Residents have clashed with asylum-seekers in a town in eastern Germany that has become a flashpoint for anti-refugee sentiment.<\/p>\n
Some 80 men and women, many described as far-right, fought with 20 migrants and refugees in Bautzen.<\/p>\n
The asylum-seekers were chased to their hostel and put under police guard.Anti-migrant tensions have been mounting in Bautzen this year. Locals cheered when a building due to house migrants was set on fire in February.<\/p>\n
The following month, President Joachim Gauck was verbally abused when he visited Bautzen to discuss the influx of refugees in Germany.<\/p>\n
Bautzen and the nearby town of Niedergurig are home to four asylum shelters.<\/p>\n
Bautzen is 60km (38 miles) east of Dresden, where the “anti-Islamisation” Pegida movement began.<\/p>\n
Since the arrival last year of 1.1 million irregular migrants and refugees in Germany, some areas, particularly eastern states, have seen a rise in anti-migrant violence as well as support for the anti-Islam AfD party.<\/p>\n
Germany’s federal police force says there have been 700 attacks on asylum accommodation this year, including 57 arson attacks.<\/p>\n
Wednesday’s outbreak of violence in Bautzen points to an escalation of tensions in the town.<\/p>\n
‘Serious anxiety and worries’<\/p>\n
The clashes appeared to be triggered by an incident the previous evening when a 32-year-old resident was hurt by a bottle being thrown.<\/p>\n
Residents on Wednesday accused asylum-seekers of taking over a square outside the central Kornmarkt shopping centre before fighting broke out.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said when police asked the asylum-seekers to leave, they responded by hurling bottles and wooden slats. When the asylum-seekers began to disperse, they were pursued by a group of extremists.<\/p>\n
An ambulance crew was caught up in the clashes when far-right residents hurled stones at their vehicle as they tried to take an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker to hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n
Local mayor Alexander Ahrens appealed for calm and said he would increase police patrols in the area so that residents could use the Kornmarkt again.<\/p>\n
“From the many reactions of Bautzen citizens, as well as from tourists and local businesspeople – I understood that the conditions in our public square have triggered serious anxiety and worries,” he wrote on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Residents have clashed with asylum-seekers in a town in eastern Germany that has become a flashpoint for anti-refugee sentiment. Some 80 men and women, many described as far-right, fought with 20 migrants and refugees in Bautzen. The asylum-seekers were chased to their hostel and put under police guard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/europeandrussiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}