Germany is toughening up security laws, in a broader
effort to crack down on terrorism, following a recent spate of deadly attacks.
On Thursday (11 August),
Germany's interior minister Thomas de Maiziere unveiled a raft of anti-terror
proposals.
“I am convinced that
these proposals will increase security quickly," he told reporters in
Berlin.
The new measures include
stripping German citizenship from dual-nationals caught fighting alongside
extremist militant groups abroad.
Any plan to strip
citizenship is likely to meet opposition from the centre-left social democrats
(SPD) and the Greens, German media report.
De Maiziere also aims at
adding more police and surveillance staff, criminalising the promotion of
terrorism, and making it easier to deport migrants who commit crimes.
However, earlier ideas
to slap a ban on full-face veil burqas have been shelved.
Instead, authorities
will be granted access to search the social media accounts of refugees if they
carry no passports or other identity cards.
De Maiziere said people seeking international
protection often have no ID papers, but most often carry smartphones. The
devices are crucial to refugees.
But de Maiziere said
they also contain information that could reveal possible security threats.
“If you want to come to
Germany, we have to make safety checks on you. And to make safety checks, we
will ask you to show us your Facebook contacts from the last few months, which
are public in principle anyway,” said de Maiziere.
Similar mobile device
schemes are already up and running in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the
Netherlands, reports the Guardian newspaper.
He also announced plans
to ease doctor patient confidentiality, a move that drew sharp rebuke from the
German Medical Association.
Meanwhile, any migrant
seen as "endangering public safety" can now be kicked out of the
country.
"In this way, we
will in future increasingly use the instrument of deportation for foreign
criminals and people likely to pose a threat," de Maiziere is quoted as saying in Deutsche Welle.
The proposals, set to
become law before the end of the year, comes in the wake of a knife attack in
Wuerzburg and a suicide bombing in Ansbach last month. Both were claimed by the
Islamic State.
A German-Iranian in
Munich had also gone on a shooting rampage and a Syrian asylum seeker had
stabbed to death a Polish woman in Reutlingen. Neither incident was linked to
Islamic State but have instead spooked a Germany that last year granted asylum
to over one million people.
No comments:
Post a Comment