Merkel pledges to stand against racism

By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN (AA) - Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised Thursday to combat discrimination and racism in Germany, if elected again on September 24.

Confronted by an ethnic-Turkish teenager during a live television debate on Thursday night, who criticised her coalition government for not doing enough against "structural racism" in the country, Merkel argued that she has always been sensitive about racism, and would continue to do so after the elections.

“Wherever you may face racist prejudices, you would find me on your side. We have developed many programs to combat racism, because we know that it is still a problem,” she said.

The teenager, who said he was a member of a bicultural family, criticised Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc (CDU/CSU) for illiberal integration policies, and failure to take a strong stance against everyday racism and discrimination.

Germany has witnessed growing racism in recent years, triggered by the propaganda of far-right parties which have effectively used the internet to disseminate extremist views, and fake news on the refugee crisis.

The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was polled at around 12 percent in recent polls, has been a widespread concern.

“If AfD really enters the Bundestag, for the first time in more than 70 years, Nazis will speak again at the parliament,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a social democrat, told weekly Der Spiegel on Thursday.

In 2013, AfD failed to pass the 5 percent threshold and could not enter the Bundestag, or German parliament.

Since the refugee crisis in 2015, the party adopted an explicit anti-immigrant as well as anti-Islamic rhetoric and significantly increased its support.

In an Infratest-dimap poll released on Thursday, AfD came in at 12 percent, with an increase of 4 points since the previous survey in early August.

The poll put Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc at 37 percent, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was polled at 20 percent.

Germany, a country of 81.8 million people, has the second largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.

Among the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, three million are of Turkish origin. Many of them migrated to Germany in the 1960s.