Section:GDN 1N PaGe:4 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 20:53 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Thursday 1 August 2019
(^4) News
Germany polarised
as far right exploits
death of boy pushed
in front of train
Kate Connolly
Berlin
Germany’s interior minister has called
for restraint after far-right politicians
sought to exploit for political gain the
death of an eight-year-old boy who
was pushed in front of a moving train
at Frankfurt station earlier this week.
An Eritrean-born man who lives in
Switzerland is accused of pushing the
boy and his mother on to the tracks.
The mother was able to roll to safety
under the platform seconds before a
high-speed train hit her son, killing
him instantly.
Local media reported that the boy
and his mother were on their way to
Austria for their summer holiday at
the time of the attack. The suspect fl ed
but was intercepted by passengers,
including an off -duty police offi cer,
who tackled him to the ground. He
faces charges of murder and attempted
murder.
“The country is polarised,” Horst
Seehofer , the interior minister, said
yesterday, and even though actual
crime levels were down, “the feeling
of security in the population is very
strained right now”. Strict measures
capital out of the Frankfurt killing.
“To connect the harrowing crime in
Frankfurt with the 2015 refugee crisis
in order to profi t from it, is glaringly
false and politically simply the most
extreme level of disgusting – though
it’s clearly part of the AfD’s method,”
he tweeted.
The Frankfurt killing is the latest
in a series of high-profi le crimes per-
petrated by non-German citizens ,
including the gang rape of an 18 -year-
old woman in the Ruhr valley town
of Müllheim by Bulgarian youths and
the death of a 34-year-old woman who
was also pushed on to train tracks ,
for which a Kosovan man has been
charged – which the AfD has seized
on. The party’s unrelenting criticism
of Merkel’s “open door” approach has
helped elevate it to the main opposi-
tion party in the Bundestag.
Tensions are also running high over
a series of crimes attributed to the far
right, including the racially motivated
shooting of a 26-year-old Eritrean man
in Wächtersbach, near Frankfurt,
threats made against members of the
far-left Die Linke party and attacks on
mosques across the country. The most
prominent incident in recent months
was the murder of the pro-refugee
Christian Democratic Union poli-
tician Walter Lübcke. According to
prosecutors his suspected killer has
numerous links to the far right.
Since Monday passersby have being
laying fl owers, cuddly toys, candles
and chocolates on platform seven,
where the boy died. A fi erce debate
over how best to protect Germany’s
rail passengers is dominating news
networks, with many calling for a
greater police presence and more
closed -circuit television.
Hundreds of people gathered at the
station on Tuesday night for an event
organised by the railway’s religious
mission to pay tribute to the boy and
express support for his family.
Police separated about 50 far-
right demonstrators from the crowd,
including a woman who held a banner
that read “This politics is killing the
people.” A man aligned to a leftwing
group shouted in her direction: “He
should have pushed you in front of
the train.”
People should not allow “hatred
to spread ”, Carsten Baumann, head
of the railway mission, urged, calling
for unity.
“A glance at social media shows that
this crime is being misused in order to
divide society. But we cannot allow
hate to seize us,” he said. He added
that his thoughts were with the boy’s
parents “who have lost everything that
their son meant to them”.
must be taken against criminals, he
added, but “we cannot allow either
the exploitation or the downplaying
of crimes by immigrants”.
Politicians from the rightwing
populist party Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD) were quick to
emphasise the fact that the suspect,
identifi ed by police as Habte Araya ,
was an Eritrean on the run from police
in neighbouring Switzerland.
Shortly after the attack, the AfD –
alluding to the summer and autumn
of 2015 when the chancellor, Angela
Merkel, allowed an estimated 1 million
refugees into the country – tweeted:
“How many citizens have to be off ered
up on the altar of this welcome culture
which knows no bounds?”
Alice Weidel , the party’s co-leader,
said the attack was the latest evidence
that the government’s open policy
towards refugees in 2015 had put
Germans in danger.
“The horror of this crime can hardly
be beaten,” she tweeted. “What else
needs to happen? Once and for all pro-
tect the citizens of this country instead
of this boundless welcome culture!”
Konstantin von Notz, a Green MP ,
called Weidel’s tweet “appalling”
and accused her of making political
▲ Tributes pile up at the entrance to
platform seven, where the boy died.
The sign reads: ‘No place for racism’
PHOTOGRAPH: ARMANDO BABANI/EPA
▲ An Eritrean-born man who was on
the run from Swiss police is in custody,
after being tackled by passengers
Continued from page 1
Essex police
issue warning
following six
drug deaths
in three days
injected, smoked or taken as pills, he
explained.
“Our main line of inquiry is
identifying what those substances are,
and obviously there will be forensic
tests that need to be done and it’ll take
a while for those to come back so I can’t
speculate on what those substances
are,” he said.
Cautioning against speculation that
a bad batch of drugs is responsible for
the deaths, Baldwin added: “Until we
know for sure what the substance is,
we don’t want to give out a message
that there’s a contaminated sample
out there or a dodgy sample as it may
not be the case.
“It may well be that the samples that
they ordinarily take are the ones that
caused this as well.”
Last night, Public Health England
warned drug users to be “extra careful
about what they are taking”.
In a statement, it said: “We strongly
advise them not to use alone and to
test a small amount fi rst. They need
to look out for each other and be alert
to any signs of an overdose, such as
lack of consciousness, shallow or no
breathing, ‘snoring’, and blueing of
the lips and fi ngertips.
“They should immediately call for
an ambulance and use any available
naloxone if someone overdoses
on opioids. We strongly advise all
dependent drug users to get support
from local drug services.”
The body of a woman in her 40s was
found in Canvey Island on Tuesday
evening, only hours after a man in his
40s was found dead in the same town
and a man in his 20s was found dead
in Benfl eet.
On Monday, a woman in her 30s
was found dead in Westcliff and a
man in his 20s was discovered in
Leigh-on-Sea.
DCI Stephen Jennings, of Essex
Police, said: “Five deaths in the space
of around 36 hours in one area of Essex
is an obvious concern and my team
are working hard to establish if they
are linked.
“Another element of our invest-
igation is to identify where the
substances involved have come from
and I need anyone who has informa-
tion about the sale of class A drugs
in south Essex – or elsewhere in the
county – to come forward.”
▲ One woman in her 30s was found
dead in Southend. A total of six people
have died in the area since Sunday
РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS