Germany hit by 10 anti-migrant attacks a day, report says

More attacks on refugees were reported in Germany last year with more than 3,500 registered across the country, amounting to nearly 10 acts of anti-migrant violence a day while far-right parties have enjoyed a sharp increase in popularity. There were 3,533 attacks on refugees and refugee accommodation and welcoming centers across Germany in 2016, according to a recent report by the German Funke Mediengruppe, as reported by DW. These attacks, apparently motivated by anti-immigration sentiment, left 560 people injured, among them 43 of which were underage.

The numbers, which take into account attacks that occurred outside asylum centers as well, show a slight decline from 2015, the year Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the country's borders to any and all refugees and asylum seekers, a policy which has been widely utilized by economic migrants as well as Islamic State militants and other terrorists.

The report also says that an additional 217 NGOs helping immigrants and volunteers were attacked as well.

These figures are preliminary and may be adjusted.

The rise of populist, anti-globalist and nationalist parties on the European continent was well underway even before 2015 as domestic problems were already being disproportionately created by citizens with immigrant backgrounds, though they never posed a direct threat to the European establishments.

The German Chancellor's decision has not affected only her own nation but other EU member states as well, most notably the "entry-point" states, such as France, Great Britain, the Low Countries and the Balkan states. To varying degrees, every EU member state has been affected in different ways but non-EU states, such as Turkey, have had to deal with the massive influx as well.

A study published by the German ROLAND legal expenses insurance group found that 66 percent of the 1,458 citizens responding in the survey feel threatened by terrorist attacks. Some 74 percent of women said they often felt unsafe in open and crowded places, perhaps due to the mass of sexual assaults perpetrated by mainly new arrivals on 2015 New Year's Eve in front of the Cologne Cathedral."A total of 45 percent of respondents feel uneasy when visiting crowded locations like stations, festivals or even in the downtowns."

The survey was conducted in October 2016, before the Daesh's Nice-style truck terrorist attack in a Berlin Christmas market, which left 12 dead. The rampage was Germany's worst attack since the 1980s, but it followed nearly two years of Islamist shootings, axe attacks and suicide bombings.

Even though the anti-immigrant and anti-EU Alternative for Germany was founded in 2013, the new party, led by Frauke Petry, is represented in 10 of Germany's 16 state parliaments. The AfD closed 2016 with polls showing the party with over 15 percent support from the public.

Marine Le Pen's Party, the Front National in France, and Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) in The Netherlands have also enjoyed sharp increases in popularity in the last 6 months and now both candidates pose a direct threat to their more mainstream opposition. Britain's decision to leave the EU last summer was apparently only the beginning of this wave of change seemingly sweeping European establishments.

Another study, published on Feb. 7, by Chatham House (The Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs) shows that most European citizens support a hardline position on immigration, with 55 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement "All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped" while only 20 percent disagreed. The study was conducted in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Britain, Hungary and Poland and had a total of over 10,000 respondents.

This indicates that the majority of Europeans wish for a more hardline immigration policy than even Donald Trump, whose executive order to temporarily restrict travel to and from 7 nations did not affect 87 percent of the world's Muslims.

Right now, the only parties behind this sentiment are the nationalist parties, which is why they pulled off Trump-style victories in 2017 or at least gain unprecedented amounts of popular support.