ver the last several years, the Church of Scientology and its investigative journal, Freedom, have documented many human rights violations against minorities in modern Germany. While world media attention to this problem has increased in recent years, the fact is German government officials have fomented discrimination against the Church of Scientology for more than two decades.
Today, however, virtually all minority religions and racial groups have become targets of government-fostered oppression and xenophobia.
This information has been made broadly known by the Church of Scientology through a public education campaign that has included booklets in English and German editions, public service messages in newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post, and exposure in the pages of Freedom.
The tactics of the hatemongers have been simple: dehumanize minorities in the eyes of other Germans, ostracize them, and subject them to a relentless campaign of unconstitutional, illegal and oppressive actions with the purpose of wiping them out.
As a direct result, violence against minorities in Germany is on the rise. This includes assaults and even murder, as well as destruction of property by arson, vandalism and other means. In the first nine months of 1994, there were 937 attacks on Jewish property—more than 16 times the number for the entirety of 1991.
According to the human rights organization, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, the number of violent assaults in Germany against minorities in 1994 was more than 400 percent higher than comparable figures for 1990. The German government reported 1,223 violent attacks motivated by xenophobia in the first 11 months of 1994. The actual figure is undoubtedly much higher because many such crimes go unreported.
Documented cases abound which prove that responsible German authorities either turn a blind eye to criminal attacks on minorities, or engage in unconstitutional and criminal violations of civil and human rights themselves.
The institutionalization of hatred is revealed in a secret German government policy, enacted nine years ago, to induce its overseas agents to discourage Africans, Hispanics, Asians and Jews from visiting Germany. This strategy was still in effect in May 1995 when an official in the German National Tourist Board in New York blew the whistle on it.
“A Racist Society”
Perhaps no one communicated the truth of the matter more pointedly than Douglas Jones, a 21-year veteran of the United States foreign service, specializing in German affairs. In 1994, Jones criticized the German government for not taking action to curb extremist violence against foreigners and for contributing to the problem.
“If Germany is not a racist society, why is its nationality law, which was written in 1913, predicated upon race?” he asked. “Public attitudes about minority communities in Germany are ambivalent, at best.”
Jones, who at the time of his remarks was the principal officer in the U.S. embassy’s office in Berlin, delivered his comments at the site of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He criticized Chancellor Helmut Kohl for saying that Germany was not a nation of immigration.
“If I were a skinhead I would take a certain amount of comfort in hearing that Germany is not a nation of immigration,” Jones said, as reported in the International Herald Tribune and elsewhere. “That would signal to me that the nearly seven million foreigners who live here legally do not belong here, and that I am justified in wanting them out. And to be honest with you, this sentiment is by no means limited to skinheads.”
Jones noted that Chancellor Kohl had never attended any of the funerals for foreigners killed by extremists since the 1990 reunification.
Jones’ voice joined those of the many political, religious and human rights leaders who have condemned rampant attacks against Turks, Africans, Iranians, Vietnamese, Gypsies and other minorities, including religious minorities, in Germany. But to have a significant impact on the situation, even more Americans and others outside Germany need to speak out.
Injuries caused by extremist violence rose sharply in 1993, with a total of 727 foreigners wounded (and seven killed) by stabbing, beating, arson and other means—a 24 percent increase from the 1992 figure of 585. Extremist attacks on the homeless and the handicapped doubled in 1993 to 300. No end to the violence is in sight.
“I never felt sympathy when I was beating them up myself. They weren’t human beings, they were foreigners.” These words were not said in the 1930s, but in today’s Germany by a young neo-Nazi.
