President Trump is right about immigrant crime being a significant problem in Germany, an analyst said, contrary to news reports that have accused the president of being mistaken.
"There is nothing new about the mainstream media seizing an opportunity to ridicule and discredit the U.S. president," wrote Vijeta Unival, a Germany-based journalist, at the Gatestone Institute.
"However, the issue of mass migration into Europe is bigger than a fresh round of Trump-bashing or finding delicacies for the next news cycle."
Unival wrote, "By shielding Merkel's migrant policy from legitimate scrutiny and criticism, and hushing up a public debate, the mainstream media have become an accessory to the seriously flawed open-door migrant policy pushed by Merkal and the rest of European political elite."
Even the German public broadcaster Südwestrundfunk "admitted that there was a 'correlation between refugee influx and rising crime,'" the analyst wrote.
Trump tweeted: "The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!"
Unival commented: "Predictably, the mainstream media were quick to criticize President Trump for his remarks. 'Trump falsely claimed that crime in Germany is on the rise,' wrote The New York Times. The Washington Post ran a 'fact-checking' story entitled, 'Trump says crime in Germany is way up. German statistics show the opposite.' 'Statistics contradict Trump's remarks,' German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported."
The problem, common of many stories based on statistics, is that there are multiple interpretations.
"According to the narrative peddled by the mainstream media, after a series of horrendous migrant crimes and string of deadly terrorist attacks perpetrated by newly arrived Muslim migrants, towns and cities across Germany were reverting to some sort of idyllic harmony," the analyst said. "All the media reports were based on the 2017 police crime statistics that registered a drop of almost 10 percent in the crime rate over the previous year. Speaking to reporters in May 2018, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer cited the report to assert that 'the number of crimes committed in Germany is the lowest since 1992.'"
While the report concludes that when all crime categories are considered, numbers are down, "in general terms, violent crimes subjected to high fluctuation are above the levels [recorded] between 2013 and 2015."
"Cases of murder. manslaughter, rape and sexual assault have risen measurably. In 2014, for example, a total of 180,955 acts of violence were reported, in previous year they were 188,946."
It's clear that crimes have risen in comparison to the period before the refugee crisis, the report said.
And for 2017, there were 1,100 foreigners charged with murder or manslaughter. There were 1,500 Germans similarly charged.
"These are staggering numbers given the fact that Germany was home to roughly 10 million foreigners as opposed to 70 million German nationals," the analysis found.
"In an article meant as a rebuttal to President Trump's tweets, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 19, 2018, admitted that the police crime report of 2017 showed a rise in homicide and sexual assault across the country. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, while correctly maintaining that the crime report showed an overall drop of 9.6 percent, disclosed that, 'The number of homicides rose by 3.2 percent' and 'the number of sexual assaults had risen as well.'"
Â
Â