Racial attacks in Germany stir World Cup fear

POTSDAM, Germany -- The savage beating of an Ethiopian man in this historic city and another attack in Berlin have rattled Germany as the country prepares to greet throngs of foreign visitors arriving for the monthlong soccer World Cup, beginning June 9.

The Easter morning assault here, in which the 37-year-old irrigation engineer was harangued with racial epithets then bludgeoned and kicked into a coma, was one of hundreds of racial attacks in the former East Germany since reunification of the country in 1990, according to German law enforcement agencies and European groups that track hate crimes.

Police blamed neo-Nazi thugs for the Potsdam attack. It was followed by the beating Wednesday of an Arab man at a bus station in eastern Berlin. The crime, also thought to be the work of neo- Nazis, was described by police as an ''anti-foreigner" attack.

The attacks have raised fresh alarms about violent far-right groups as the country prepares to host its largest sports spectacle since the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes died in an attack by Palestinian terrorists.

In a sign of the government's concern about the potential threat to soccer tourists, the federal prosecutor was placed in charge of the Potsdam case last week, an unusual move that superseded local authorities. In a statement, federal prosecutor Kay Nehm said the assailants were motivated by ''hatred of foreigners and extreme right-wing inclinations."

Two men from eastern Germany, ages 29 and 30, have been taken into custody for questioning in the case. Nehm told reporters that DNA tests will compare their blood with that found on glass shards at the crime scene.

The World Cup soccer tournament is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from six continents to watch games played at stadiums in a dozen cities across Germany over the course of four weeks. The motto for the event is ''A Time to Make Friends."

The attack on Ermyas Mulugeta in Potsdam was recorded on the telephone answering service of his wife, whom he called on his cellphone in desperation while being accosted at a trolley stop near the 18th-century Sanssouci Palace, one of Germany's top tourist attractions.

''Why are you calling me pig?" the terrified African-born father of two, a German resident for 20 years, demanded of his assailants. ''Why are you calling me [racial slur]?"

In the background, voices can be heard hurling other racial slurs and insults. ''We'll finish you," one threatened.

According to police, Mulugeta was beaten to the ground with beer bottles then repeatedly kicked in the head. He was saved after a passing taxi driver intervened; he remains unconscious in a life-threatening condition, according to German prosecutors.

Western diplomats have been quietly mulling whether to issue a warning against travel to parts of Germany. And an organization representing Africans in Germany issued a statement describing Potsdam, 15 miles southwest of the capital, and eastern Berlin as ''no go" areas for blacks because of the danger of attack.

''The entire former East is a risky area," said Moctar Kamara, head of the Africa Council, a group of 25 Berlin-based African-German associations. ''We have been calling for action against racist violence for many years."

The latest attacks were deemed so damaging to Germany's image that Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in, urging investigators Thursday to quickly prosecute perpetrators of racial attacks ''to make very clear that we condemn absolutely hatred of foreigners [and] right-wing violence."

Analysts and editorialists, meanwhile, were wondering aloud about the safety of World Cup visitors in the former East Germany, where extreme right-wing parties routinely blame ''foreigners" for high unemployment and other social ills -- even though relatively few of Germany's more than 3 million Turkish, Arab, and African immigrants live in the region. The parties enjoy their strongest support in the east, especially among young people, and the rock band Aryan Duo is a big hit among neo-Nazi youths with songs like ''White and Full of Hate."

''It's not a good idea for a black person to walk around in the east, especially at night," said Lars Rensmann, a political scientist at the University of Potsdam and an authority on right-wing extremists. ''These are not just isolated incidents, but part of a pattern of violence against so-called foreigners -- especially anyone who looks African or Asian."

In the xenophobic parlance of neo-Nazis, a foreigner is anyone with a dark skin or non-European appearance.

According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there were 776 cases of violent crime with ''right-wing motivation" -- meaning racial or ethnic assault -- in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available. That included 640 beatings, six attempted murders, and a handful of arson attacks.

''Germans who don't have enough work or enough welfare have an ugly history of turning on perceived 'outsiders,' " said Anetta Kahane, chairwoman of the Amadeu-Antonio Foundation, an anti-racism group named after an Angolan contract worker murdered in 1990 by neo-Nazi skinheads. ''It was Jews in the Nazi era -- now [it is] blacks, Asians, and other foreigners."

Earlier this year, a 12-year-old African boy, the son of immigrant parents, was kicked and beaten unconscious by five alleged neo-Nazis in the village of Poemmelte. In another attack, right-wing toughs in the town of Dahme tore apart a Vietnamese restaurant, beating the owner so brutally that he was left permanently deaf in one ear. Police say the assailants told the victim ''Germany belongs to Germans."

None of the most recent attacks has proved fatal, but more than 100 foreigners have been killed in attacks attributed to neo-Nazis since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, according to German media reports.

Xenophobia is rampant in the former Soviet bloc, but the attitudes of eastern Germans toward outsiders is especially virulent, especially among frustrated young people with little education who have watched factories close and neighbors with more job skills move to the west. Many easterners grew up with no contact with foreigners except the occasional Soviet soldier or tourist from elsewhere in the bloc.

''Until the wall came down, inhabitants of the East lived under nearly 60 years of totalitarian government -- first the Nazis, then the communists," said Rensmann, the political scientist. ''They haven't had the longer experience of multicultural democracy that shaped and changed the West. They've been molded by fear of outsiders."

But racist views are not the only views in eastern Germany.

Hundreds have rallied to marches and other demonstrations in Potsdam during the past week to protest the attack on Mulugeta.

''In this country, we do not tolerate that extremists chase, beat up, or even murder people because of their skin color or religion," Joerg Schoenbohm, interior minister for Brandenburg, the German state which has seen the most attacks in recent years, said at a news conference last week in Potsdam. ''There will be justice and strong penalties for such acts."

Petra Krischok of the Globe's Berlin bureau contributed to this report.