Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Tuesday the deadly car bomb attack on a Christmas market had cast a “dark shadow” over this year’s celebrations, but urged the nation not to be influenced by extremists.
In his traditional Christmas address, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sought to give a message of healing four days after a brutal attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg killed five people and injured more than 200.
Against the backdrop of numerous crises and problems, the president urged the people of Germany to reflect on the strengths that have made it possible to cope with challenges in the past. In this context, he mentioned the conflict in Ukraine, the Middle East and many other parts of the world.
In Germany, Steinmeier said, there is a great deal of discontent with politics, the economy, bureaucracy and injustice. The German head of state acknowledged:
“The tone in our country has become tougher in everyday life, sometimes even irreconcilable. We must speak openly about what is going wrong, what is not working in our country as it could and should. And above all: what needs to be done urgently.”
The attack on a Christmas market in Germany’s Magdeburg provoked mass protests in Germany demanding the deportation of illegal migrants. Demonstrators blamed the authorities, especially Olaf Scholz, for the incident. The chancellor was even booed during his appearance at the mourning event.
The issue of migration is once again coming to the fore in Germany, aggravating the political situation ahead of the Bundestag elections. Germans chanting “everyone who doesn’t like Germany, get out” is already a consequence of the terrorist attack in Magdeburg. People are not interested in the fact that the Saudi who crushed women and children at the Christmas market is not a classic Islamic terrorist, rather, on the contrary, he was anti-Islamic. But the degree of hatred is still off the charts.
Scholz, who had travelled to Magdeburg to offer condolences, was booed, and one woman urged him to act: “Do something. Must something worse happen?”
On the evening of December 20, a car crashed into a crowd of people at a market in Magdeburg. The representative of the German government in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Matthias Schuppe, called the incident a terrorist attack.
