UN member states posed critical questions to Germany about its policy against racism and discrimination on Tuesday, during a regularly scheduled review session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Despite Germany's positive reputation on human rights, the country has faced a rise in ethnic-charged violence since the 2015 refugee crisis. Authorities recorded around 5,700 attacks on refugees and refugee centers in recent years. The German government has also warned of a rise in anti-Semitism.
During the Tuesday session, the UK wanted to know about Germany's answer to anti-Semitic violence and attacks on asylum seekers. Separately, Brazil urged Germany to protect its places of worship, including synagogues and mosques.
"Despite Germany's efforts, hate speech remains widespread," the Egyptian envoy warned, with Bahrain representative saying her government was "concerned about attacks against Muslims."
Belgium recommended that Germany train its police to fight racism and discrimination, but also demanded information on Germany's efforts against child pornography and prostitution. Sweden asked how Berlin intended to increase the number of female lawmakers.
Read more: Germany's CSU and CDU want German 'values' taught to refugee children in schools
German police becoming more diverse
In turn, Germany pointed to new policies to fight discrimination, such as hiring police officers with immigrant roots and the newly appointed anti-Semitism commissioner.
"There are new developments and challenges that require action in Germany, as well," said Bärbel Kofler, the German government's commissioner for human rights policy and humanitarian aid. "We know we have to move against racist attitudes and discriminatory views in various parts of our society."
German authorities have adopted a country-wide action plan against racism, Kofler said.
"Racist statements on the internet are being prosecuted more vigorously."
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AFD says they are victims of discrimination
Despite Bahrain signaling its concern over attacks on Muslims, its representatives also praised Germany for taking in large numbers of refugees. Diplomats from Australia, Algeria, Cote d'Ivoire also lauded Germany's welcoming policy.
Read more: Scores of refugees attack German police cars over deportation case
In addition to Kofler, several German lawmakers also attended the session, including Jürgen Braun of the far-right AFD. On the sidelines of the Geneva session, Braun said there was no major racism problem in Germany and that the most pressing human rights problem is the lack of adequate media representation for his party. He also said that the diversity of public opinion was shrinking in Germany.
Germany faced a similar grilling in 2009 and 2013 within the Universal Periodic Review of human rights set up by the UN's Human Rights Council. The council has 47 members, but all of the 193 UN members are allowed to take part in the review. Germany can either accept or reject recommendations of other countries. In 2013, Berlin accepted over 160 out of 200 recommendations.
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture allianceThe head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
dj/kms (dpa, KNA, epd)
