Look the Other Way No Longer : Bonn has been delinquent in recognizing the level of threat to foreigners

Officials in Bonn have now been forced to acknowledge that the attacks on foreigners that have been taking place in much of eastern Germany are the result of an organized terror campaign by neo-Nazis, rather than spontaneous acts by rootless and politically ignorant young thugs.

It took three more deaths early Monday to prompt this belated reconsideration. Those deaths, resulting from firebomb attacks on two apartment buildings in the town of Moelln, brought to at least 14 the number of foreigners murdered in Germany this year. The most recent victims were all Turks, two of them women, the third a 10-year-old girl. Turkey’s embassy in Bonn has decried the latest killings as crimes against humanity.

The investigation of the firebomb killings was quickly taken over from local police by Federal Prosecutor Alexander von Stahl, on the ground that the outrage constituted a threat to internal security. Until now Stahl had been reluctant to involve his office in the anti-foreign violence, arguing that there was no evidence to suggest the attacks were organized. But German authorities estimate that there are 60,000 right-wing extremists in the country, with as many as 10,000 belonging to the neo-Nazi or skinhead groups that have been so active in attacking foreigners. Numbers such as these imply an inherent degree of organization.

The wave of xenophobic violence that has occurred in the last two years, along with chilling signs of a revived anti-Semitism, is usually attributed to the social disarray and economic hardships growing out of unification. This may plausibly explain the pathological behavior of some. It in no way excuses the political behavior of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government. Bonn has been delinquent in recognizing the level of threat facing foreigners in Germany, and lax in accepting the need to bring the power of the federal government to bear in a growing national crisis. Germany is now preparing to enact a new immigration law, but that won’t protect foreigners already in the country from hate-inspired attacks. Providing such security is a moral as well as a legal responsibility. Bonn has been much too slow to act.