INTERVIEW - "The German perpetrators have names like Ali, Ahmed, Mohammed" – Frank Urbaniok on attacks on paramedics, insults in swimming pools and racists in the police force

Mr. Urbaniok, violence has been a major issue this summer. Guests are being turned away from swimming pools for harassing women and attacking guests or staff. Young people are attacking the police, and there are almost daily reports of knife attacks from European countries. Are we seeing an increase in violence in public spaces?

There's clearly an increase in certain areas. We didn't have to protect Christmas markets from terrorists in the past. There's a dramatic increase in knife crime, as German statistics, among others, show. I just spoke with a journalist from Leipzig. In Saxony's two largest cities alone, Leipzig and Dresden, there were almost 600 knife attacks last year, more than ever before, committed primarily by the foreign population. Phenomena that were rarely seen before are occurring everywhere, whether in swimming pools or in healthcare.

You mean attacks on healthcare workers?

Two years ago, I attended a conference of the professional associations, a large organization that runs hospitals themselves and represents nurses, home care services, as well as police officers, firefighters, and employees from various departments. The focus was no longer primarily on how to protect yourself from accidents at work, with helmets, safety goggles, and the like. No, the main topic for these professionals was their "customers" – those who threaten, harass, and attack them. The police have been familiar with this for a long time. But that now firefighters and paramedics are also being called out on an incident and then sometimes attacked by entire families? That was an eye-opener for me.

In your recently published book “The Shadow Side of Migration,” you claim that these phenomena are largely linked to migration from certain countries.

This picture emerges when you break down statistics from Switzerland, Germany, and Austria by nationality and by offense, such as serious violence and sexual offenses. Then you see: It's not the case that migration per se causes problems. Asian countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia actually have lower crime rates than the native population. On the other hand, there are countries of origin that appear three, five, eight, or even ten times more frequently in serious crimes.

Does this finding also apply to Switzerland?

These figures are more or less consistent in all three countries I examined. The same picture emerges in the welfare receipt rates. People from countries with high crime rates also disproportionately receive welfare. In Switzerland, certain immigrant groups, such as refugees from African or Arab countries, have significantly higher welfare receipt rates. In Germany, almost 50 percent of citizens' allowance recipients are foreigners who have never paid into the system. This is a strong indicator of an inability or unwillingness to integrate.

You identify North Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, and the Balkans as problem regions. Aren't immigrants from these areas also often traumatized or difficult to integrate due to a lack of education?

Of course, there are traumatized individuals who can't immediately re-enter the job market. But the rates I mentioned cannot be explained by trauma. There are women among them who don't work for cultural reasons. And we have people who don't want to work and organize themselves in parallel structures.

In some European countries, this problem is acute. In Sweden, it manifests itself in gang wars, in France in acts of destruction after football matches, and in Belgium in Islamic parallel societies. Why is Switzerland spared such excesses?

These fault lines can be seen across Europe, albeit in varying degrees. In Germany, we see rampant knife crime in public spaces and the clans that sometimes control entire neighborhoods in major cities. In Sweden, where people long said that integration was going well, the situation with youth drug gangs has gotten completely out of control. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the per capita murder rate in Stockholm is 30 times higher than in London. Switzerland is in an even better position at the moment; there are hardly any large-scale parallel cultures. It certainly helps us that we don't have the same concentrations of refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries as Germany, for example. There is also no city of over a million inhabitants where entire neighborhoods are becoming isolated. These are all factors that benefit Switzerland. But the trend is the same; we are simply lagging behind by a few years.

The good old swimming pool has also emerged as a new hotspot in Switzerland. The small town of Porrentruy in the Jura region no longer allows access to foreigners who don't live or work in Switzerland due to harassment and abuse. Is Porrentruy demonstrating on a small scale what you call for in your book: no longer allowing entry to citizens of countries whose citizens cause excessive trouble?

We need to ask ourselves the following questions: Who is coming into the country? And how do we deal with those who are in the country? How do we respond to a lack of integration? We have countries that are massively overrepresented in crime statistics. At the same time, however, this knowledge plays no role in today's migration policy. That cannot be right.

According to this logic, even Afghan families who abide by the law should no longer be granted asylum in Switzerland because some of their compatriots are criminals. That's collective punishment.

With every measure, there are people who are affected through no fault of their own. But this risk must be put in relation to the good we want to protect. In the case of the swimming pool: that guests who behave normally can go to the pool without being insulted, sexually harassed, or physically attacked. This need is just as legitimate, but it is often barely discussed. Of course, one must ask whether a measure is proportionate. And one should try to differentiate among the group of those excluded so that not too many harmless bathers are disadvantaged. Today, we are setting the wrong priorities. We simply accept that violent offenders come in. But it is unacceptable when we have groups that cause many times more victims. Incidentally, we should also think carefully about who we grant citizenship.

For what reason?

An example from a major German city: A high-ranking police officer confided in me that his men felt like strangers in a foreign country when they went to certain neighborhoods. His unit is responsible for serious violent offenders, all of whom have committed 20, 30, or even well over 100 offenses. Often, they include multiple sexual offenses, because that's part of a gangster identity. They commit robberies, they beat people up, and they assault women. Of these, he told me, 50 percent are German and 50 percent are foreign. The Germans have names like Ali, Ahmed, and Mohammed.

You say violence has cultural roots. But violence was long accepted in Western countries as well; there were attacks on homosexuals, and corporal punishment was used in schools. To this day, Swiss men kill their wives and children because they feel insulted. Isn't it too easy to distinguish between peaceful and violent cultures?

I don't find Swiss criminals any more sympathetic than others. But we already have our hands full with them. And it's a fact that the Swiss commit one-tenth as many murders as other nationalities. It's obvious that this is related to cultural influences. I've dealt with these people almost daily for over thirty years. Fathers, for example, who ordered a murder because their daughter had the "wrong" boyfriend. It's perfectly clear that it has an impact on the crime rate when people come from a region where there is no separation of church and state. Where many more people have fundamentalist ideas. Yes, we too have been arguing over religion for centuries, and it's been a long road to resolving these conflicts. But one shouldn't think that someone from a country with a fundamentalist religion will change their mindset just because they become a citizen or because a social worker has spoken to them.

In Lausanne, youths recently rioted after a 17-year-old was chased by police and killed. The youth was Black, and some accuse the police of racism. This is especially true since it was revealed that Lausanne police officers had been exchanging racist remarks in a chat group for years. Are the police contributing to the disintegration of foreigners?

Such cases must be thoroughly investigated, including whether racism played a role. I don't know the Lausanne environment well enough to judge that. Extremists have no place in the police force. However, if stupid remarks are made in a chat, that doesn't automatically mean that everyone in that chat is a hardcore right-wing extremist. Maybe it's just a few hotheads letting off steam. That, too, needs to be investigated. What bothers me is this imbalance in the debate.

What do you mean by that?

When you cite figures that show that certain foreign groups are massively overrepresented in crime statistics, they say it's not a problem at all, the perpetrators are just disadvantaged, there are also knife attackers named Uwe, and the usual litany. On the other hand, when accusations of racism are raised, the media reacts with incredible receptivity and a reflex to exaggerate the problem. This inflationary spread of accusations of racism triggers a defensive reflex in a large segment of the population, which is completely unhealthy.

There were almost 50 police officers in the Lausanne chat group, but apparently no one intervened. Can you understand why this might arouse feelings of discrimination and anger at the state among young people who are often stopped by police simply because they are Black?

Yes, I understand that's a problem. But there are different ways to react to it. You can almost accept it gratefully and legitimize your anger at the state. But I can also see it this way: If I know that Africans are heavily represented in the drug trade, I can also have a certain understanding of why I'm being stopped. The police often check people based on past experience, not on racist criteria. I don't rule out the possibility that "foreign"-looking people are reported more often in minor offenses. However, when it comes to serious violent and sexual crime, this no longer plays a significant role, because such offenses must be prosecuted by the state. Racism has become a buzzword that's used at any time. Even by rowdy bathers who are reprimanded by staff.

In your role as a forensic psychiatrist, have you encountered violent police officers? How many have a problem with violence and choose this profession so they can strike?

I've seen maybe a handful of such police officers. That's a small number, and they hadn't committed any offenses while on duty. But of course, there can always be such people; hierarchically organized groups are attractive to people with a certain front-line mentality. But I don't see this as a structural problem; a lot is done in training to sensitize people to racism. The vast majority of police officers behave correctly.

Your book on migration-related violence has caused quite a stir. Do you imagine that the propensity to violence will decline again in the coming years?

I'm pessimistic about that. There's no discernible cultural awakening in the countries of origin. Quite the opposite; many at-risk countries are moving toward fundamentalism. What's more, and we unfortunately know this from our own history, a propensity for violence, whether religiously or culturally motivated, is persistent and long-lasting. We see this very clearly in Sweden, where the issue of violence is even more pronounced among the second or third generation of immigrants. They idealize the traditions of their countries of origin and react disparagingly to Western culture, which they see as effeminate. They demonstratively demonstrate their strength and toughness. So we shouldn't hope that this will go away.