Who protects the people who are supposed to implement corona measures? The industry association asks this question after the fatal shot at a petrol station employee.
Berlin – After the fatal shot at a seller in Idar-Oberstein, the petrol station interest association accused politicians of leaving employees at petrol stations alone with the implementation of corona measures.
“With the Corona rules, politicians are shifting police tasks onto companies. The petrol station employee becomes a police officer, ”criticized spokesman Herbert Rabl in an interview with“ Welt ”. The members of the association also reported threats of fines from public order offices. So there is a lot of pressure to enforce rules. “The employees are concerned and ask themselves: How are we protected? Who will help us? “
In the meantime, constitutional protection officials are warning of a danger from radicalized “lateral thinkers”. Due to the lack of success on the street, a small part of the protest movement is “now radicalizing itself in the fight against imagined oppression,” said Hamburg’s constitution protection chief Torsten Voss to “Spiegel”.
His Baden-Württemberg counterpart Beate Bube, who at the end of 2020 became the first President of the Constitutional Protection to put parts of the corona denial scene under observation, sees her assessment confirmed. “Many extremist conspiracy myths, as they are also spread by” lateral thinkers “, convey public hostility, anti-Semitism and sometimes also racism,” said Bube to “Spiegel”. Thuringia’s constitution protection president Stephan Kramer said: “The act of Idar-Oberstein did not occur in a vacuum. We have been observing an escalation spiral for months, including calls for murder on social networks. At some point words become deeds. “
The Rhineland-Palatinate Justice Minister Herbert Mertin (FDP) demanded clarity from politicians on the subject of hate crime on the Internet. There are indications that the public groups and channels available at the service provider Telegram are regularly used to influence recipients with conspiracy theories and right-wing extremist ideas. “In the interests of effective and speedy criminal prosecution, clarity must be quickly created as to whether service providers such as Telegram are subject to the requirements of the Network Enforcement Act,” said Mertin. Then they would be obliged to open up opportunities to complain against illegal content and, if necessary, to remove it.
From investigative circles it became known that the 49-year-old perpetrator from Idar-Oberstein was “well versed” in the theories of the corona deniers. “He knows the sources and has also stated that he has made himself smart,” it said. It has not yet been proven whether he radicalized himself in social networks.
The 49-year-old German is accused of having shot a 20-year-old cashier in the head at a gas station in Idar-Oberstein. The young man had previously advised him of the mask requirement. After his arrest, the perpetrator said, according to investigators, that he rejects the corona measures. The German, previously unknown to the police, is in custody on suspicion of murder. The act caused great horror and sympathy nationwide. dpa
