A/49/677 English Page 15 64. In 1993, 783 acts of violence in which xenophobia was the confirmed or probable motive were recorded. Despite the considerable drop in the number of offences after September 1992, there was an increase of nearly 200 acts of violence over the same period for the previous year. 28/ 65. On 9 October 1994, in the city of Magdeburg, five skinheads attacked four African asylum-seekers. During the assault one African sustained knife wounds after being attacked with a broken beer bottle. The attackers got away. In Berlin, extreme-right youngsters beat up a passenger and then tried to push him out of the subway. The injured victim was taken to the hospital. That same day, skinheads attacked another three persons. 29/ 66. The Special Rapporteur would like to cite the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, reporting on the situation in Germany at its forty-third session: "The Committee expressed serious concern at the manifestations of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racial discrimination and racial violence that had recently occurred in Germany. In spite of the Government’s efforts to counteract and to prevent them, it appeared that those manifestations were increasing and that the German police system had in many instances failed to provide effective protection to victims and potential victims of xenophobia and racial discrimination, as required by the Convention. The Committee particularly held that all those who carried out functions in public and political life should in no way encourage sentiments of racism and xenophobia." 30/ 67. With regard to the behaviour of police towards foreigners, on 13 September 1994 in Hamburg, 27 police officers were suspended from duty as a result of complaints that they had maltreated foreigners. Some of those officers were even under the suspicion of having close links with extreme right organizations. The Interior Minister of Hamburg, W. Hackmann, resigned, claiming that it was in protest against the behaviour of some police officers towards foreigners. The whole scandal followed an article which had been published in the local newspapers, according to which, on 15 January 1994, a 44-year-old Senegalese had been beaten up by two police officers for wearing a cap with an anti-Nazi slogan. The two police officers were never put on trial, and they were merely ordered by the public prosecutor to pay a fine of 5,400 deutsche mark (DM). The Minister of Justice of Hamburg has initiated an inquiry to examine 120 declarations of police misconduct. 68. That event in Hamburg was not isolated. In Berlin the public prosecutor sentenced three police officers to pay fines from DM 10,000 up to DM 14,000. They had dragged an Iranian from a bus on Christmas Eve in 1992 and maltreated him. And in Bernau, a small city near Berlin, a chief of police is under the suspicion of having systematically maltreated Vietnamese. According to Amnesty International, there is a huge increase in the number of cases of maltreatment of foreigners by the German police. 31/ 69. In Belgium, on 15 October 1994, a report by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman Treatment of the Council of Europe asserts that the Belgian police are guilty of violent action against detainees and /...