A 52-year-old German was arrested for setting fire to a building where Turkish people live in the city of Pforzheim in Germany’s Baden-Württemberg state.
The office of the attorney general in a statement said that a suspect was arrested immediately after the act of arson that took place on June 4. The suspect was interrogated, released and then rearrested.
It was determined that the suspect had committed a previous racially motivated crime and was sent to prison for deliberately setting the building alight, according to Anadolu Agency (AA).
The police stated that serious material damage took place in the 10-story building, rendering two of the apartments completely uninhabitable. One person was negatively affected by the fire’s smoke.
The Turkish community in Europe is concerned with the rising trend of Islamophobia and Turkophobia in Western countries, calling on European states to escalate measures against hate crimes.
Racist attacks targeting Muslims or immigrants increasingly make the headlines as white supremacists become more efficient in an age where their ideals, or at least parts of them, are going mainstream. There is no single large group orchestrating these attacks against Muslims and immigrants. Rather, individual attacks lead to more attacks by copycats.
The tolerant political climate under the pretext of freedom of speech has helped far-right sympathizers with violent tendencies expand their support.
Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have frequently urged European decision-makers and politicians to take a stance against racism and other types of discrimination that have threatened the lives of millions of people living within the bloc’s borders.
