Migrants behind gang rapes and knife crime, says German opposition leader
Migrants are to blame for the “nightmare” of gang rapes, Germany’s opposition leader has said.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-Right Christian Democrats (CDU), also claimed new arrivals to the country were largely responsible for almost daily cases of knife crime and sexual assault.
Ahead of a key election in eastern Germany, he said: “On average there are two gang rapes per day, far more than half of which are carried out by migrants.”
Speaking on the campaign trail in Brandenburg, Mr Merz, 68, accused young migrant men of a “complete lack of respect for women”.
“This country needs to be able to live in freedom and security once again,” he said, adding that “we will find a majority to ensure that this nightmare is ended”.
The CDU leader appeared to be referring to statistics published in July that showed that 761 cases of gang rape were reported to police last year.
A little under half of the suspects did not have German citizenship.
Knife crime also rising
With knife crime also on the rise, the German interior ministry last month announced plans to ban knives in criminal hotspots and to reduce the length of a legal blade.
Mr Merz, who is widely expected to run against Olaf Scholz, the German leader, in next year’s federal election, has sharpened his broadsides against migrants since a terror attack in Solingen a fortnight ago.
In an attack claimed by Islamic State, a young Syrian man who arrived in Germany in 2022 murdered three people and injured eight more at a diversity festival.
Mr Merz called on the chancellor to stop taking in any more arrivals from Syria and Afghanistan, where most migrants to Germany originate.
This week, he gave Mr Scholz a deadline of next Tuesday to agree to his demands, saying he would otherwise walk away from cross-party talks on the issue.
Far-Right poses election threat
Mr Merz’s comments come in the middle of a series of key elections in the east of the country where the AfD – the anti-immigrant, far-Right political party – recently scored landmark successes.
In voting in Saxony and Thuringia on Sunday, the AfD won over 30 per cent of the vote after promising mass deportations of migrants.
Brandenburg, the rural state that surrounds Berlin, is going to the polls on Sept 22.
The AfD lead the polls on 27 per cent. Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats, who run the state government, are second on 23 per cent. The CDU are polling third on 18 per cent.
Mr Merz sought to distinguish his hawkish stance from that of the AfD by emphasising that “the vast majority” of migrants are “fantastic people” whom the country “couldn’t do without”.
Large-scale migration under Merkel
With former German leader Angela Merkel in charge, the CDU opened Germany’s borders to refugees. Large-scale migration started during the autumn of 2015, when up to 10,000 people arrived every day.
But, faced with stiff electoral competition from the AfD, Merz has sought to distance himself from Ms Merkel’s legacy, saying that it would be “unforgivable to make the same mistake twice” on migration.
Mr Scholz has also gone on a migration offensive in recent months.
Last month, he broke the taboo of dealing with the Taliban by sending a plane carrying 28 convicted criminals to Kabul.
His government has also suggested that deportations to Syria will start “very soon”.