Remember when Fox News had to apologize for saying there were no-go zones in Europe? Well, that was then. This is now.
The police in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany are publicly warning about no-go zones in the Ruhr. Below is brief article on the topic from Die Welt, as translated by JLH:
Police in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) Warn of Lawless Zones
Attacks on police in lawless zones in the Ruhr area are increasing. Gangs rule whole streets; nightmares ensure. In a confidential report, Duisburg headquarters warned of the establishment of No-Go areas.
Rival biker gangs are only a part of the problem. Security in the Ruhr is worrisome. As stated in a confidential report from police headquarters in Duisburg, the emergence of lawless zones creates “serious peril.” The SPIEGEL writes that, to some extent, criminal gangs “are laying claim to whole streets.”
Police officials fear they could lose control of problem sectors. The report warns that public order cannot be “guaranteed over the long haul.’” “Nightmare” situations could arise, including even on streetcars during evening and night hours. And residents would be intimidated. The police, too, have a tough situation, facing a great deal of aggression and lack of respect. Police women are particularly affected.
Reasons for the problematic situation in several districts are enumerated in the confidential report. These include — according to the SPIEGEL report — “high unemployment. lack of prospects for immigrants with lack of qualifications in the German job market and ethnic tensions among the immigrants.” As a consequence of this analysis, the police intend to be more strongly represented in these places. And officers will conduct more intensive investigations of crimes. The Duisburg headquarters does not expect improvement in the middle term.
“It’s a Game for the Criminal Gangs”
The report shows how severe the situation in Duisburg has become and how helpless the police are in the breakaway districts. The police union (GdP) in North Rhine-Westphalia was already warning of No-Go areas at the beginning of July. According to state GdP head, Arnold Plickert, there are situations every week in which police in Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund are threatened and attacked by large mobs for no discernible reason. “We must not give up the streets to criminal groups or whole sections of the city will slip further out of control, taking the residents with them,” warned Plickert.
The union is concerned about the penetration of problem districts by Lebanese families. At the end of May, in Duisburg-Marxloh, members of one such family attacked and wounded two police officers. The officers had to draw their weapons to control the situation. Around fifteen attackers had harassed them, surrounded by about 100 lookie-loos.
During the investigation of a traffic accident the officers had been intending to question two suspicious characters who smelled strongly of cannabis.
“For the criminal gangs, it is a game. They know that the police cannot mount an operation in their district, if they cannot immediately deploy five to ten cruisers as reinforcement when individual police officers are attacked,” Plickert says. On top of that, several rival biker gangs as well as Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian gangs are fighting for dominance in the streets. The GdP head is demanding more personnel to master the problems. The national union supports the demand.
Captions:
Photo 1: Rival biker gangs are only a part of the problem. Unemployment and lack of prospects as well as ethnic tensions are noted. Photo 2: Duisburg police intend stronger representation in problem districts, as here after a battle between the Bandidos and the Hells Angels.
Lebanese? Surely they are not Muslim as well?
Technically they could be Christian but it is really a slim chance of that I think
The Maronite Christians of Lebanon have been reduced from their former position to a precarious political and military balance with the Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims and the minority Druze. There have been repeated invasions by Syria, influxes of Palestinians, active Hezbollah units in the south attacking Israel, two Israeli invasions/occupations. Beirut was once called the “Paris of the Levant” and the American University there was a treasured institution. There is not much left of the culture that gave us Danny Thomas. If the French are not determined and lucky, Paris may someday be known as the “Beirut of Europe.”
In other words, the Christians of Lebanon are not a lot better off than Christians elsewhere in the Muslim world. The best thing we could do for them–and ourselves–would be to hoover them up from every nook and cranny in the Middle East and bring them back to the US as a balance to the less than welcome invaders of other types, because they might at least appreciate the chance to breathe free, worship as they please, and *work* for a living.
Back in the days of the Wiemar Republic, during the worst financial crisis the world has known, the same problem existed, not just cities in the Ruhr, but in also in other German and European states.
In those days the groups controlling the streets were largely communists fighting the police, army, and/or national socialists, but the common denominator was that everyone involved, (then and now) expected the government to solve their problems.
Eventually, the government of the National Socialist German Workers Party cleaned up the streets and solved everybody’s problem. Boy, did they ever!
Now, new leeches are draining the governments’ lifeblood and complaining bitterly if their their bellies are not immediately engorged, and the police are under increasing pressure to maintain good order, very similar to some European neighborhoods of the 1920s.
History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes and I don’t think the world will take much comfort from the final stanza in this present verse.
“Gods of the Copybook Headings,” and all that.
Not all Lebanese are muslims, there is a sizeable Christian minority in lebanon, who are generally of higher education than the majority Shiite Muslims. Christian Lebanese who emigrate to the West generally integrate well into the Christian non-Muslim milieu, at least in the States and Australia.
“Rival biker gangs”?
Can’t we send Bernard Goetz to Berlitz to learn German, then have him cloned?
those so- called Lebanese are minotitarian Arabs that were expelled from eastern Turkey in the 1920 ies and never got assimilated to Lebanon.Via east Berlin,they were smuggled into west Germany after the reunification as asylum seekers.They never cared to work and now form a subcultural criminal group, at least many of them.