Solingen arson attack of 1993
| 1993 Solingen arson attack | |
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Demonstration of Germans and Turks in front of the arson house
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 Solingen
Solingen (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Solingen
Solingen (Germany)
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| Location | Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany |
| Coordinates | 51°11′2.5″N 7°5′23.7″E / 51.184028°N 7.089917°ECoordinates: 51°11′2.5″N 7°5′23.7″E / 51.184028°N 7.089917°E |
| Date | May 28, 1993 (UTC+1) |
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Attack type
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Arson |
| Deaths | 5 |
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Non-fatal injuries
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14 |
| Perpetrators | four Neo-Nazi skinheads |
| Motive | Anti-immigration |
The Solingen arson attack was one of the most severe instances of xenophobic violence in modern Germany. On the night of May 28 to May 29, 1993, four young German men (ages 16-23) belonging to the far right skinhead scene, with neo-Nazi ties, set fire to the house of a large Turkish family in Solingen in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Three girls and two women died; fourteen other family members, including several children, were injured, some of them severely. The attack led to violent protests by Turks in several German cities and to large demonstrations of Germans expressing solidarity with the Turkish victims. In October 1995, the perpetrators were convicted of arson and murder and given prison sentences between 10 and 15 years. The convictions were upheld on appeal.
In the early 1990s after German reunification, the topic of foreigners, and especially of asylum seekers, was hotly debated in Germany. The CDU party and the tabloid newspaper Bild Zeitung were main forces calling for limiting their numbers.
Several instances of anti-foreigner (xenophobic) violence preceded the Solingen attack. In December 1988, a German ultra right militant named Josef Seller set fire to the "Habermeier Haus" building in Schwandorf, Bavaria killing the Turkish couple Fatma and Osman Can, together with their son Mehmet; the arson attack also took the life of German citizen Jürgen Hübner. In September 1991, violent disturbances in Hoyerswerda forced the evacuation of an asylum seeker's hostel. During the three-day in August 1992, several thousand people surrounded a high-rise building and watched approvingly while militants threw Molotov cocktails; the Vietnamese inhabitants barely managed to survive by fleeing to the roof. In November 1992, an arson in Mölln perpetrated by right-wing youth killed three Turks.
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Wikipedia