The Michigan Daily - Monday, November 23, 1992- Page 7
Neo-Nazis, leftists clash
in streets of Germany
BERLIN (AP) - Swinging
baseball bats and setting fires, leftist
radicals have suddenly seized a star-
ring role in Germany's running saga
of brutal neo-Nazis and beleaguered
foreigners.
During the weekend, leftist and
rightist gangs dueled with knives,
baseball bats, flare guns and rocks in
at least five German towns, while
rightists assaulted foreigners in sev-
eral others.
One man was killed, more than a
dozen seriously hurt and 25 arrested
during melees that included subway
knifings, a street rumble, two bar
brawls, the siege of a leftist com-
mune and random attacks on un-
lucky passersby and their cars.
Neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners
have risen since 1990, the year
Germany reunited. But there has
been a recent increase in violent
counter-assaults by Germany's vet-
eran leftist groups, who proclaim
themselves friends of foreigners.
Leftists disrupted an anti-racism
rally that drew 500,000 people in
Berlin on Nov. 8 by throwing eggs at
Chancellor Helmut Kohl and
President Richard von Weizsaecker.
The leader of Kohl's parliamen-
tary faction, Christian Democrat
Juergen Ruttgers, said new evidence
indicates leftists and rightists are
increasingly mobilizing for show-
downs with each other.
"The belief that available laws
are adequate is a flight from reality,"
he wrote in Sunday's Frankfurter
Allgemeine newspaper.
To fight rightist violence, the
government has focused on ways to
toughen the liberal asylum law that
has allowed a record number of for-
eigners into the country.
Conservatives blame the influx
for igniting right-wing hate attacks;
liberals say blaming foreigners just
encourages the neo-Nazis.
Reflecting government helpless-
ness, Germany's top justice official
suggested a vague "people's initia-
tive" - a sort of nonbinding refer-
Conservatives blame
the influx for igniting
right-wing hate
attacks; liberals say
blaming foreigners
just encourages the
neo-Nazis.
endum - asking citizens what law-
makers should do.
"A people's initiative means
Parliament must concern itself with
the public's ideas and legal recom-
mendations," Justice Minister Sabine
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told
the magazine Bunte on Sunday. She
said such a measure would eliminate
lawmakers' foot-dragging.
The image of rightist and leftist
thugs brawling in the streets has
prompted some commentators to
compare Germany's befuddled
government to the doomed Weimar
Republic, the post-World War I
democracy that collapsed amid street
chaos that Adolf Hitler rode to
power.
That might strike some as an ex-
treme comparison, but there's no
doubt tensions - and violence -
are escalating.
More than 2,000 leftists marched
through Berlin yesterday to de-
nounce the stabbing death of a 27-
year-old compatriot during a fight
between neo-Nazis and anarchists
late Friday night in an east Berlin
subway station. Police said they
made an unspecified number of ar-
rests on weapons charges during the
otherwise peaceful march.
Two other leftists remained hos-
pitalized with stab wounds sustained
during the fight, which was followed
hours later by a riot by 150 leftists
who pelted police with rocks and set
garbage containers on fire.
That was only part of a larger
picture of violence. Since sunset
Friday through yesterday:
In Brandenburg, skinheads and
leftists rumbled in the streets. Police
arrested 13 people and seized starter
guns, baseball bats and knives. A 21-
year-old skinhead was hospitalized
with a mangled eye and other facial
wounds. A 22-year-old leftist suf-
fered a punctured lung.
Twenty rightists fired flare
guns and smashed windows of a
leftist squatters' community in the
eastern town of Rathenow;
In the eastern city of
Rudolstadt, masked leftists beat a
rightist with a baseball bat;
About 25 masked leftists
stormed a bar frequented by neo-
Nazis in the eastern city of Erfurt
and pounded the patrons with base-
ball bats. Four people were hurt, one
arrested; and,
Police said leftists detonateda
bomb inside the Hamburg University
law school, seriously damaging three
floors.
Somali children eat lunch at a feeding center in Mogadishu yesterday. Two clan warlords are preventing ships
loaded with donated food from entering Mogadishu's port, so the International Committee of the Red Cross is
cutting the number of meals it serves and reducing each meal from 1,200 calories to 600 calories.
Regional warlords occupy
ports, block aid to Somalia
Yugoslavian cease-fire
fails under bombardment
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP)
- Ladan Mohammed Nur, blind
and pregnant, nearly burst into
tears yesterday when the relief
agency that saved her life six
months ago began serving her
only one meal a day.
The 19-year-old woman is one
of a half-million hungry Somalis
in Mogadishu who depends on the
International Committee of the
Red Cross for her survival.
Saturday, U.N. officials failed
to persuade Mohammed Ali
Mahdi, the warlord who controls
northern Mogadishu, and Gen.
Mohammed Farah Aidid, the clan
leader in the capital's south, to
open the port to relief ships.
The Red Cross said it was
forced not only to cut the number
of meals it serves each day from
two to one, but to slice the calories
of each meal from 1,200 to 600.
For more than a week, a Red
Cross ship carrying 12,000 tons of
food, a World Food Program
vessel with 10,000 tons and a ship
carrying supplies for the U.N.
troops have been waiting to enter
the port.
"There was enough food in the
pipeline, but we just can't bring it
in," Red Cross spokesman Horst
Hamborg said yesterday.
At least 300,000 Somalis have
been killed by the fighting and
'If you have a 16-year-
old kid ... sticking an
AK-47 up your nose,
you cannot return fire
or defend yourself
until your head is
blown off.'
- Stephen Tomlin
director, International
Medical Corps
famine, and another 2 million
Somalis are in danger of
starvation.
In the southern city of
Kifmayu, clan leaders also have
blocked relief ships from using
that port, forcing the Red Cross to
feed people only once a day.
Somalia descended into chaos
after clan warfare broke out in
January 1991.
Relief agencies have helped
Somalis survive the violence and
the drought, and 500 U.N. soldiers
deployed in Mogadishu have taken
control of the airport, a main
conduit for relief supplies.
But peacekeepers cannot
prevent clansmen from blocking
the port, attacking truck convoys
of food and threatening the lives
of relief workers.
Stephen Tomlin of London, the
director of the International
Medical Corps, said U.N. soldiers
should be allowed freer use of
their weapons.
"Now U.N. soldiers can only
fire back," he said Sunday. "So if
you have a 16-year-old kid
wearing an I AM THE BOSS T-
shirt sticking an AK-47 up your
nose, you cannot return fire or
defend yourself until your head is
blown off.
"And we have people sticking
guns up our noses all the time.
When we deal with the local
authorities, one of the implied
threats is always they will let
gunmen loose on us."
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - A once-
promising cease-fire virtually collapsed yesterday in the
heaviest artillery bombardment of Sarajevo since the
truce went into effect 10 days ago.
Bosnian authorities also accused Serb forces of de-
ploying Scud missiles in positions that threaten two
northern towns. A Serb military spokesperson denied
the allegation.
U.N. peacekeeping troops from Britain moved yes-
terday to protect U.N. relief warehouses in Travnik, a
town 45 miles northwest of Sarajevo that is clogged
with refugees fleeing approaching Serb forces.
NATO warships began stopping and searching ves-
sels entering Yugoslav territorial waters in line with a
U.N. decision Friday to toughen economic sanctions
against Yugoslavia, which now consists of Serbia and
Montenegro.
The NATO ships include five destroyers from Italy,
Germany, Greece, Turkey and Britain, plus a Dutch and
an American frigate, the USS Halyburton.
The NATO and European forces have been monitor-
ing the embargo in the Adriatic since July, but they
have not had the authority to stop and board ships. Most
materials reaching Yugoslavia have come overland or
along the Danube river.
The embargo was imposed in May to punish Serbia
for fomenting the Bosnian war, which erupted after the
republic's majority Muslims and Croats voted in
February for independence from Yugoslavia. More than
14,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Serb rebels have since captured more than 70 per-
cent of the republic, and Croat forces hold much of the
rest. The Muslims hold Sarajevo and little else.
A U.N.-brokered cease-fire that went into effect in
Bosnia on Nov. 12 had been violated in some areas of
the republic but had brought the capital, Sarajevo, one
of its quietest interludes in an 8-month-old siege by
Serb militias.
On yesterday, however, artillery shelling struck nu-
merous areas of the capital. U.N. peacekeepers said
eight rounds landed near the Bosnian presidency build-
ing. Other details were not immediately available.
Bosnia's Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, ap-
pealed to the United Nations to halt the alleged Serb
NATO warships began stopping
and searching vessels entering
Yugoslav territorial waters in line
with a U.N. decision Friday to
toughen economic sanctions
against Yugoslavia.
missile deployments. He accused the Serbs of using
continuing peace talks as a cover for reorganizing their
forces.
A senior Bosnian army officer, who spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity, claimed as many as 12 Scud surface-
to-surface missiles were moved out of the Serb-con-
trolled northwestern city of Banja Luka in a convoy on
Wednesday.
Maj. Milan Pantovic, an information officer reached
by telephone at the Bosnian Serb air force command in
Banja Luka, denied the existence of Scud missiles in
Bosnia.
The Scud is a Soviet-designed tactical missile with a
range of about 175 miles.
Water leak draws fire
fighters to 611 Church,
but does little damage
by Nate Hurley
Daily Staff Reporter
People in the 611 Church Street
building were given quite a scare last
night as water began to pour out
onto the main floor lobby of the
building.
The incident began between 7
and 7:30 p.m. last night on the sec-
ond floor of the building.
"The water drain valve was
turned on intentionally in the second
floor hallway. The water pressure
lowered and water drained into the
electrical closet," said Ann Arbor
Police Officer Laura Hobson.
Firefighter John Schnur said he
and his team located the open valve
people into the building until the fire
department made sure there was no
danger. A small crowd of about 20
people gathered outside the building,
but dispersed quickly once the fire-
fighters left.
The only visible damage was
one-fourth to one-half inch of water
on the ground floor. Hobson said she
'The water drain valve
was turned on ... The
water pressure lowered
and water drained into
the electrical closet.'
- Laura Hobson
Seven die
in French
ski resort
avalanche
VAL THORENS, France (AP)
Two British students and an
Australian classmate were among
the seven skiers killed in an
avalanche at the Val Thorens ski re-
sort, police said yesterday.
They were swept away Saturday
by the snowslide. Police were inves-
tigating whether the avalanche was
an accident of nature or caused by
someone skiing off marked trails.
The resort, a site of the men's
slalom competition at the Winter
Olvmnics in Fernarv. was clned
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