Left wing and Green activists have called for the chairman of the Düsseldorf Red Cross to resign his post after he said the migrant men who torched a Red Cross facility to the ground should be deported.
A kilometre-high column of smoke rose from Hall 18 at the Messe Düsseldorf international exhibition centre on Tuesday, after a group of migrants living in the German Red Cross administered facility torched the building to the ground because they were unhappy about Ramadan provisions particular to their Islamic faith.
Local chairman of the German Red Cross charity Olaf Lehne, who coordinates the service which provides thousands of beds and meals to migrants every day, blasted the arsonists in an interview this week. He said: “He who starts a fire and brings other refugees and staff into danger is criminal, and who is a criminal our country does not need”.
Pro-migrant organisations from the Left have rounded on Mr. Lehne for his comments, blaming him and the German Red Cross for the fire. The Rheinische Post reports the comments of local Left Party spokesman Christian Jäger who asked how the Red Cross could even have let the shelter they run get to the point of “intolerable conditions” where the migrant residents would want to burn it down in the first place.
Among the complaints of the men who were arrested for the arson — and for which the German Red Cross is now blamed — include not being woken up in time for their Ramadan breakfast, and chocolate pudding not being included in the evening buffet.
Clearly upset by the Red Cross chief’s comments, Mr. Jäger accused former member of parliament Mr. Lehne of trying to gain politically from the fire, playing up his links to the ruling CSU party of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr. Jäger said: “It is devastating when the president of a prestigious charity demands the punishment and deportation of his charges… A German Red Cross chief who comes down to a refugee shelter and does propaganda against refugees for his political career is intolerable”.
Local leader of Germany’s left wing mainstream party, the SPD, Andreas Rimkus, also jumped at the opportunity to take Mr. Lehne to task over his comments. While he conceded the arson was a “serious offence”, he accused the Red Cross manager of “cheap populism” and reminded him that if the migrants responsible were from a war-zone, they couldn’t be deported under German law anyway.
While that is true, unfortunately for the left wing leader the so-called ‘refugees’ understood to be responsible for the fire have been uncovered as Moroccan citizens posting as Syrian refugees in a bid to gain access to Germany.
Speaking to host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Breitbart London’s Oliver Lane Discusses The Dusseldorf Fire This Morning: