German politicians and football authorities reacted with anger on Thursday to a warning from a former government spokesperson that World Cup visitors from abroad risked race attacks in eastern Germany.
”There are small and mid-sized towns in Brandenburg and elsewhere where I would advise anyone with a different skin colour not to go. They may not leave with their lives,” Uwe-Karsten Heye told Deutschlandradio Kultur on Wednesday.
Heye, a spokesperson for the former government led by Gerhard Schroeder, now runs an anti-racist group called ”Gesicht zeigen” (Show Your Face).
Officials in Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin in the former communist East Germany, said he had later distanced himself from his comments.
But politicians were concerned that the damage had already been done.
”This is a denigration of whole areas of Brandenburg and there is nothing to justify it,” said Matthias Platzeck, the state leader of Brandenburg.
Marlene Mortler, who chairs the tourism committee of the German Parliament, said Germany had shot itself in the foot.
”In one area, we Germans are world champions: in scoring own goals.
”No other nation would manage to create so many negative headlines shortly before the whistle blows for the start of such an extraordinary event as the World Cup,” said Mortler, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Mortler said in a statement that although isolated racially motivated attacks did take place, ”Germany is far from being a country where foreign visitors should fear attacks from the far-right”.
The World Cup organisers said they would not comment on Heye’s warning.
The interior ministry said it was confident that all of the estimated one million visitors for the June 9 to July 9 World Cup would feel safe.
”We have worked out a national security concept with the regional states and we are doing our best to make guests feel at ease here,” a spokesperson for the interior ministry told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on Thursday.
However, one politician said he shared Heye’s concerns.
Sebastian Edathy, who has an Indian father, said he was afraid to take a night train out to the suburbs of Berlin because he was dark-skinned.
”I can completely understand this warning. Don’t blame the messenger in this case,” said Edathy, who heads the German Parliament’s home-affairs committee.
Brandenburg was the scene of a brutal attack on a 37-year-old man of Ethiopian origin in April.
The high rate of unemployment in the former East Germany has been blamed for helping neo-Nazi, anti-immigration groups to recruit young members. — AFP
