Jan 9, 2012
BERLIN // German authorities have announced a plan to place anti-Islamic websites under surveillance because of growing concern that they are becoming more radical and fomenting right-wing violence.
The domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said last week it had set up a working group to assess whether German-language sites such as Politically Incorrect and Nürnberg 2.0, whose stated aim is to oppose the "Islamisation of Europe" are in breach of the constitution.
The attack by Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who killed 77 people in July and posted a "manifesto" on the internet, threw a spotlight on the role played by websites as a forum for spreading hatred of Muslims in Europe.
Right-wing populists and websites condemned Mr Breivik as a crazed loner. But many of the arguments in his 1,500-page declaration matched their own rhetoric, sparking accusations that they have been breeding violence by railing against Muslims.
In Germany, calls for greater scrutiny of the far-right intensified after the revelation in November that a neo-Nazi terrorist cell murdered at least 10 people, eight of them Muslim immigrants of Turkish origin, in a killing spree spanning more than a decade. The case has embarrassed German authorities and exposed them to criticism that they have been blind to the threat posed by racists.
The head of the Hamburg branch of the intelligence agency, Manfred Murck, said there were clear signs that the operators of many anti-Muslim sites "had a disturbed relationship with the democratic rule of law" and often espoused "infringements of human rights protected under our constitution". Read the rest on:
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