SPD whips up xenophobia in German federal election
By
Ulrich Rippert
5 August 2017
The demonisation of refugees is increasingly the central theme of the federal (Bundestag) election campaign of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). Just ten days ago SPD chief Martin Schulz resorted to the jargon of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Schultz accused German chancellor Angela Merkel of allowing into the country more than a million refugees two years ago in a “largely uncontrolled” manner and declared that this could not be repeated.
Boris Pistorius, responsible for internal security issues in Schulz’s election campaign, quickly followed suit. The interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, known as a hardliner, called for the limitation of asylum numbers by setting up detention centres in Libya. Refugees are to be held in such centres before they can embark on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.
At the centres their “asylum claims” are to be “summarily reviewed.” In fact only a handful can ever expect a positive response to their applications. Refugees from Africa are dismissed en masse as “economic refugees,” who are not entitled to asylum. It is already clear that the vast majority of African refugees are not eligible for the right of asylum, Pistorius told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
What Pistorius is proposing is the construction of concentration camps, in which tens of thousands of refugees would be imprisoned indefinitely until they are deported across Libyan’s southern border into the Sahara where they face fierce heat and the possibility of death by dehydration.
To overcome any resistance on the part of the largely powerless Libyan government, Pistorius suggests bribes. “Possible resistance by the Libyans can be…