Germany records over 900 assaults on refugees in 2016, number of arrivals drops

More than 900 assaults on refugee centers were recorded this year all across Germany, and over 850 of them may have been committed by far-right extremists, the criminal police said. The stunning statistics marks a fivefold increase from 2014 figures.

Of 921 reported attacks on refugee centers, 857 had a suspected far-right background, German criminal police office (BKA) said in response to a request for information filed by Die Welt daily.

Among others, the figure includes 66 arson attacks, 211 cases of hate speech and 371 cases of property damage, the report said. The remarkable statistics marks almost a fivefold increase from just 199 crimes in 2014, the criminal police asserted.

“This figure is frighteningly high,” Eva Hoegl, the Social Democrats’ (SPD) deputy parliamentary group leader and domestic security expert, told the newspaper. “People come here and need protection. What we don’t need to do is to confuse refugee policy and terrorism,” she said in an apparent reference to the recent truck attack on a Christmas market Berlin, which killed 12 people and injured 48 others.