Five violent terror-related attacks in a two-week span are prompting Germans to turn on longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has continued to embrace a liberal refugee policy some say has compromised safety.
(FOX)- Although Germany has so far been spared the kind of atrocities that shook Brussels, Paris and Nice in the last year, there have been 15 deaths and dozens injured in attacks in Germany since July 18. Two of the attacks have been linked to ISIS, and many suspect the others bore hallmarks of terrorism.
Politicians from both the left and the right have assailed the once-enormously popular chancellor’s plan to integrate more than a million refugees from war zones in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
The sharpest criticism comes from Bavaria, which has been the entry point for most of the refugees. Leaders of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavaria-based sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are demanding tighter border controls and an annual upper limit on the number of migrants.
The left-wing opposition party, Die Linke, has also voiced criticism. Its co-leader, Sahra Wagenknecht, as quoted by Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, said the violence shows that the task of integrating the huge number of refugees “is harder than Merkel with her frivolous ‘we can do it’ slogan of last autumn would have us believe.”
Merkel’s government denies that the terrorist attacks reveal flaws in the immigration program that began a year ago, in August 2015. But most Germans do not share Merkel’s optimism.
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