Germany braces for potential New Year's Eve riots

Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she fears a repeat of New Year rioting and attacks on emergency services in Berlin and other cities.

"I'm worried that New Year's Eve could once again be a day on which we are forced to experience blind rage and senseless violence in some cities, for example, against police officers or emergency services," Faeser told the RND media group in comments published on Thursday.

At the start of 2023, at least 41 police officers were hurt in the capital alone, and there were dozens of attacks on emergency responders.

There were reports firetrucks were supposedly "lured into ambushes" and shot at with fireworks and pelted with stones and beer crates in cities including Cologne, Hamburg and Dortmund.

"For me, this uninhibited violence is completely incomprehensible and cannot be justified by anything," Faeser said.

More police deployed over New Year

The dramatic scenes of streets ablaze to the sound of gunfire from blank-firing pistols as fireworks reignited the debate about a potential ban on the sale of fireworks.

Fireworks fill store shelves this year starting on December 28, but Faeser said authorities are making more preparations to deal with potential violence this year than they have in the past.

"I know that the federal states and their police forces are now preparing for this differently than last time: with new risk assessments, with more police," she said. "I am particularly grateful to the emergency services who are putting their necks on the line for our safety."

Gemany's police union pushed for harsher penalties for the perpetrators of violence against emergency service staff, and the fire service called for the use of more body cams to be able to prove that acts of violence have taken place.

Worries over radicalization

"On days like New Year's Eve, we now see a general increase in violence," Faeser continued, "and, of course, we have to keep a very close eye on the danger of this mixing with radicalization, which we are now seeing in light of the Middle East conflict."

In January, Berlin police said 145 people were arrested in connection with the New Year's Eve violence in the capital, including 38 people who were specifically detained in connection with attacks on the police and emergency services staff.

Of those, two-thirds were German nationals and the majority were under 21.

Some people in Germany were quick to blame the violence on people with migrant backgrounds. At the time the federal government's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Ferda Ataman, however, warned that there was no justification for what she described as the "racist reactions" to the New Year's Eve violence.

lo/sms (AFP, dpa)

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