Like the energy prices now, the corona protection measures in particular drove thousands of people onto the streets in MV in the first half of the year. There were also repeated crimes. When classifying the perpetrators, the usual left/right grid has reached its limits.
Schwerin (dpa/mv) - Politically motivated crimes in the course of protest actions are increasingly no longer included in the grid used by the police up to now. As can be seen from the answers of the state government to two small questions from the left-wing faction in the state parliament, the officials could not assign almost half of the around 1000 offenses registered in the first half of the year to any political direction. "An unclear statistical situation not only obscures actual problems, but also prevents politicians from drawing the right conclusions," complained Michael Noetzel, a member of the Left Party, on Tuesday in Schwerin. He called on the responsible Ministry of the Interior to review the categories used so far and to supplement them if necessary.
According to Noetzel, the majority of unattributed crimes are related to the protest against the Corona measures. "It's no secret that these demonstrations, especially when they turned violent, were led by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis, some of whom were well-known nationally," said the parliamentarian. The state parliament reacted to the anti-Semitic posters displayed, anti-democratic slogans and attempts at intimidation with a resolution that recognized the right to demonstrate, but at the same time called for a clear demarcation to the right.
At the end of July, the Ministry of the Interior presented preliminary data on the development of politically motivated crime in the first half of 2022. Accordingly, the number of these crimes has doubled compared to the same period last year in the Northeast. Instead of the previous 549, 1,113 such offenses were recorded. Violations of the Assembly Act have increased almost six-fold, with 332 cases recorded. There was also a sharp increase in insults and damage to property, each with 45 cases. Because of the often unclear political background of those involved, a clear classification according to right, left or religious groups is usually not possible, it said.
According to the statistics, crimes with right-wing and left-wing backgrounds also increased, with politically motivated crime from the “right-wing phenomenon” again clearly predominating. Their number rose by 126 to 495 compared to the first half of 2021, with more than two thirds of the cases being propaganda crimes. The number of right-wing violent crimes doubled from 16 to 32. 90 of the cases reported from January to June were assigned to left-wing perpetrators, 40 more than in the same period of the previous year. The focus was on damage to property with 44 cases.
