An
African man was beaten and stabbed by three German teenagers
outside a nightclub in the latest of a long series of racist
attacks in eastern Germany.
Police said the
22-year-old man, named only as Daniel G., had enraged the
three 18-year-old men because he had been speaking English to
his girlfriend. The doorman of the nightclub in Nauen near
Berlin had refused to let him into the club and he was talking
to his girlfriend about it when the three assailants
approached him.
"Why are you
speaking English, Nauen is in Germany," one of them shouted,
the newspaper Bild reported. Another man pushed him to
the ground and they started kicking him. One of them pulled
out a knife and stabbed him.
Police said the
victim, a trainee retailer from Ghana who has lived in Berlin
for over four years, managed to defend himself with pepper
spray. He and his girlfriend fled to the railway station with
the attackers in pursuit but police arrived in time to stop
them attacking him again. The victim was taken to hospital
with a stab wound to the kidney but it wasn't deep enough to
be life-threatening.
Two of the
attackers, named only as Nils N. and Merlin Maria D., were
caught and confessed to the attack. They face assault charges
but have been granted conditional release pending the court
case. The third assailant faces no charges because he was
deemed to have played only a minor role.
Racially
motivated attacks are a frequent occurrence in Germany,
especially in the former communist east where far right
parties are now represented in three of the region's five
federal states.
The domestic
intelligence agency recorded a total of 919 assaults motivated
by far-right extremism last year, up from 816 in 2005.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said this month that he
was alarmed that young people were increasingly adopting
far-right attitudes.
"We have to
undertake every effort to get young people to support
democratic views," he said. But he did not say how, and he
identified Islamic terrorism as the gravest threat to
stability and security in Germany.
