Not a day goes by without news of a knife attack in Germany, most of them committed by migrants. Yet, instead of stemming the problem at its roots—by ending illegal migration—the state of North Rhine-Westphalia intends to educate the public with the message that life “without knives is better.”
The state’s police force recently launched a campaign to deter people from carrying knives in public. Under the motto “Besser ohne Messer” (Better without knives) the police intend to inform citizens about the dangers of carrying knives. Their online information leaflet—which is available in ten languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Ukrainian—says people should leave their knives at home in the first place, so as not to be “tempted” to use them. The police also point out that carrying a knife can be a criminal offence in itself, and that a knife carried for self-protection can be “quickly used against you.” The authorities also offer advice to people who are confronted with someone wielding a knife.
Considering that the police campaign is not new and already ran in 2019, it is questionable whether it will achieve anything at all.
There were 3,536 cases of knife crime in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2023, an increase of 3.4% compared to 2019, the last year before the COVID pandemic.
Conservative publication Apollo News questions whether the tightening of laws actually deters perpetrators, “because criminals obviously do not abide by the law.”
Knife attacks have been plaguing Germany for a large part of this year, with the terror attack in Solingen and the brutal murder of a policeman in Mannheim being among the most serious cases, causing a huge uproar in the country.
At least 13,844 knife-related attacks were committed last year throughout Germany, a significant increase compared to the 10,131 cases recorded a year earlier. Evidently, the nationwide stabbing spree is continuing in 2024, with media reporting daily of a knife attack somewhere in the country:
- Last Tuesday, in Ettenheim, a teenager stabbed a classmate twice in the back. The victim suffered life-threatening injuries, and had to undergo emergency surgery.
- Last Thursday, in Augsburg, a 36-year-old man stabbed his wife after an argument, seriously injuring her.
- On Saturday, in a hospital in Wuppertal, a dispute between several men escalated into a knife attack, with one of the men lightly injuring two others.
- On Sunday, in Rendsburg, a man critically injured another man with a knife following a dispute between the two.
Although the identities and nationalities of the suspects were not named in the reports, most of the times when identities are revealed, the perpetrators turn out to be mostly migrants, many of them Afghans and Syrians.
Federal police chief Dieter Romann recently said that
in relation to the total population, non-Germans are statistically six times more likely to resort to knives in an attack than German citizens.
The government a little over a month ago announced a list of measures aimed at addressing the crisis, such as a ban on carrying knives at festivals, sporting events, and other similar public occasions. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has also suggested that the legal size limit on blades carried in public should be shortened from 12 cm to 6 cm.