22/12/2014- There’s little to break the monotony of Communist-era apartment blocks stretching across Marzahn-Hellersdorf, an east Berlin satellite district that has gained national notoriety for a spate of anti-foreigner protests. Week after week, hundreds of residents here have angrily rallied against plans for a new centre to house refugees seeking asylum on a stretch of parkland now ringed by cyclone fence and watched by security guards. As Germany confronts a rise in far-right populism, with “anti-Islamisation” marches drawing thousands in the eastern city of Dresden, this bland corner of the sprawling capital, a district home to almost 300,000 people, has become another flashpoint of resentment and xenophobia.
“I have nothing against foreigners, I’ve been around them all my life,” said Fritz Siebke, 91, enjoying a Christmas season banquet of meat rolls, potato dumplings and gravy with fellow German pensioners at a district community centre. “But since we’ve accepted refugees into Marzahn-Hellersdorf, things have changed in the neighbourhood. My gardening tools were stolen from right outside my house. In the past, that wouldn’t have happened.” Christa Timm a fellow retiree who has lived here “for half-a-century,” since the days when a Marxist-Leninist regime was in charge — grumbled that “it would have been good if the authorities had informed us properly.”
At first glance little has changed in Marzahn since the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago the few splashes of colour amid the prefab walls of 1970s-era architecture are mostly discount supermarkets and the yellow trams leading to the city. With one in five residents unemployed and the area suffering neglect, the drab district is a world away from Berlin’s more cosmopolitan and diverse centre and, analysts say, fertile ground for the far-right protests. “Just look at the decay of our roads, our schools,” argued Manfred Rouhs, head of the far-right Pro Deutschland (For Germany) party, which has helped organise protests venting anger at the entire political class, as well as the mainstream media. “It’s normal that people demand their problems be addressed before they host economic refugees,” he told AFP in his office, seated before a black-red-gold German flag and a poster calling for “more education and less immigration”.
Marzahn district mayor Stefan Komoss, a centre-left social democrat, said he understood the concerns of many residents, but argued that “if we had to wait for budget surpluses before we dealt with the asylum issue, we wouldn’t be doing anything at all.” He insisted his local administration had used “all the available channels of information” to gain acceptance for the new asylum centre. “Those who still complain of not being informed are merely saying, in a roundabout way, that they are against the arrival of refugees in their neighbourhood.”