Hanau terror attack: Germany is still 'blind in the right eye'

Gokhan Gultekin, Sedat Gurbuz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtovic, Vili Viorel Paun, Fatih Saracoglu, Ferhat Unvar, and Kaloyan Velkov—nine people—were killed, and five others wounded, when Tobias Rathjen attacked two shisha bars in the German town of Hanau on February 19, 2020. The assailant then went home to kill his mother and himself.

The attack was racially motivated. The families of the first nine victims had migrated to Germany and lived there for generations. Rathjen had published a “manifesto” on the  Internet months before the attack, calling for genocide and sharing obscure conspiracy theories. He had also sent letters to German authorities, making his intentions clear.

“The attack shook Hanau. Many people were traumatised, and some locked themselves up in their homes. It is a devastating fact, but we no longer felt safe in the country that we were born and raised in,” Selma Yilmaz-Ilkhan, member of the Hanau City Council and head of political party Wir Sind Hanau (We Are Hanau), tells TRT World.

“The sense of insecurity still lingers, and I don’t think it will go away easily, because the racist mentality behind the attack still remains,” she adds. 

Cetin Gultekin, brother of Gokhan Gultekin, expresses  the same concern, adding that the situation got worse even as the Turkish community protested and fought against racism. 

“There has been a 35 percent  increase in firearms licences in two years since the attack. The more we called for guns to be taken from racists, the more they armed themselves. How can we feel safe?” he questions in a statement to TRT World.

Rise of the far-right

The attack in Hanau was not a one-off incident in Germany. It was preceded by two other right-wing extremist attacks in 2019—the assassination of Walter Lubcke and the anti-semitic Halle Synagogue attack.

Lubcke’s assassination was linked to his pro-refugee stance, as neo-Nazi extremist Stephan Ernst confessed to killing him. The Halle attack was committed by Stephan Balliet, who had initially planned to raid  the city's synagogue during Yom Kippur but failed, and instead opened fire at passersby, killing two. Baillet had been inspired by the Christchurch attack.

Even then, attacks against citizens of non-German descent were not new. From 2000 to 2007, the far-right  National Socialist Underground (NSU) group had targeted Turkish migrants and killed 10 people, eight of whom were of Turkish descent. However, German police and intelligence failed to consider that a neo-Nazi motive could be behind the murders, neglecting the country’s far-right menace.

“We were blind in the right eye for too long,” the country’s former interior minister Horst Seehofer admitted on November 2021, ten years after the police found far-right ideology behind the murders.

The assassination of Lubcke, along with the Halle and Hanau attacks, constituted proof that right-wing extremist attacks had become prevalent in Germany, and were not going anywhere, with each attack committed by an unstable individual who acted alone, and had been radicalised by racism and a far-right agenda.

Lat year, ahead of the first anniversary of the Hanau attack, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas had said the attack was foreseeable, citing a 2020 report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which estimated the number of right-wing extremists in Germany at over 33,000, adding that over 13,000 of those people were considered to have tendencies toward violence.

German police recorded 23,604 crimes related to a far-right agenda in 2020, surpassing the previous record of 23,555 crimes in 2016 when the refugee influx was at its peak.

The BfV also found that the country’s far-right had become more radicalised during the pandemic as the extremist agenda found a new platform to flourish along  with protests against coronavirus measures.

Was the Hanau attack a turning point?

In a sense, the Hanau attack was a wake-up call for Germany. In the aftermath of the attack, they set up a Federal Government committee, called The Cabinet Committee for the Fight Against Racism and Right-wing Extremism, in March 2020 to track and tackle all forms of hostility against specific groups in society.

December, 2020 saw the government adopt a set of recommendations by the committee that outlined a total of 89 measures to combat right-wing extremism and racism, which included stricter laws and punishment, supporting and protecting victims, improving state structures, strengthening security efforts, creating awareness and educating people, and increasing cooperation within state actors as well as between state and civil society.

A budget of approximately one billion euros was also created to fund the fight between 2021 to 2024, along with an additional 150 million euros for 2021. The funding was reportedly meant for research and prevention efforts, supporting civil society, etc.

Moreover, in March 2021, the country’s domestic intelligence agency classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) right-wing political party as suspected “extremists” and put the party under surveillance. The party had long been accused of spreading propaganda and hate, leading to an environment that allows right-wing extremism and racism to thrive.

While introducing new and improved measures, the country continued its crackdown on right-wing extremists, both on individual level and group level, to prevent the spread of racist discourses and discourage people from acting on a far-right agenda.

People who are found to be connected to far-right racist groups and crimes are being prosecuted and prisoned, the far-right groups are being banned or broken down, their rallies are being called off, etc.

Another hopeful development is the country’s new interior minister, Nancy Faeser, who has defined fighting racism and right-wing extremism as her top priority, announcing on January 12 that an action plan is being rolled out.  

"We will do all we can to stop radicalisation processes, dismantle right-wing extremist networks and systematically deprive extremists of their weapons," the ministry quotes her as saying in her first policy speech as interior minister. Faeser is set to work for a Germany “where all people can live freely and without fear".

In the last weeks, Germany has also targeted messaging app Telegram for its popularity among right-wing extremists. Over 60 channels were shut down just days ago after  Faeser  flagged the app , even threatening to shut it down if it did not cooperate.

German law asserts that social media platforms are obligated to remove content that are deemed illegal by the state, including death threats and hate speech, which the app had reportedly became a hotbed of.

Most recently, the government decided to make March 11 the official day to commemorate victims of terrorism.

Nevertheless, for some, the threat remains as high as ever because they have not observed a decrease in far-right racist treatment they are subjected to in day-to-day life. 

“Even our children in first grade are faced with racism each day. I can’t tell you the Hanau attack led to a turning point because racism still persists, although it has not surfaced on a major scale like the attack,” Yilmaz-Ilkhan tells TRT World, adding  she did not believe Germany and racism would ever be separated.

Prosecutors closed the investigation into the Hanau attack two months ago after concluding that the assailant worked alone. The victims’ relatives had demanded a probe into Rathjen's father, who they suspected of assisting the assailant, but the probe found no evidence of any accessory to murder.

However, Cetin Gultekin recently alleged that the assailant’s father had been harassing families of the victims. The father had even sent 25 letters to the prosecutor claiming his son was the real victim, and was planning to avenge him, said Gultekin. No action has been taken, despite the authorities being aware of the situation.

The victims’ families also demand answers on how the assailant, despite having been diagnosed with mental illness, had a firearms licence and why the police did not investigate him before the attack although they were aware of him.

“In the two years since the attack, our lives didn’t change for the better. We lost nine people, but it was like it didn’t even matter. We did not observe the effects of any of the measures the government rolled in, and our troubles even got worse,” Gultekin says.

Yilmaz-Ilkhan says that non-German communities still had to live with racism and fear. “We were hoping for more changes, both in Hanau and nationwide, but nothing substantial really happened,” Yilmaz-Ilkhan adds.