"They fled religious hatred, rape and violence in their homelands for the “safe” haven of Germany -- only to encounter the same, brutal conditions in their new accommodations: the refugee hostel.
Violence in refugee centers became a national topic in Germany last October, only weeks after Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel invited into Europe one million, mainly Muslim, refugees. But exposure of this disgraceful situation appears to have had little effect, as German newspapers are reporting this month that conditions remain unchanged.
In fact, life in German refugee hostels has now become so unbearable thatreligious minorities, women traveling alone or with children, and homosexuals are fleeing their accommodations. For them, according to one paper, the word "hostel" has become synonymous with ‘"defenselessness".
The constant harassment and mistreatment at the hands of Muslim male refugees is not only becoming intolerable and dangerous, but, for some, life-threatening.
“Torn bibles and insults, ripped off crosses and even blows to the face, the complaints about violence in the refugee centers do not let up,” the German newspaper, Die Welt, stated recently.
According to Rainer Wendt, chairman of the German Police Union, outbreaks of violence in German refugee centers were occurring before last August. In the first six months of 2015, police were called out 1,288 times to refugee asylums and registered 499 crimes. One problem is definitely the overcrowding, Wendt said, but there are also “knallharte” (very brutal) criminal structures among the refugees.
Most violent incidents occur between Muslims themselves. They form groups, Wendt says, according to “ethnicity, religion or clan structure and go at one another with knives and self-made weapons.” And the fights, which can involve dozens on each side, concern “power struggles” and are “above all, religious or politically motivated.” Numerous violent disputes have ended in death.
“Here the Sunnis fight the Shiites, there are Salafists of different brands …women are forced to wear the veil. Men are forced to pray. Islamists want to install their values and order there,” said Wendt.
But among the mistreated minority groups, one is especially targeted for abuse: Muslim converts to Christianity. Many are from Iran and Afghanistan where Christians are a persecuted minority and Islamic law demands that they be put to death for leaving the faith.
One human rights organization official says the chances of a Muslim convert to Christianity, unwilling to hide his faith, being subjected to violence or mobbing in a refugee center is “nearly 100 percent.” And the situation is only going to get worse.
“Among those arriving now, a not insignificant portion is at least on the level of the Muslim Brotherhood in its religious intensity,” he said.
Pastor Gottfried Martens, who counts six hundred Christian converts from Islam in his Berlin parish, agrees. Martens, who baptized many of them himself, said, it is “above all Christian converts from Islam who have to suffer as a minority” in the hostels. Christians are not allowed to prepare their meals in the kitchens and “whoever does not pray five times a day in the direction of Mecca is mobbed.”
“Almost all of them have huge problems in their hostels,” said Martens. “Strictly believing Muslims there convey the view: Where we are, sharia rules, our law rules.”
Which causes one to wonder: What does this situation bode for Germany’s future once these “refugees” are let loose in society?
One Christian refugee from Iran is probably also asking himself this same question. In an anonymous interview with Die Welt, he said he would never have thought he would face religious persecution in Germany like that in Iran. There, he had belonged to an underground church and fled after the secret police had arrested his brother for attending one too. After crossing Turkey on foot, he made it to Germany where he thought he could finally live out a Christian life without fear.
But he was wrong. Placed in a hostel with mostly strictly believing Sunni Syrians, the young Iranian says he cannot openly profess his faith or “then I will be threatened.”
“During Ramadan, they wake me up before dawn and say I should eat before the sun comes up,” he told Die Welt. “When I decline, they say I’m an “infidel." They spit at me. They treat me like an animal and threaten to kill me.”
The one other group suffering equal, and possibly worse, abuse in German refugee asylums is women traveling alone. Overall, women make up 25 percent of the migrant population. And they, as well as children, are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. The federal official responsible for this area in refugee asylums nation-wide says reports of such violence reach him daily from around Germany.
As regards the number of such incidents, no one knows for sure. But according to the Psychosocial Center for Refugees, “there are many.” In a center in Giessen, there were 15 reported cases of sexual abuse of women in one month, leading police to investigate cases of rape and forced prostitution. The situation there is described as “a second- or third-world situation…like a UN refugee camp in Africa.”
"A 16 year old Afghan asylum seeker is suspected of having raped an employee in a refugee shelter in Menen, VTM News reports. This is confirmed by the Ghent branch of Prosecution in the province of East Flanders. The facts occurred wednesday in a Red Cross facility in Menen. The victim is working for a caterer delivering supplies to the asylum center. When the woman was in the cellar handling supplies, she was raped by the teenage boy, reports VTM News. Before, the boy would already have hurled verbal insults to the woman..."
"The eleven persons taken into custody Friday afternoon after a fight in which a hundred individuals were involved in the Leopoldsburg asylum center have been "removed". This is confirmed by An Luyten, spokeswoman for the Red Cross. "The four who were a part of the hard core have been transferred to a closed refugee shelter. The seven others have been individually placed elsewhere in other asylum centers in Flanders", says An Luyten."
"In Zwijndrecht, near Antwerp, a sixteen year old boy was slightly wounded in a fight between several minors in an asylum center. This is confirmed by the Zwijndrecht Police Department."