Cars torched in Berlin

2005-11-07 13:07

Berlin - Five cars were set on fire in a poor district of the German capital on Monday and police said they were trying to determine if there was any connection with the wave of violence sweeping France.

The cars were burned in five separate streets in Berlin's Moabit district, a poor region with a high number of foreigners a few kilometres from the central government district.

Police said nobody had claimed responsibility for the attacks and so far there was nothing which suggested they were copy-cat crimes.

Cars have been regularly torched in Berlin by left-wing extremists on violent May 1 protests which have been a fixture in the city since the 1980s.

Moabit is in former West Berlin and has a high number of Turkish nationals. Turks comprise the biggest foreign minority in Berlin, numbering 118 000 out of a total population of 3.4 million, according to official figures.

There are about 450 000 foreigners living in the German capital.

Comparions between Germany and France

Berlin does not, however, have the same sort of huge, impoverished foreign ghettos as Paris.

Although parts of the city such as Wedding and Neukoelln have major social problems and high unemployment, they have not become no-go areas for police.

Youth unemployment in Germany is less of a problem than in France, according to European Union data. In Germany some 13.8% of people aged 15 to 24 years are jobless, compared with almost 22% in France.

Politicians from all German parties underlined the difference between Germany and France but they warned that steps had to be take to improve integration of foreigners.

"We don't have ghettos like in France," said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Greens member of the European Parliament in comments to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

Cohn-Bendit also stressed that Germany's social welfare network was in far better shape than that of France.

Need to learn German

Wolfgang Schaeuble, a senior member of designated chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said greater efforts were needed to ensure that all young foreigners learned the German language.

"Districts are developing in our cities with high proportions of foreigners which are being cut off from the rest of society," said Schaeuble.

Michael Mueller, a left-leaning member of outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) said the events in Paris showed that Germany could not afford to trim back its social welfare programmes.

"Social conflicts and disintegration are increasing in Germany," said Mueller. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA