As Europe grapples with the rising tide of migrants, asylum seekers are facing opposition and, in some cases, violence from locals. Human Rights Watch said Thursday that asked men – often armed – have been attacking and intercepting boats in the Aegean Sea carrying refugees on their way to Greece, one of many clashes reported this week.
Witnesses have described eight separate incidents in which assailants damaged the boats by removing the engines or fuel or puncturing the hulls of inflatable rafts. Some of the boats were towed back into Turkish waters. The latest such incident took place on October 9, 2015.
Ali, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan told Human Rights Watch that their boat had taken off for Lesbos from Assos in early October. Only 30 minutes into the journey a speedboat rammed their rubber dinghy. On board were five men with their faces covered with balaclavas, armed with handguns.
“At first when they approached, we thought they had come to help us,” he said. “They didn’t come on board our boat, but they took our boat’s engine and then sped away.”
Other attacks clashes in Europe have been more violent. Slovenian police reported a stabbing incident near Rigonci Thursday, while in the village of Berkasovo in Serbia, migrants clashed with police at the border crossing. The unrest subsided after several minutes. But the outbreak reflected the frustrations of the tens of thousands of people facing long waits and other hardships as they make their way north over the Balkans each day in search of better lives in prosperous EU countries.
Further along that route, Austrian police moved to relieve pent-up pressure which they feared could lead to violence, removing barriers at an overcrowded collection point at a border crossing with Slovenia. A day earlier, thousands of migrants broke through police obstacles at the same collection center at the Spielfeld border point.
But the threat of violence remains even as migrants arrive in countries that have been more welcoming of refugees. German police have foiled a far-right plot to attack refugee shelters in Bavaria. Prosecutors said 11 men and two women were detained during raids in the town of Bamberg, about 50 kilometres ( north of Nuremberg.
Police were able to confirm a suspicion that the group planned to use the explosives – which included two illegal one-kilogram “ball bomb” firecrackers – to attack refugee shelters in Bamberg on Oct. 31 in order to “instill fear and terror among the asylum seekers,” prosecutor Erik Ohlenschlager said.
Several of those detained were members of a political party called The Right, while one person was involved in organizing a rally in Nuremberg for an offshoot of the anti-Islam group PEGIDA, Mikulasch said.
German officials have warned that violence against migrants is on the rise at a time when hundreds of thousands of people from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere are seeking refuge in Germany. According to figures provided to The Associated Press, there were more than 576 crimes against or around refugee shelters this year, almost three times as many as in all of 2014, primarily vandalism, propaganda and incitement.
George Jahn, Frank Jordans and David Rising reported for the Associated Press