Victims of a far-right extremist attack that killed nine people four years ago in the small western German city of Hanau were commemorated on Monday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned far-right groups for stoking hate and instigating violence, and promised stronger measures to combat racism and xenophobia.
"Four years ago, a right-wing extremist brutally murdered nine people in Hanau. His motivation was hate, his motive was racism," Scholz said in a message posted on social media.
"Right-wing extremists are attacking our democracy. They want to socially exclude citizens, even expel them from the country. We will never allow this," he said, referring to the recently leaked plans of far-right AfD on deporting immigrants.
In Hanau, a commemorative event was held to remember the victims, attended by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Mayor Claus Kaminsky, Turkish Ambassador to Berlin Ahmet Başar Şen, community leaders, family members and friends.
On Feb. 19, 2020, far-right extremist Tobias Rathjen attacked two cafes, killing nine young people and injuring five others. All the victims had migrant backgrounds.
Before the attack, the far-right extremist posted videos on the internet detailing his xenophobic views. After the attack, he killed both his mother and himself.
Interior Minister Faeser said all democratic forces in Germany should take the far-right threat more seriously, and take a stronger stance against right-wing extremists who spread hatred and xenophobic propaganda.
"The horrific racist murders deeply shocked Hanau and our entire country four years ago. We will never forget Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtovic, Vili Viorel Paun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov," she said.
"All democratic forces must take seriously the threat that right-wing extremism poses to many people in our country, and they must act. Our government will continue to use all the instruments of our constitutional state to combat right-wing extremism," she stressed.
Germany has witnessed growing racism and Islamophobia in recent years fueled by the propaganda of neo-Nazi groups and the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which exploited the refugee crisis and attempted to instill fear of immigrants.
The AfD party could double its vote share in the European elections in June, a poll published last Tuesday indicates, with similar trends observed in other major EU countries. In the previous European Parliament elections in 2019, the party won 11% of the vote, putting it in fourth place.
Now the AfD could win 22%, which would put it second only behind the conservative Christian Democrats, according to a survey from the INSA opinion research institute for the German news website t-online.
Tens of thousands of people have joined anti-extremism demonstrations all over the country in recent weeks. For a country haunted by its Nazi past, the rise of a nationalist party has become a major concern.
In 2022, right-wing extremists committed 23,493 crimes and carried out 1,170 violent attacks targeting migrants, refugees or political opponents. At least 675 people were injured in those attacks.
At least 219 people have been killed in Germany by neo-Nazi violence since 1989, according to the human rights organization Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
Notably, threats against mosques in Germany too skyrocketed since the latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict broke out on Oct. 7, with the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB) reporting 17 instances of emails and letters signed with the neo-Nazi alias "NSU 2.0."
With over 84 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. Among the country's nearly 5.3 million Muslims, 3 million are of Turkish descent.