Bavarian Minister of Finance, Markus Soder’s reaction after the terrorist attacks in Paris caused a wave of indignation on Twitter and a large part of the German media. The “young” (47) hope of the Bavarian CSU, used the attack in an unfortunate way in order to score with the right-wing voters.
“Paris changes everything,” he tweeted, and went on with a sentence about stricter controls at German borders. He thereby linked the attacks to refugees, which earned him a spot on German Twitter trends, and criticism from Sunday print media columnists. He doesn’t seem to worry much about that, as his statements in today’s interview with Welt am Sonntag shows, Soder:
“The continent must protect itself better from enemies who will stop at nothing,” Soder said. “The time of uncontrolled immigration and illegal immigration cannot go on like this. Paris changes everything.”
“It can’t be that we don't know who is coming to Germany and what these people are doing here,” he continued. “Not every refugee is an IS terrorist. But to believe that not a single civil war fighter is among the refugees is naïve. France shows that in questions of security, we cannot make any more compromises.”
German Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said today in Berlin that politicians shouldn't "hurry to create a link" between the Paris attacks and the refugee crisis, saying that careless words might raise tensions and worsen attacks on asylum seekers and refugee homes.