The German government has pledged "zero tolerance" of extreme-right violence as newly released statistics show an alarming rise in violent crime against immigrants and foreigners.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, yesterday appealed to all Germans to get involved in the fight against extreme-right and anti-foreigner violence.
"A point has been reached where the usually silent majority of the population can no longer remain silent," he said in a newspaper interview yesterday.
Statistics released on Tuesday show that last June alone, some 129 crimes with extreme-right connections were recorded by police in Germany, 32 more instances than in the same period last year. Of the 144 people investigated for extreme-right crimes that month, only nine were charged.
The new package of measures to curb extreme-right violence will include monitoring extremist websites and shutting them down where possible.
"The Internet is becoming a platform for extreme-right agitating and one shouldn't just watch it and do nothing," Mr Wolfgang Thierse, the president of the German parliament, said.
State and federal ministries for the interior have agreed to co-operate on a national database listing people convicted of neo-Nazi or anti-foreigner offences.
The federal authorities will also take over the prosecution of high-profile extreme-right cases in a move that they hope will deter copycat crimes.
However, the Bavarian Interior Minister, Mr Gunther Beckstein, has called for more action, including an outright ban on the extreme-right German National Democratic Party.
The calls for action against neo-Nazi violence have been mounting since an explosion at a Dusseldorf train station last Thursday which injured 10 immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
A man was arrested yesterday in connection with that attack. A spokesman said the man had been apprehended in the city centre not far from the scene of the explosion.
The 10 victims of the blast were from Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Russia. Most of them were Jewish.
