A 20-year-old Thai man living in Bremen was on his way back to his flat on Monday last week when he was attacked. Three young men repeatedly punched him in the face and brutally kicked the victim, who was lying on the ground, in the head – while calling him “Chinese” again and again. Even when the victim called for the police, they did not let go of him. The suspects, all three men are Syrian, according to the police two are the same age as the victim, were caught soon after – now the police are also investigating on suspicion of a possibly racist crime. The victim talked to TE magazine about the crime.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” says Nitiwit – he suffered skull fractures, among other injuries, and had to be hospitalised and treated. “Germany is supposed to be one of the safest countries in Europe,” he complains, Nitiwit calls Germany his “beloved homeland”. But the three perpetrators did not have any fear of “the police and the law” – and whether they could be prosecuted at all, he also has his doubts.
The police arrested the alleged perpetrators, but they are on the loose again. The victim does not understand why the state allows this to happen: “Although these people are dangerous, they are allowed to run around freely. The brutality with which they attacked the student was shocking: in addition to kicks to the head, two of the Syrians lifted the student from the ground and held him by both arms so that the third could punch him in the face.
Despite the seriousness and dimension of this allegedly racially motivated “hate crime”, which the judiciary has so far only prosecuted very mildly, the media response has been extremely restrained – although “anti-Asian racism” was repeatedly made an issue by the media in the Corona pandemic when the origin of the Corona virus was at issue. The local newspaper Weser-Kurier reported on the incident in a brief article in its print and online editions, but also concealed the origin of the suspects in the latter. It seems that the robbery does not fit the expected stereotype. “For me, it makes no difference what skin colour the perpetrators have,” said the victim – but that does not seem to apply to everyone.
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/gewaltkriminalitaet-bremen-rassismus/