Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Germany's Real Victims= Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 04:45:04 EST Message-ID: <8.1992Nov25.044505@AmeriCast.com> Lines: 49 Germany's Real Victims= THE MURDER in Germany Monday of three longtime legal residents who were ethnically Turkish is a tragedy and also, for the debate over cultural pluralism in Europe, a moment of deadly clarity. These victims - a 51-year-old grandmother, her 10-year-old German-born granddaughter and a teenage friend - were neither asylum seekers nor outsiders in the small town, where most residents called the grandmother "Mama." They were purely victims of prejudice. The setting was not change-wracked East Germany but a prosperous hamlet near Hamburg in the West. The attack by neo- Nazis, who firebombed two family houses and then phoned police to jeer "Heil Hitler," came only a week after the country's Social Democrats had agreed to compromise on the previously deadlocked asylum issue. It's as if the killers, faced with the imminent defusing of the issue that the government had been offering as an explanation for the violence, ratcheted it up another notch. The asylum issue has a life of its own: The government's inabil- ity either to stem the flow of refugees or to integrate them de- cently into society is bound up with German post-World War II guilt and with current unrest in the depressed East. For too long the Kohl government refused to confront racist crimes directly. Talking about asylum overload made it possible to avoid the issue of pure race hatred and antisemitism. Now, though, the issue has to be faced. The government responded to this week's killings with a full measure of outrage and with the promise of immediate prosecution and better police work. More attention is also going to allega- tions that some officials refused to protect refugee hostels under attack. The key challenge, though, is to say clearly what is at issue: not an immigration policy debate, not a fringe juvenile-delinquent phenomenon, but murderous racism and the an- gry resistance of segments of a long ethnically based state to a cultural pluralism that is now inescapable. It's not a German but a Europe-wide problem and to some extent a universal one. The ex- tremity of lawlessness in Germany at the moment, combined with the extraordinary public pressure on that country because of its history, put it under a heavy obligation to get this one right. 02:07 11-25C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)