Koch stokes the flames of racism. German state premier campaigns against "foreign criminals"

The occasion for this latest official racist campaign was the attack by two young men (one Greek, one Turkish) on a pensioner in a Munich subway station just before Christmas. Since the attack, CDU politicians—above all, Koch—have competed with each other to demand harsher p enalties against young offenders and quicker deportations of foreigners.

Koch, who is currently campaigning for state elections to be held in Hesse on January 27, is leading the charge. On the day after the attack in Munich, he told the right-wing tabloid Bild newspaper that there were “too many foreign criminals” in Germany. On Wednesday last week, he presented a six-point programme, which includes a proposal for the rapid deportation of “foreign criminals.” The programme further calls for deportation to occur whenever a foreigner has been sentenced to one year or more. Koch also proposed a so-called “warning arrest”—i.e., a form of “zero tolerance”—involving punitive sentences for petty offences. Koch remarked that young offenders should experience early on what “prison was like from the inside.”