Merkel gets ‘booed’, vows ‘no tolerance’ for xenophobia

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is expected to visit a refugee center on Wednesday, condemned the attack and blamed it on far-right extremists promoting a “disgusting” message of hatred.

The town near Dresden was the scene of violent clashes over the weekend as far-right militants, protesting against the arrival of around 250 refugees at a local shelter, pelted police with bottles and rocks, some shouting “Heil Hitler”.

Attacks against refugees and asylum centers in Germany have increased sharply over the past year.

Police in Hungary have used tear gas to disperse migrants protesting at a reception camp on the Serbian border.

They tried to disperse crowds amid unrest at the centre in Roszke, on the Serbian border. In 2010, she said multiculturalism in Germany had “utterly failed” and that migrants looking to settle in Germany had to do a better job integrating themselves into German communities.

Germany is expecting to receive a record number of 800,000 requests for asylum this year, four times higher than in 2014.

“We are the rabble” the protesters shouted at the chancellor, a refernce to Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel’s Monday condemnation of the weekend violence in Heidenau as instigated by “a rabble”. The centre houses about 600 asylum seekers.

On Wednesday, German President Joachim Gauck has visited a refugee home in Berlin and blasted a “dark Germany” behind the recent series of xenophobic attacks.

“There will be no tolerance of those who question the dignity of other people”, she said in the small eastern town of Heidenau.

Meanwhile, a Swedish rescue crew cut up the deck of a migrant boat north of Libya yesterday to make a grisly discovery in the hull: The corpses of 51 migrants who died making the risky Mediterranean crossing in hopes of reaching Europe.

A majority of Germans (52 percent) believe “Islam doesn’t belong to Germany”, a 2014 survey conducted by the Forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis found. She was jeered by a group of about 50 people when she arrived.

Leaders from the western Balkans – the region that has become one of the main routes into the EU – will attend a summit in Vienna on Thursday joined by Merkel, in a bid to work out a coherent approach to the crisis. Earlier, the government said it was considering deploying troops there too.

The country is already building a 175km (110 mile) fence in a bid to stem the flow of people.

A spokesman for the interior ministry confirmed that under new guidelines, refugees from Syria are now allowed to stay in Germany regardless of which country they entered the EU by.

The European Commission has announced that it is releasing an additional €1.5m in humanitarian funding to Macedonia and Serbia to help cope with the crisis.