It’s about time.
Berlin in February 2012 – In a state ceremony Germany is mourning the brutal killing of 10 people. Nine immigrants and one German police woman, slain by members of a murderous neo-Nazi gang, who called themselves the National-Socialist Underground (NSU). The killing spree remained undetected for a decade, although forensics showed the same weapon was used in all 10 slayings. No connections were made, an almost impossible blunder. Instead the police blamed the victims, investigating alleged criminal activity by foreign crime syndicates, operating from Döner-Kebab stalls. It was only after the NSU botched a bank robbery, that the truth came to light. The killers evaded capture by committing suicide, leaving a confession video behind. The nation was shocked by the murders and at the dramatic picture of ignorance, incompetence and failure of law enforcement, who for 10 years were investigating in the wrong direction.
On Feb. 23, 2012, all eyes were on Berlin where chancellor Angela Merkel struggled to find the right words.
Human dignity shall be inviolable. That is the foundation of social coexistence in our country, the foundation of the free and democratic German Republic. Whenever people in our country are ostracized, threatened, persecuted, it hurts the foundations and values of our Basic Law. This is why the murders by the [NSU] were also an attack on our country. They are a disgrace for our country.8
Unfortunately, these were not the only racist murders in Germany. Officially, there have been 63 killings due to neo-Nazi violence since German reunification in 1990. More than 20 years ago, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa from Angola was bludgeoned to death by rightwing extremists in Eberswalde near Berlin. He was the first African to die violently in the newly unified Germany. His killers received only mild sentences; they have long since been released from prison. Kiowa´s son had to grow up without his father. In the wake of the NSU killings and the obvious incompetence or negligence of German Law Enforcement, journalists began to wonder about the true extent of racist violence in Germany.
Research by Germany’s Die Zeit and Tagesspiegel newspapers9 revealed last year, that at least 152 killings10
since reunification could be attributed to extreme rightwing violence. And the magazine Der Spiegel11 reported last November that the Ministry of the Interior surveyed 3,300
unsolved murders since 1990 and found suspicious rightwing activity in 746 cases that warranted further review. The shocking truth is: We do not know the true extent of racial violence in Germany, yet.
Could further attacks have been prevented, had the implications of everyday racism in Germany been
recognized and addressed right after reunification, especially if former chancellor Helmut Kohl had publicly denounced Amadeu Antonio Kiowa‘s killing as a racist murder? He chose not to. Perhaps, 36-year-old Oury Jalloh from Sierra Leone would still be alive. Maybe he would not have burned to death in his cell while in custody of the Police in Dessau in January 2005. Although he was restrained to a mattress, supposedly due to his violent behavior, the officers in charge claimed that he managed to retrieve a lighter from his pocket and accidentally set himself on fire. No lighter, however, was found in his pockets when the police searched him prior to his incarceration. Two police officers were eventually charged with negligent death. One officer was found not guilty and the other one received a penalty. The exact chain of events that led to Oury Jalloh´s death is yet to be uncovered.
At the State Ceremony in honor of the 10 people killed by the NSU, Chancellor Merkel said:
Germany – this is all of us; all of us who live in this country, no matter where we come from, how we look, what we believe in, whether we are strong or weak, healthy or sick, with or without handicap, young or old. We are one country, one nation. All of us together form the image of Germany, our identity in the globalized world of the 21st century.12
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Jeannine Kantara is an activist based in Berlin, addressing issues of concern to Afro-Germans.