Major Taboo in German Politics Broken: Bundestag Approves Resolution to Curb Illegal Migration
The German parliament has passed a resolution to tighten migration rules following a fatal knife attack in Bavaria by an illegal migrant from Afghanistan on a child and a man. The resolution provides for the introduction of permanent border controls, the possibility of refusing illegal migrants at the border and the detention of foreigners who have been ordered to leave the country by the authorities.
‘This step has broken a great taboo in German politics,’ said conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He regretted that his non-binding proposal to restrict immigration was passed with the support of the far-right AfD party.
After the vote, in a heated debate, Merz stressed that he did not want ‘a majority other than the one in the democratic centre’ and proposed new talks on migration with the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens ahead of another vote on the migration issue scheduled for Friday.
He called on both parties ‘to talk to us before Friday about how we can work with you to achieve a majority for the bill we have presented here in the German Bundestag’.
Last week, on 22 January, an illegal migrant from Afghanistan, Enamullah O, 28, who lives in a German shelter near Aschaffenburg, attacked a group of kindergarten children with a knife shortly before noon in the Shental Park in the centre of Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. The suspect is charged with the murder of a child and an adult.
One of the two victims is a two-year-old boy whose family is from Morocco. The second victim was a 41-year-old passerby. He is said to have tried to stop the attacker. Thanks to his actions, ‘other children were saved from death,’ said Joachim Herrmann (CSU), Bavarian Interior Minister.
The attacker stabbed a two-year-old girl in the neck and a man in the upper body. The kindergarten teacher broke her forearm when she fell. The three injured, a two-year-old Syrian girl, a 72-year-old man and a 59-year-old kindergarten teacher, were taken to a hospital in Aschaffenburg. They are not in danger of dying.