Civil courage

A tragic drama that took place over the weekend in Munich appears likely to become a campaign topic in upcoming parliamentary elections. It has fired up simmering debates over juvenile justice, as well as moral decay and civil courage in Germany.

On Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12, a businessman riding a local tram stepped in to protect a group of four young teenagers from three youths, 17 and 18 years old, who were harassing the youngsters for money.

The 50-year-old man called the police from his cell phone, and offered the four, aged 13 to 15, to accompany them off the tram at his end destination, the wealthy Munich neighborhood of Solln.

Reminiscent of earlier attack

After they got off the tram, however, the older teens continued to harass the younger ones. The good Samaritan tried to intercede, and the two young men attacked him, punching and kicking him until he was unconscious on the tram platform. According to police, he died in the hospital a few hours later.

The attackers have been taken into custody, and prosecutors have said they will likely be charged with murder. The 18-year-old offender, who was drunk at the time of the crime, has a previous record of assault and battery, theft and extortionate theft.

The story has shocked Munich and the rest of the country, and recalls a similar attack in late 2007, when a retiree was nearly beaten to death by two youths in a subway station. That attack became a topic in the then-hotly-contested parliamentary election in the state of Hesse, with the focus on social decline and the fact that the attackers in that case had migrant backgrounds.

Crime, juvenile justice on election agenda

In contrast to the 2007 attack, however, the offenders in Saturday's deadly beating are both Germans born in Munich, noted Munich prosecutor Laurent Lafleur. Still, the Christian Socialist Union, the Bavarian sister party to Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, appears ready to make the case a campaign issue. They have used it to call for stricter juvenile sentencing and increased public video surveillance.

On Monday, Bavarian Premier Horst Seehofer said the case should lead politicians to think about how to better combat crime, and that no subject should be considered taboo.

Meanwhile, Bavaria's conservative Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann called for the maximum penalty for juveniles to be raised, from 10 to 15 years imprisonment. The state's justice minister, Beate Merk, also of the CSU, said 18 to 21 year olds should be sentenced as adults. Currently in Germany, offenders that age can also be sentenced according to milder juvenile sentencing guidelines.

Horrible consequences for civil courage?

Conservative parliamentarian Peter Ramsauer also joined the debate. He accused Social Democrats of having blocked stricter juvenile sentencing rules and said the Social Democrats had failed "to do the least thing" to combat juvenile crime.

In response, a spokeswoman for Germany's Minister of Justice, Brigitte Zypries, who is a Social Democrat, dismissed the CSU demands. Despite recent events there is no need to change the law since, indeed, judges can already sentence 18 to 21 year-olds as adults, she pointed out.

And SPD lawmaker Dieter Wiefelspuetz complained to the Rheinische Post newspaper that the CSU had shown a "unique brand of irresponsiblity" by making policy recommendations just hours after such a horrible event.

Meanwhile, police are concerned that the case could mean that people who witness crimes or dangerous situations in the future will be afraid to speak out, with potentially damaging consequences for law enforcement and the overall social fabric.

The investigators in the case say they are worried about the signal sent on crime prevention. The victim behaved exactly as he should have, police agreed. He got involved, wasn't aggressive, and called the police - but he died anyway.

Police spokesman Wolfgang Wenger told AFP news service: "The worst thing that could happen is that the message that comes out of this is: 'Don't get involved.' "

jen/dpa/AFP
Editor: Nancy Isenson