Munich, the first point of arrival for the thousands of economic migrants travelling by train from Hungary into Western Europe will be put into a state of police emergency during the usually jubilant Oktoberfest celebrations.
Joachim Herrmann, the Christian Social Union interior minister revealed plans to deploy “strong security forces” to the city during the annual beer and wurst (pork sausage) festival in two weeks time, as he feared confrontations between Germans celebrating their cultural heritage and newly arrived migrants.
Munich central station is a major railhead for thousands of migrants travelling north through Europe, taking trains from Budapest through Austria to the southern German city.
On just one day last week 1,500 people arrived, hoping either to disperse into Germany or to continue their migratory route deeper into the continent.
Speaking in an interview with local newspaper the Münchner Merkur, Herrmann admitted “you can not see who is Islamist” among the thousands arriving in the city, and that there was a significant challenge identifying who exactly was coming to the country as many had forged or no paperwork.
He said: “We can not ignore our own security interests… Such Islamists are already in our country”. As for Oktoberfest, he said he “could not foresee how the many drunken Oktoberfest revellers will behave”, but noted that there were always some incidents and the meeting of a large group of refugees and the revellers could close both the railway station and the main city square.
TheLocal.de reports the minister’s request for extra police has already been granted by the Federal government, who would be redeploying forces from other German states to assist with the operation.
The assignment of potentially thousands of extra police, as has been the case in other occasions in the country where ordinary Germans clashed with asylum seekers and pro-immigration factions, suggests the authorities do not hope to match last year’s fall in crime at the Oktoberfest.
Reports last year said cases of alcohol poisoning were down, as were arrests. Over the festival, a remarkable 6.5 million litres of beer was consumed – enough to fill over two and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Breitbart London reported in this past week that Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has warned his country was being “overwhelmed” by “several million people” who were on their way to Europe.
The numbers of people arriving in Hungary were now so great they are being put onto buses and sent north to Germany without being recorded by the Hungarian police, who have become overwhelmed. Today the government has announced it is deploying the army to the southern border to keep more out. Over 100 buses were used to move over 4,000 migrants from Hungary to Germany over the weekend.
Despite his actions, Hermann struck a conciliatory note in his interview, remarking that “It does not help to criticize only Hungary, while you look away as other southern European countries have failed to control their external borders for a long time”.
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