Shocked German officials on Sunday condemn two “disgusting” incidents involving anti-migrant mobs in the ex-communist east of the country, including a crowd cheering a blaze at a planned refugee shelter.
A group of 20-30 apparently drunken onlookers applauded as fire took hold in a former hotel being converted into home for asylum seekers in the town of Bautzen in Saxony state overnight. Police suspected arson and traces of fire accelerant were found.
Some members of the group tried to impede the work of firefighters dispatched to the scene, police say.
A police spokesman says that the group showed “unabashed delight” at the blaze and made “disparaging comments” about the efforts to contain it.
No one was hurt in the incident. Two 20-year-old men were temporarily detained for defying police orders.
The events came two nights after 100 people in the Saxony town of Clausnitz tried to block the arrival of a bus carrying about 20 asylum seekers to a new shelter.
The scenes, captured on video, show the mob angrily shouting “We are the people,” borrowing the pro-democracy slogan from the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
— AFP
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire at a former hotel that was under reconstruction to become a home for asylum seekers on February 21, 2016 in Bautzen east of Dresden, eastern Germany. (AFP / dpa / Rico Loeb)
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