New Year’s Eve in Berlin
Merz near Lanz: “The sons, these little pashas”
By Marko Schlichting
01/11/2023, 05:40 am
After the riots in several cities on New Year’s Eve, the investigation has begun. On Tuesday evening, the talk shows on ARD and ZDF will be about this topic. And CDU boss Merz has a special appearance.
The images are disturbing. In Berlin-Neukölln, young people in particular attack police officers and firefighters on New Year’s Eve, throw New Year’s Eve rockets at them and shoot at them with blank pistols. There are similar images in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Hagen. According to initial reports, the perpetrators in both cities were mainly young people with a migration background. Different in the town of Borna near Leipzig. Here, the police assume that right-wing Germans are primarily responsible for the unrest.
And in Berlin, too, there is confusion about the perpetrators. In his ZDF talk show, Markus Lanz speaks of 145 criminals, two thirds of whom are said to have a migration background. The police initially reported this. According to the Berlin “Tagesspiegel” she has now specified her details. The newspaper announced on Monday that there had been a total of 145 arrests, but only 38 for attacks with firecrackers on police officers and firefighters. Two thirds of the mostly young people were actually Germans.
“A Bad Development”
Nevertheless: Berlin has a problem. The governing mayor Franziska Giffey from the SPD knows that too. “What we saw on New Year’s Eve is a bad development,” she says on the ARD talk show “Maischberger”. You knew that New Year’s Eve would be “violent”. “But that we would be confronted in this form and with these targeted attacks on our security forces, that’s something even die-hards who have been with us for a very long time didn’t expect.”
The head of the police union, Stephan Weh, had already called for a ban on firecrackers in downtown Berlin in November. That was not enforceable, explains Giffey. “If you issue a ban on firecrackers, you must also be able to implement it. But that is only possible if you also restrict the sale of firecrackers at the same time,” says the politician. She calls for criminals to be prosecuted and prosecuted.
Giffey also wants to tighten up the Weapons and Explosives Act, which, for example, should restrict permission to own blank pistols. In addition, “hard firecrackers” should be banned.
Giffey thinks the current migration discussion is wrong. “These are boys from the neighborhood,” says the former district mayor of Neukölln. “They were born and raised there. Their parents were also born there. They are Berliners with German citizenship. The demand that they should go back leads to nothing.” Nevertheless, there are social hotspots in Berlin where there is social segregation. This term comes from sociology and means that there is social inequality in these districts compared to other districts. This is definitely the case in Berlin-Neukölln.
What Giffey specifically wants to do about it, she is asked by Sandra Maischberger. She evades the answer. On Wednesday there should be a summit against youth violence. “We also have to look behind the problems,” she says. A demand that seems quite helpless after twenty years of the SPD government in Berlin.
“I think it’s horrible”
CDU leader Friedrich Merz is more specific. He demands more respect, especially from young migrants from the Arab world. “I think it’s horrible,” he says about the riots in Berlin with Markus Lanz on ZDF. “This is completely unacceptable, we have to do something about it.” Above all, Merz calls for tougher penalties. “We have to ensure that the people who challenge this rule of law are shown the limits from the outset. Some countries are not doing this enough.”
However, Merz is not just about migrants. “You can still see what is happening in Lützerath, for example. That the climate movement is attacking the police. That has nothing to do with freedom of expression and freedom of demonstration. These are acts of violence, these are crimes.”
However, Merz sees the biggest problem in the lack of integration of some of the young people, especially from the Arab world. “We are talking about people who actually have no business here in Germany,” said Merz. The CDU politician sees the danger in tolerated migrants who would not be deported. One shouldn’t be surprised “that there are such excesses here.” Merz cites verbal violence as an example, which starts at school, especially against female teachers.
“And then they want to call these children to order, and the result is that the fathers appear in the schools and don’t allow the teachers to reprimand the sons, the little pashas, for a change.” What begins in school continues later on the street. Merz does not want to accept that. “Everyone has a chance in this country. And if you don’t stick to it, you have no place in this country,” he says.
After the outburst of the CDU politician, there is a mixture of helplessness and horror among the guests of the Lanz show. And the moderator seems to have been affected by a very rare phenomenon: he noticeably spits away.