Arson in Solingen: “What contempt for humanity! Yet once more” | EUROtoday

MEliha and Emre stand on Grünewalder Strasse and look throughout the highway on the window openings of the burnt-out, soot-black rooms. “I’m very unhappy. I really feel insecure. “I’m personally afraid, for myself and for my husband,” says 28-year-old Meliha.

The younger Turkish couple from Solingen lives a couple of kilometer away and got here to the residential constructing at quantity 69 on Thursday afternoon, like virtually 200 different folks. They adopted the decision for a mourning rally. They need to present their sympathy, their disappointment and their concern and place flowers in entrance of the barrier on the home. There, grave candles flicker between teddy bears and preparations, and on a sheet of paper wrapped in cling movie it says: “What contempt for humanity! Yet again”. The police closed the busy road in this section for the rally.

Meliha and Emre are standing further back, under the canopy of an interior decorator. You first found out from the Turkish media that a fire was set in the three-story house on the night of Monday to Tuesday and that a family of Turkish origin from Bulgaria died, a three-year-old child, a five-month-old infant and their parents aged 28 and 29 years old. Eight other people were injured. Mostly migrants lived in the house.

The act brings back memories

The fire was deliberately set, the remains of an accelerant were found in the stairwell, it is a matter of murder and attempted murder, that's what the investigators from the lead public prosecutor's office in Wuppertal can say so far. There are no indications of the perpetrators yet, and the motive also seems unclear. “There are no indications that point to a xenophobic motive,” the general public prosecutor’s workplace stated.

Such a formulation originally of the investigation is at the very least dangerous. Because this may also be understood as if one thing was excluded or not taken under consideration. The chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Integration Council, Tayfun Keltek, nevertheless, was a lot clearer: “Unfortunately, we have to assume that there are racist backgrounds behind the cowardly attack.”

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In Solingen and much past, folks instantly consider May 29, 1993, of the arson assault on Untere Wernerstrasse, lower than 4 kilometers from the present crime scene on Grünewalder Strasse. At that point, the Genc household of Turkish origin misplaced 5 younger girls and ladies within the treacherous hearth, and lots of had been injured, some severely. Four younger Germans with hatred of migrants and connections to the neo-Nazi scene had been recognized because the perpetrators and convicted of homicide, tried homicide and notably critical arson. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of “right-wing terror” in 2023, when the assault celebrated its thirtieth anniversary.

Alliance complains about “shift to the right”

The title Solingen is related to this arson assault and is paying homage to a darkish time. In the early Nineteen Nineties, Molotov cocktails had been thrown at shelters whereas an offended crowd cheered, Hoyerswerda, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Mölln, refugees died and had been injured. Neo-Nazis within the East hunted migrants on the streets. Then the assassination try in Solingen, within the west of the republic.

Some see parallels to this time. At that point too, there have been political and media controversies about refugees and migrants. There was a “pogrom atmosphere,” stated Stephan Stracke on Thursday night on the mourning rally on Grünewalder Strasse. He belongs to the left-wing alliance “Solinger Appell”, which was based after the arson assault in 1993. In his speech, Stracke identified that the background to the brand new crime was unclear. “We don’t know whether they were Nazis,” he says. One factor is evident to him: “It is a racist act.”

Stracke warns that assaults in opposition to migrants are beginning once more, complains in regards to the “shift to the right” and incitement in opposition to migrants and refugees in politics and the media. “The 90s are coming back,” he says into the microphone. One should be “vigilant” and guarantee “that the shift to the right does not spread any further”. Ali Dogan from the Turkish People's Association complains: “Politics in Germany tends to encourage racist attackers.” We need to make insurance policies so that individuals can reside peacefully collectively.

A younger girl who got here with buddies sees a “right-wing continuity” in Germany. An older girl got here along with her husband of Turkish origin. She was on the rallies after the assault in 1993. She is upset that the general public prosecutor at the moment sees no proof of a xenophobic act. “The fact that it is automatically excluded puts us light years apart. Then there can be no trust,” she says. “You can simply say that you are investigating in all directions.”

Meliha, who got here along with her husband Emre, is aware of from her father what occurred in 1993. At that point he had simply come to Germany. Meliha was born right here. She says that she went to high school, educated in retail and works – and but she doesn't really feel acknowledged. “I pay my taxes, but I am not seen as a German. I feel like a German. In Turkey I don't feel like I'm at home, but they don't want me here. “That makes me really sad,” says Meliha. Since the hearth, she and her husband have change into extra cautious. They shut the home windows and blinds within the night: “We live on the ground floor and you don’t know what’s going to be thrown in.” She says that she lives in a neighborhood with a number of migrants. And many foreigners additionally lived in the home on Grünewalder Strasse. In the meantime, Westdeutsche Rundfunk discovered from the general public prosecutor's workplace that it was an act within the “interpersonal area”.