Fiends [Oppressors Thugs, Subversives])
Translation: Anthony Pfriem

Criminality: the new fear of the German police

A few German districts the police hardly dares to enter anymore, because they are attacked immediately. A visit to “dangerous areas” of the Ruhr.

One further step over the Viehofer Straße, and a line has been crossed. It is invisible; there is no warning sign on the usual road maps of Essen. Yet there are other laws on this side of the line. At the Viehofer Strasse the “dangerous area” starts. This is how the local police call the northern part of the inner city of Essen.

Every two weeks, about a dozen police officers in olive-green overalls go there, accompanied by a few officers of the security force of the city. The exact number of personnel is not to be mentioned, so that “the opposing powers can’t accustom to it”, stresses the police.

The “dangerous area encompasses three dozen roads. The officers enter dim tea houses and oriental cafes, which like to call themselves “cultural societies”, snack bars, telephone shops, internet rooms. It is a partly dodgy infrastructure of the Lebanese “community”, amounting to around 5000 people in Essen. The police ask for IDs and shop permits. They are often treated with reluctant politeness and disdainful looks, as if they were entering foreign territory. In Essen a phenomenon is being fought against, that can be observed in other German cities as well. Policemen speak of “parallel worlds” and “Fear-areas”. Migration-politicians are breathless when confronted with such remarks, but the police officers can’t find other expressions for their experiences anymore. They only dare to enter such areas with backup, because they risk being treated with vulgar behaviour or being physically attacked.

In the northern part of the inner city of Essen delinquencies and criminal offences have been happening on a daily basis for a while, parking offences, drug deals, receiving of stolen goods, brawls, illegal employment. “It cannot be that a legal black hole appears”, said the director of the police of Essen, first chief inspector Dietmar Jensen in April 2007. That is why the region was declared to be a “dangerous area” according to the standards of the North Rhine-Westphalia police law. Since then stricter controls are allowed.

This for Germany unusual measure is insofar a taboo-breach as it openly shows the resistance the 270 000 federal-, state- and federal-criminal police officers are confronted with in many regions. “The problem of violence against police officers has grown over the last few years. The police has to increasingly focus on self-protection during their tours of duty”, the federal chairman of the police union (Gewerkschaft der Polizei-GdP) Konrad Freiberg told the WELT. “When the colleagues go on a tour of duty, they don’t know anymore what will happen to them.”

The number of resistance acts, according to the GdP is presently at around 26 000 per year, which means an increase of 60 percent in comparison to the eighties. “Earlier people thought that what the police do is right. Today people assume that we are doing something wrong”, says chief inspector Stefan Kirchner, staff-leader of the police station Köln-Mitte. Kirchner explains that non-involved passengers intervene in person controls or arrests and wranglers team up against the police officers who try to accommodate a quarrel. For a while now the reactions in public masses are being trained more profoundly in police trainings. If, for example, the police move into a bar to arrest a troublemaker, a group of colleagues of at least the same size follows them to contain the bystanders. The GdP complains that many people have developed a different kind of sense of justice; growing aggression towards the police can be seen through all levels of age and population.” That is not a problem which is limited to the agglomerations like Berlin or the Ruhr area, it is just most visible there”, says GdP spokesman Rüdiger Holecek.

Although German delinquents statistically are the clear majority, the police complain time and again about noticeable foreigners. “There is no more respect of the authority of the state among citizens, especially among young people of foreign origin”, says Freiberg. The police are forced, despite all successful integration measures, to name the problems more clearly than before. These are not being discussed for fear of getting xenophobic resentment.

But at the Berlin police the same appeasing language as ever is to be heard. Here the press office doesn’t want to even name the problematic districts when requested to do so. One “couldn’t say that so generally” it is said. On the other hand GdP spokesman Holecek stresses:” In Berlin we actually have red alert already.” But one can also go to Duisburg, to the district Marxloh. “If a protective shield becomes a target” an article is titled which appeared in the may issue of the GdP magazine “Deutsche Polizei”. Holecek describes the risky situation for the policemen in Marxloh.”One has to address this topic, although it doesn’t conform to political correctness”, he says. Two officers from Duisburg described to him how they wanted to appease a fight between Turks and Lebanese on a crossing in Marxloh. Suddenly they were surrounded and couldn’t get to their police car anymore. Passengers in an also blocked tram had to first call reinforcement for help via the mobile phone.

Marxloh officially is a “district with special need for renewal”; others say it is a “social focal point”. Of the approximately 18 000 inhabitants a third is of foreign origin, most are Turkish, unemployment is high. With an engaged district office and citizen initiatives, for many years now amazing things are being done for mutual understanding. Without conflicts one of the biggest mosques of Germany is being built. But at the same time striking differences in the sense of justice of Germany become apparent. Holecek cites a Duisburg official with the words:” what is developing here for three, four years, is a time bomb.”

Lord High Commissioner Andreas de Fries knows this negative foreshadowing that suddenly crawls up his neck when he is checking the personal data of a suspect and suddenly two dozen people appear from nowhere and scramble around him and all talk at once. “The voices come from all sides, and suddenly you get a hit in the back. You can’t even look that fast, says de Fries.

The 45-year old high commissioner is a strong guy with an assertive appearance. But in Duisburg-Marxloh a police uniform doesn’t count much anymore. “That was a creeping development”, says police commissioner Hans Schwerdtfeger, who has been working in the foot patrol guard at the August-Bebel Place for eleven years. His colleague de Fries has been here five years longer.

The two have experienced the Kurdish conflicts in the nineties. They know many of the Turkish vendors; buy their food in their shops. They rave about the wedding dresses which an exotic wedding-fashion place offers on the Wieseler Hauptstrasse, and with a few inhabitants they have become friends. By and large Schwerdtfeger and de Fries speak in high terms of the Turkish people of Marxloh.

But those who come as “stateless” from the Lebanon, Iraq or the Kurdish areas of Turkey, cause them unrest. “With the Turks and the Albanians it always goes over the parents”, Schwerdtfeger explains; if a kid becomes conspicuous, a talk to the parents often helps. But the young people who call themselves the “Arabs” don’t know respect or borders anymore. There may be a few hundred in Marxloh, and their demeanour is partly responsible for cross-the-board fear of foreigners. Eight-year olds kick old ladies, request sexual intercourse from women, and throw water balloons against store fronts or deliberately cross the street to cause traffic jams. “Continuously small offences are provoked, even if a police car is in sight”, says de Fries. As soon as one wants to call the youngsters to reason, their older brothers appear. “That is our street”, they shout. Then it is dangerous. The police president of Duisburg, Rolf Cebin gives the problem towards the WELT a name. “Riotous assemblies of parts of the population during police tasks are becoming an ever increasing problem. Time and again a hostile atmosphere towards the police appears.”

The GdP praises Cebin for his courage to say this, and stresses that anger and disappointment has grown among many colleagues. They see that it is the duty of the political system to change its social and migration policies.

In the neighbour city of Essen the northern part of the city centre remains a “dangerous area” in the meantime. In the first four months after calling out its special status more than 1000 people have been controlled and about 200 criminal offences have been uncovered. Since half a year no more major incidents have appeared. Police spokesman Ulrich Faßbender is proud of the success, but he also judges it very unemotionally:” If we were less present as a police force, it would start again immediately”.