A human chain was formed in a German city to denounce an alleged racist incident

Almost a week after a Ghanaian family was involved in a confrontation in a small German town, hundreds of people formed a human chain to call for tolerance and denounce racism.

According to police, around 460 people gathered on Thursday evening in Grevesmühlen, a town in the north of the country with around 10,500 inhabitants. They were connected to each other by colorful ribbons and stood in the Ploggenseering housing estate, where the incident occurred on June 14.

Grevesmühlen’s mayor, Lars Prahler, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Minister of Culture, Bettina Martin, were present at the event.

According to police, a physical altercation occurred last Friday in Grevesmühlen between a group of German youths and a Ghanaian father, in which the man was slightly injured.

He wanted to confront the teenagers after an eleven-year-old allegedly knocked down his eight-year-old daughter.

Racist comments are said to have been made during the altercation. According to the police, charges of assault were also filed against the Ghanaian father.

The case made national headlines because police initially reported that the girl had been kicked in the face and injured. This report was later corrected. The girl was not injured and, according to police, she had not been kicked in the face.

The eleven-year-old had hit the girl with the tip of his foot when he blocked her path with his outstretched leg.

The investigation into this case is still ongoing and even almost a week later it is still not entirely clear what happened between the teenagers and the family.

Local media reported that some of the young people involved in the incident in the Ploggenseering district had recently been excluded from the Grevesmühlen town festival because of xenophobic remarks.

A knife is also said to have played a role in the incident with the Ghanaian family. As the Ostsee-Zeitung reported, a video of the altercation shows a young man being held by his peers while others in the background shout: “He has a knife!”

A spokesman for the Schwerin public prosecutor’s office told the German Press Agency on Thursday that investigators were still evaluating photos and videos from the crime scene. They were primarily interested in the question of whether a dangerous object played a role.

A human chain was also formed around Schwerin Cathedral on Thursday evening. State Justice Minister Jacqueline Bernhardt and the Catholic Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Heße, also took part.