Neo-Nazis strike as Brandenburg argues over prevention

Instead of reporting 64-year-old Stolpe's stirring words in a New Year's speech the papers related a nasty incident in the town of Cottbus that raised a spectre of the Nazi past. On New Year's Day morning neo-Nazis shouted abuse outside the home of a Jewish couple who have been resident in the city for years. When the 72-year-old man reported the incident to police an officer offered to take him into "protective custody", the cynical, euphemistic term used by the Nazis when they arrested Jews. Exactly that was what happened to the man's father, a prominent lawyer who later died in a Nazi concentration camp.

Brandenburg state government quickly issued an official apology for what it called an unfortunate choice of words. It also said the incident had nothing to do with a extreme rightwing mindset but rather highlighted a lack of knowledge about Germany's dark Nazi past. Police said they had no evidence but believe the abuse of the Jewish couple could well be attributed to extreme rightwingers. Two days later drunken neo-Nazis in Cottbus attacked four people, one of them a Lebanese aslyum seeker. Police spokesman Peter Boenki admitted that "our extreme rightwing cleintele does tend to resort to violence more quickly". The culprits like drinking and fighting, said the policeman. On Friday four suspects were arrested. Martina Muench, a local Social Democrat councillor who started an anti-extreme right-wing violence initiative in Cottbus, believes the city is not a hotbed of neo-Nazi violence but she also feels teachers and parents must do more to make it clear to their charges that such behaviour will not be tolerated.

Over the Christmas period the town of Guben on the border between Germany and Poland saw its already poor reputation sullied by further neo-Nazi thuggery. Four young men attacked and knifed a 20-year-old German because they thought "he looked Asiatic". At the beginning of 1999 Guben hit the international headlines when extreme rightwing youths chased after Algerian aslyum seeker Omar Ben Noui. The young man ran for his life and eventually bled to death after cutting himself on shards of glass in a apartment hallway. Despite the well-meaning speeches the Brandenburg state government cannot seem to make up its mind how to combat the neo-Nazi scourge. An alliance against violence and xenophobia was set up in 1997 but in the past few weeks critics, among them interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm, have accused the body of not doing enough. Rolf Wischnath, chairman of the initiative made up of trade unions, local federations and individuals, quickly called on Schoenbohm to apologise. Wischnath, who is also chief superintendant of the protestant church in Brandenburg, said society must join forces to counter the "brown cholera" of neo-Nazism.

The two men have been at loggerheads for years, especially since former Bundeswehr armed forces general Schoenbohm seldom avoids locking horns with the church. In the meantime the number of extreme rightwing-motivated acts of violence against people in Brandenburg went up to 63 in the first 11 months of 2000 from 46 in 1999. Schoenbohm continues to put his faith in the police and in a state think tank set up last year to discuss ways of curbing neo-Nazism. "We can't allow a group of around 600 'thugs' bent on violence to ruin the reputation of the state," he declared.

(dpa)