German Interior Ministry Should ‘Get Active’ to Better Protect Refugees

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere needs to be more proactive in ending far-right attacks on refugees and their housing in Germany, an influential rights advocacy group said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Germany registered more than 3,500 assaults last year, or almost ten attacks a day, the Interior Ministry estimates, according to local media. They left 560 people injured, including 43 children.

"It is a warning to the German interior minister to finally get more active," Amnesty International’s German office chief Markus Beeko said in a statement on Monday.

Beeko said it was "incomprehensible and unacceptable" that people looking for help in Germany had to fend for themselves. He urged German authorities to work out a "German-wide concept to protect refugee accommodations."

Official figures showed 280,000 asylum seekers came to Germany in 2016, only a third of the 890,000 arrivals it saw a year before. But the ministry has been struggling to clear a backlog of applications from 2015 amid security concerns over a string of attacks by immigrants.

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