BERLIN — “If they come to set our houses on fire, will the fire brigade come to put it out and save our lives?” Migrant organisations say people keep asking them questions like that as the far-right Alternative for Germany edges toward government in Saxony-Anhalt, and on Monday four umbrella groups put the question to Chancellor Friedrich Merz in an open letter. (TEH translation.)
The Turkish Community in Germany, the Federal Conference of Migrant Organisations, DaMOst, the eastern German umbrella body, and LAMSA, the Saxony-Anhalt network, presented the letter at the Federal Press Conference, three days before the state premiers meet. They want an answer while talks on a state government that could include the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are still open.
The party took 43.8 percent at the Saxony-Anhalt election on September 6, and the letter notes that the state’s domestic intelligence office classifies its regional branch as confirmed right-wing extremist. No party with that classification has governed a German state, the groups say, and this one would share control of police, schools and security with no template for it.
They ask for three things: a federal-state commission on protecting minorities, reporting before any such government stands; a hardship clause letting asylum seekers bound by residence rules move states if racist violence threatens them; and a federal fund, paid out without state consent, for threatened associations, counselling centres and communities. The open letter asks for a written reply within 14 days.
Mehtap Çağlar, the Turkish Community’s federal chair, said many people now ask who protects them “when those who are supposed to protect us do not want to protect us.” Since the AfD’s wins, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on September 20, the groups say their offices get hate mail and threatening letters. LAMSA’s counselling service has logged 85 racist incidents this year against 81 in all of last year. That is its own caseload, not an official count.
The letter says the AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, told a news conference the week after the vote that “later remigration and deportation offensives” would “of course” need appropriate aids, and that he wanted arms production brought into the state. TEH could not check that against a recording. The states, the groups add, have planned for their own procedures: Saxony-Anhalt is waiving the chair of the premiers’ conference. No plan covers the people.
Anadolu Agency reported that the party holds 39 of the Landtag’s 83 seats, three short of a majority, with a vote to elect the premier expected in December. Who supplies the missing three is unsettled; the smaller BSW has signalled openness to some cooperation, the agency says.
For the fund, the groups cite precedent: after the 2019 Halle attack, Berlin added 22 million euros to secure Jewish institutions. TEH found no reply by late Monday afternoon from the Chancellery, the premiers or the AfD. Karen Taylor of the Federal Conference put the test: “Where are people in danger? Who protects them? And who pays for it?”
