NEWS
EVENTS
Support of Asylum Seekers Results in Death Threats for Priest
A Catholic priest of Congolese origin has resigned from his parish in Bavaria after receiving multiple death threats and racial abuse.
Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, 66, received death threats and racial abuse both written and verbal when he spoke up in support of asylum seekers in his service.
In addition to one of the messages he got which read, “We’ll send you to Auschwitz” he also had a local resident come up to him and tell him, “We’ll get you.”
The priest left the immediately after he gave his service and a statement was published on the parish website saying, “We are shocked and saddened by these [death] threats.” Ndikimbi-Tshiende has been preaching in Zorneding, Bavaria since 2012.
Tensions had been created between the priest and two local conservative CSU politicians when Ndjimbi-Tshiende criticised the language that was being used by local leader of the CSU, Sylvia Boher in October, describing the many asylum seekers particularly the ones from Eritrea as an “invasion” of “refugees from military service.”
The heavy flow of asylum seekers entering the EU includes many Eritreans that are fleeing mandatory military service in order to avoid years spent in awful conditions for little or no pay.
Although the two politicians resigned from their posts after much criticism for their actions, the arrival of more than a million migrants in Germany over the past year alone has sparked major xenophobia in the region and across Europe this is an issue that is getting worse and worse over time.
