The increase in offences classified as ‘anti-Christian’ can be gleaned from two parliamentary statements made by the German government in Berlin in response to parliamentary enquiries from the AfD. According to these, 135 anti-Christian offences were recorded in the police statistics on politically motivated crime throughout Germany in 2022. According to preliminary figures, 277 such cases were recorded in 2023, including 55 incidents involving damage to property.
The increase cannot be explained across the board, a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior told the German Press Agency. Increased numbers of cases could be partly explained by multiple sharing or publication of criminally relevant posts on the internet. Such posts had become known to the Federal Criminal Police Office’s Central Reporting Centre for Criminal Content on the Internet.
Another explanation is ‘the tense global political situation, particularly in the context of the Middle East conflict as a result of the attacks by the terrorist organisation Hamas against the state of Israel’. In this context, there had been a large number of terror threats, which had mainly been sent by email. The spokesperson explained: ‘Some of these threatening emails were sent to Christian institutions or contained statements directed against the Christian religion or people of the Christian faith.’
Polizei schlägt Alarm: Christenfeindliche Straftaten verdoppelt | Exxpress