RACIST VIOLENCE IN 15 EU MEMBER STATES - Cospe

RACIST VIOLENCE IN 15 EU MEMBER STATES - A Comparative Overview of Findings from the RAXEN NFP Reports 2001-2004
large part of racist hate speech appears to emanate from political parties,
particularly in the run up to general elections in Denmark, this is an important area
that the authorities continue to carefully monitor.
6. Germany
6.1. CONTEXT
To a large extent, Germany’s Nazi history dictates what kind of information is
collected on racist crime and violence. Data collection is focused on ‘politically
motivated right-wing criminality’ - encompassing right-wing extremism,
xenophobia and antisemitism. In the same vein, and again reflecting the country’s
Nazi history, German statistics prohibit data collection on people’s ‘race’/ethnicity.
Instead, information can be collected on people’s nationality. As a reflection of
this, the terms ‘racist violence’ or ‘racist crimes’ are not in general use by either the
criminal justice system’s data collection mechanisms or the research community.
Therefore, strictly speaking, German data on ‘racist crime’ does not include
everyday racist violence that is not affiliated with politically motivated right-wing
criminality and/or extremism.
The State focuses its efforts on monitoring the activities of extreme right-wing
groups and political parties. Members of these groups tend to fall into one of two
main categories; namely (1) groups of young skinheads, and (2) neo-Nazi groups
that are organised on the basis of Kameradschaften (comrade groups). According to
RAXEN 4, the most prominent xenophobic parties and right-wing extremist
organisations at present include: the German National Democratic Party (NPD) –
with 6,100 members in 2002; the Union of German People (DVU) – with 13,000
members in 2002; the Republicans (REP) – with 9,000 members in 2002. In the
period 1993 to 2002, both the DVU and REP lost significant numbers of their
membership.
Since the peak of extreme right-wing violence and other criminal acts against
migrants/minorities in the early 1990s, again in 1997, and most notably in 2000,
there has been an overall decline in officially recorded extreme right-wing,
xenophobic and ant-Semitic incidents – though this may partly reflect Germany’s
new data collection system, which came into effect on 1/1/2001, rather than an
actual decline.
Propaganda crimes have increasingly come to represent the majority of officially
recorded crimes of an extreme right-wing nature, which perhaps reflects growth in
the use of the internet. However, violent racist crimes and instances of antisemitism
continue to attract the attention of the media; although antisemitic crimes make-up
a very small percentage of all extreme right-wing crimes. In comparison no official
data registration exists for crime and violent crime related to Islamophobia.
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