Mass Brawl In Shelter Breaks Out Among Refugees In Berlin
On Sunday, a mass brawl broke out among hundreds of refugees at a shelter in Berlin. The former Tempelhof airport, where the chaos broke out, has been converted into a shelter and is home to about 800 refugees. According to AFP, the shelter can house up to 1,200 people.
More than 100 police officers were called to the shelter when the situation got out of hand and order needed to be restored. AFP reports the brawl erupted during lunch among the food distribution lineups. People reportedly attacked each other with sticks and knives, according to Europe Online.
Brawls are not uncommon with so many people living in a cramped area, but the violence at the shelter was described to be worse than usual. The number of police officers who went to the shelter to restore peace attests to the number of people involved in the violent incident.
Many of the refugees have been through a great deal of trauma, escaping wars and leaving their homes behind. They suddenly find themselves living in a tightly packed space among other people who come from different cultural backgrounds and religions. Tensions sometimes run high, and it’s easy to see how a brawl could get started.
Reuters reports the brawl in the shelter shines a light on the challenges Germany faces in handling the hundreds of thousands of refugees migrating to the country. Germany’s police union wants refugees to be separated by religion and country of origin to cut down on potential conflict.
Michael Elias, who is in charge of the shelter, said 830 people currently live there. According to Elias, between 20 and 30 people started the brawl.
“It’s the simple fact that there are a lot of young men traveling alone here. We withdrew… because the situation simply exploded. It was a complete blow-out.”
“There were apparently many hundreds of people involved,” a police spokesman said. Police made a number of arrests, although it remains unclear as to exactly how many people were arrested.
Police had been called to another shelter in Berlin earlier on the same day to break up a different brawl. At this shelter in Spandau, a Berlin suburb, 500 people reportedly had to flee for their safety in a state of “fear and panic,” AFP reports.
A police spokesperson said migrants in that brawl attacked each other with fire extinguishers, tossed sofas, and smashed windows. Several residents ended up injured.
Brawls like those which occurred today are making the people of Germany feel uneasy about accepting so many refugees into the country in such a short period of time. Up to a million refugees are expected to migrate to Germany this year alone. Hundreds of thousands have been put up in flats, army barracks, sports halls and tent cities.
According to the Daily Mail, the Tempelhof Airport was used by Hitler “to barnstorm his way across the country in the days before he established his Nazi dictatorship.” The airport currently houses 830 refugees but could house more and may do just that soon with the large numbers of migrants coming to live in Germany.
The Guardian reports that earlier this year, authorities were accused by Germany’s police union and women’s rights groups of playing down reports of sexual assault and rape at refugee shelters because they feared refugees would suffer backlash.
Interior minister Thomas de Maizière has asked that Germans refrain from lumping all refugees together and not to look at all migrants with suspicion.
The refugees are coming from a variety of countries with a variety of religions and cultural backgrounds. With the large number of people coming to Germany in hopes of finding a safe place to live, there are no easy answers to the crisis Germany now faces in trying to accommodate those fleeing war torn countries.
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