Germany For Germans?

"Ethnic cleansing," it appears, plagues not just the Balkans but the Baltic as well. In a hail of rocks and Molotov cocktails, skinheads and neo-Nazis in the eastern German port of Rostock tried to storm an apartment block housing 200 asylum-seeking Romanian Gypsies, beginning an ugly battle that would last all week. After officials moved the Gypsies, the hooligans trapped 100 Vietnamese guest workers in a neighboring building and set it ablaze. By luck alone, none of the inhabitants was seriously hurt.

Even after the Vietnamese decamped, skinheads fought nightly battles with the police. Local officials sought to excuse the inept handling of the riots by blaming an influx of rightists from Berlin and Hamburg. But local residents didn't help matters much. Crowds of Rostockers let the rock throwers disappear into their midst when chased by police, cheering on the skinheads and screaming "Germany for the Germans!" Hundreds of rioters were arrested, and hundreds of police were injured in the fighting.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl deplored the mayhem as "a disgrace for our nation," but it is far from unusual. Violent right-wing incidents -- mostly against foreigners -- jumped almost sevenfold last year to nearly 1,500, a recent federal report found.

Even as they denounced the violence, Bonn officials used the occasion to urge once more the adoption of a constitutional amendment that would curtail Germany's liberal provisions for asylum. Germany continues to bear the brunt of Europe's population upheaval, taking in 256,000 asylum seekers last year -- a number that may double this year. But Kohl's Christian Democrats could soon get their wish. Leaders of the rival Social Democrats, whose support is essential for such an amendment, coincidentally abandoned their opposition only hours before the Rostock riots began.