World Cup – big chance for racist violence

Germany prepares to welcome more than a million foreign fans for the World Cup, a spate of racist attacks is raising fears that the world's most popular sporting event and Germany 's image will be tarnished by an explosion of right-wing violence.

Photo: World Cup – big chance for racist violence

A group of assailants beat three men from Mozambique and Cuba in an apparent racist attack in eastern Germany , and one had to be hospitalized, police said Friday. The violence Thursday evening in the city of Weimar adds to a string of incidents that have raised renewed concern over racism and hate crimes in Germany , weeks before the soccer World Cup opens. One of the men, a 46-year-old Mozambican, was hospitalized with head injuries, said Ilka Vollmar, a police spokeswoman in nearby Jena . His life was not in danger, informs “Pravda.ru” recently.

The issue flared into a hot national debate after a former government spokesman floated the idea of "no-go zones" in the most notorious epicenters of racist attacks. In a radio interview last month, Uwe-Karsten Heye warned anyone with dark skin against setting foot in small and middle-sized towns in Brandenburg , the region around Berlin that has been a hotbed of hate crimes. "He might not leave alive," Heye said.

"We have seen on radical right and neo-Nazi web sites they plan to target black people," underlines Eritrean-born Jonas Endrias, vice president of the International League of Human Rights. "All of east Germany is unsafe", reports the AP.

N.U.