In the past few days, tens of thousands in over 100 cities have protested and paid tribute to the nine young people with a migrant background who were shot dead by the German racist Tobias Rathjen five years ago, on 19 February 2020.

The slogan “Say Their Names” has since been used to honour the memory of Kaloyan Velkov, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Sedat Gürbüz, Vili Viorel Păun, Gökhan Gültekin, Mercedes Kierpacz, Ferhat Unvar, Hamza Kurtović and Said Nesar Hashemi.

On the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack in Hanau, the relatives of the victims have drawn a bitter balance sheet. In February 2021, just one year after the nine murders, the chain of failures on the part of the police and authorities was already evident: a police call centre that could not be reached on the night of the crime, a locked emergency exit, a perpetrator who was able to legally possess several weapons despite having a known psychosis. All of these failures were compounded by the state authorities’ open disregard for the relatives, who were isolated from the victims and only allowed to see their dead loved ones days later, after they had undergone an autopsy without the permission of the families.

The fifth anniversary comes shortly before the German federal election, where the main parties have unleashed a campaign of unprecedented agitation against refugees and migrants, even though hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets across Germany against the general shift to the right and the elevation of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In the US, Trump has come to power with an unprecedented xenophobic programme, and here in Germany, leading politicians are outdoing each other in warmongering, demanding rearmament and “deportations on a grand scale” (Chancellor Olaf Scholz).

At the weekend, the candidates for chancellor in the so-called “Quadrell” (Foursome) indulged in vile agitation against refugees in the style of the AfD. At a state level, the Greens, Social Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Union politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and elsewhere are boasting that they are organising deportations to Afghanistan. Political speeches directed against Muslims and those with a migrant background are being made across the country.

In this heated climate, it is no wonder that right-wing violence is at the highest levels since the Nazis and far-right offences are exploding. It is a direct consequence of the right-wing incitement from above. Even Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) and Hesse’s Minister President Boris Rhein (CDU), who cynically shed their crocodile tears on the market square in Hanau on 19 February, cannot hide this fact.

For the relatives of those shot dead on 19 February 2020, this state of affairs is almost unbearable. They spoke at their own commemoration on Saturday 15 February and soberly took stock and with disillusionment in view of the official hypocrisy. Looking ahead to the election on Sunday, Çetin Gültekin, brother of the murdered Gökhan Gültekin, said: “We all know that the next few years will be difficult. Racist agitation seems more normal than ever. When we look back over the past five years, we have to be honest: we have not managed to repel racism and the shift to the right in society as a whole.”

Over the past five years, the relatives and their supporters have organised and initiated hundreds of rallies, demonstrations, events, vigils and initiatives. However, their motto: “To remember is to change,” has so far remained unfulfilled. Their questions have not been answered.

The initiative Forensic Architecture, for example, reconstructed the scene of the Arena Bar crime in order to clarify the course of events and the effects of the emergency exit presumably closed at the initiative of the local police, making clear that several victims could still be alive if this door had been open.

Only recently, Niculescu Păun, the father of the murdered Vili Viorel Păun, filed another complaint against senior Hessian police officers. The reason: when Vili Viorel, a courier driver, tried to alert the police several times on the night of the crime, the emergency call in Hanau did not work. Vili Viorel bravely pursued the perpetrator to a second crime scene in Hanau-Kesselstadt, dialling the police several times without success. Shortly afterwards, he himself was shot dead in his car by the gunman.

Those responsible in the police force and in the Hessian government have not been called to account. On the contrary they have been promoted to higher positions. To this day, there have been no official consequences from the attack. “We have achieved nothing, nothing at all at this level. All criminal proceedings were dropped in no time at all,” is the bitter conclusion of Gökhan’s brother Çetin Gültekin (author of the book Born, Raised and Murdered in Germany).

It was only thanks to the initiative of the bereaved that a committee of inquiry in the Hessian state parliament was established to investigate the attack. The committee found “omissions, mishaps and mistakes,” but those responsible were nevertheless promoted.

Newroz Duman from the Initiative 19 February told Hessischer Rundfunk radio: “It’s frustrating. This feeling: It’s all been proven, it’s all there. You saw it in black and white in the committee of inquiry. Why is nothing happening? ... Law and justice are not the same thing in this country.”

Çetin Gültekin continued at the Hanau memorial service on Saturday: “But we also want and need to ask ourselves: what have we achieved in these five years, and what we have not ... The AfD assisted in the shooting on 19 February 2020; the perpetrator was influenced and incited by AfD racists. We emphasised this again and again after the attack. In 2021, the AfD was at around 10 percent at federal level. Less than four years later, now on 23 February 2025, this far-right party will in all likelihood enter the Bundestag with over 20 percent. How can that be?”

He pointed out that the CDU and Free Democratic Party had made common cause with the AfD in the Bundestag and voted in favour of “even tougher measures against refugees and immigrants.” In fact, all of the parties, including the SPD and the Greens, supported this policy, thereby strengthening the fascists. Çetin Gültekin warned that five years after Hanau, “Right-wing extremists and racists are not only on the rise in the US, Italy and Hungary, but also in Germany. I ask myself: How is this possible? What have we done wrong?”

Said Etris Hashemi, the brother of Said Nesar Hashemi, who was shot dead on 19 February, told Hessischer Rundfunk: “A lot has happened in the last five years, but at the same time little has changed.” Said Etris himself was seriously wounded and barely survived the attack.

In his book The Day I Was Supposed to Die, Said Etris Hashemi vividly described the atmosphere that prevailed in the working class suburb of Hanau-Kesselstadt, where he grew up, in which “each block ... was its own little Noah’s Ark” that “housed all kinds of nations,” and he concluded: “[W]hat united us was our poverty, whether in the ‘Kackhaus’ [a brown block with mainly German residents] or in the Afghan block. And perhaps it was more the poverty that made Kesselstadt a hotspot and an enemy of the authorities, not the fact that we were ‘foreigners’.”

Many in Hanau emphasised that they were not only concerned about their relatives, but also about the victims of racist attacks in Mölln, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Solingen, Dessau, Cologne, Duisburg, Dortmund, Celle, Kleve, Kassel, Halle, Munich and elsewhere. Emiş Gürbüz, who spoke at the memorial service about her son Sedat Gürbüz, one of those murdered in cold blood on 19 February 2020, reported that Sedat himself “never sorted people out according to nationality. He always said: ‘They are all my brothers’.”