The Bavarian government has defended classifying asylum homes in the region as ”dangerous places” and allowing police to enter or raid them without a warrant after an outcry by pro-migrant groups.
Left-wing pro-migrant groups have accused the Bavarian government of infringing on the human rights of asylum seekers by allowing police warrantless access to asylum homes at any time. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann has defended the classification and increased the number of police present at asylum homes after several recent violent incidents, Die Welt reports.
Nuremberg-based lawyer Yunus Ziyal has been one of the most vocal critics of the policy, saying: “All the people who live there have the same right to do so unmolested by others.”
“No population group, and asylum seekers are a population group, deserves to be put under general suspicion,” he added.
Ziyal said the classification puts asylum homes on the same level as “gambling dens and brothels”. The lawyer has an ally in Alexander Thal from the Bavarian Refugee Council, who argues the classification “stigmatises” asylum seekers.
Interior Minister Herrmann defended the policy, noting that a large amount of crime occurs both in and around asylum homes in the region. Most recently, an asylum home in Bamberg burned down, killing a 28-year-old Eritrean, and earlier this year an asylum seeker stabbed a five-year-old to death in an asylum home in Arnschwang before being shot by police.
A spokesman for the interior minister said they had no records of how often police checked the identification of asylum seekers or how often they are searched without cause. Searches that do occur with cause are written in police reports, the spokesman said.
Migrant crime in Bavaria has surged since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, with some cities like Munich seeing almost half of all criminal suspects being from migrant backgrounds.
The number of rapes involving migrant suspects has increased by 91 per cent this year according to police statistics.
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