More Corona-related crimes
Politically motivated crime is on the rise
05/10/2022 1:04 p.m
Within a year, the number of politically motivated crimes that cannot be assigned to any category increases by almost 150 percent to more than 200,000. A similar number of offenses are attributed only to the right spectrum. Especially in the context of the Corona protests, things are bubbling up.
The number of politically motivated crimes in Germany increased significantly last year and exceeded the 50,000 threshold for the first time. The balance sheet published by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) lists 55,048 such cases from different areas. One cause is therefore a significant increase in crimes related to the corona pandemic and the fight against it.
21,964 of the crimes recorded are assigned to the right-wing political spectrum, almost seven percent less than in the previous year. At the same time, there was a drastic increase of 147.4 percent to 21,339 cases of politically motivated crimes that cannot be assigned according to the official statistics. This also includes a significant proportion of crimes during protests against state corona measures, whose participants from the lateral thinker movement, for example, are regarded as a heterogeneous “mixed scene”.
10,113 politically motivated crimes are assigned to the left spectrum (minus 7.8 percent). The authorities count another 1,153 cases in the area of ”foreign ideology” (up 13.5 percent), 479 cases in the area of ”religious ideology” (up 0.4 percent). In 2020, a total of 44,692 cases of politically motivated crime were recorded. The year-on-year increase is 23.2 percent.
Most of the increase in anti-Semitic acts is not politically attributable
In the case of politically motivated acts of violence, the officially politically unattributable offenses also recorded by far the highest increase. Their number increased by 144.3 percent to 1,444. Among them are 459 physical injuries. 1042 acts of violence are attributed to the right spectrum (down 4.6 percent), 1203 to the left spectrum (down 21.2 percent), 140 to foreign ideology (up 23.9 percent) and 60 to religious ideology (up 39.5 percent). Overall, the number of recorded violent crimes rose by 15.6 percent to 3,889.
The number of anti-Semitic acts rose by 28.75 percent to 3,027 cases. Of these, 2552 cases were assigned to the right spectrum, 127 cases to foreign ideology and 57 to religious ideology. Here, too, the highest increase was in offenses that could not be officially assigned, the number of which increased by 519.6 percent to 285. 64 of the anti-Semitic offenses were violent, including 51 assaults.
There is a very mixed picture in the area of hate crime. Overall, the number of criminal offenses remained largely constant at 10,501 (plus 2.5 percent), but not the detailed data. Offenses hostile to the disabled increased by 81.5 percent, albeit with a comparatively low number of 118 cases.
There were increases of more than 50 percent in hate crimes, including offenses related to sexual orientation or identity, to 870 and 340 cases, respectively. By far the highest proportion are still 9236 xenophobic acts (minus 2.0 percent) and 4735 xenophobic acts (minus 10.6 percent). Multiple assignments are possible in each case.