Last Friday, 23 August, a Syrian migrant stabbed three people to death in Solingen, Germany at the street festival ironically called Diversity that celebrated the 650th anniversary of the city’s establishment. 26-year-old Issa Al H. (his full last name has not been made public due to data protection laws in Germany) is believed to have ties to the Islamic State terror group. He arrived in the country in 2022, then had his asylum application rejected, and was due to be deported to Bulgaria, where he first arrived in the European Union.
The reigning Social Democratic Party (SPD) had already been facing mounting pressure from the right to crack down on illegal immigration prior to the attack.
In the European Parliamentary election earlier this year, SPD only got 13.94 per cent of the popular vote. It was outperformed by both the centre-right CDU-CSU coalition and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SPD party travelled to the site of the stabbings on Monday, 26 August. There he told reporters that his administration is willing to take measures to curb illegal migration, stressing that it ‘must go down’.
‘This was terrorism, terrorism against us all,’ the BBC quoted the Chancellor. He went on to say that the government will do ‘everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not stay here in Germany are repatriated and deported’.
In the wake of the stabbing, the youth division of AfD showed up to protest in Solingen, which, in turn, attracted the violent far-left group Antifa to counter-protest. Evidently, the demonstrations ended in clashes between the two groups, and a clash between the police and Antifa as well.
Tensions are also rising within the Bundestag, with CDU leader Friedrich Merz calling on the government to stop letting in migrants from Syria and Afghanistan; while AfD has called for a complete halt on all immigration into Germany.
While Chancellor Scholz has made a commitment to curb illegal migration into the country, his party has also stated that they remain committed to helping those who are fleeing prosecution in their home country.
Germany was one of the main catalysts for the 2015 migration crisis in Europe. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel from the centre-right CDU party allowed over a million asylum seekers to come into Germany before their applications were even processed. Back then any dissenters to the ‘humanitarian’ immigration approach were vilified, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary being one of the most prominent figure to be pilloried. By now, however, opposition to illegal migration is so mainstream in Germany that Bild, the newspaper with the highest circulation in Germany, published a 50-point anti-migration manifesto last year; and now, even the Chancellor from a left-wing party has come out against mass illegal migration. The problem is, this change of heart of the mainstream elite may have come too late: the damage done to Germany might prove to be irreversible.
Related articles:
