BERLIN, May 10 (Xinhua) -- The number of politically motivated crimes in Germany continued to rise significantly by more than 23 percent to over 55,000 offenses in 2021, the Ministry of the Interior (BMI) said on Tuesday.
It was the highest figure since the data series was introduced in 2001, it added. The number of politically motivated violent offenses also increased by 16 percent to almost 3,900.
Crimes that could not be clearly labeled as right-wing or left-wing accounted for almost 40 percent of all politically motivated crimes, according to the BMI.
This showed that the crimes' backgrounds became "more diffuse and more diverse," a statement from BMI said. A significant number of these offenses were in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 federal elections.
"Politically motivated crime is an indicator of the intensity of social conflicts," commented Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser. "We registered a very high number of crimes in 2021 in the course of the coronavirus protests."
Forty-one percent of the victims of politically motivated violence in Germany were attacked by right-wing extremists. The minister called right-wing extremism "the greatest extremist threat to our democracy and the greatest extremist danger to people in our country." ■