Black soccer fans told to avoid parts of Germany

BERLIN: Black soccer fans attending the World Cup are risking their lives if they stray into parts of Germany where neo-Nazi attacks are on the rise, an anti-racism campaigner said on Wednesday.

Supporters should avoid parts of the eastern German state of Brandenburg, said Uwe-Karsten Heye, head of anti-racist organisation "Gesicht zeigen" (Show face), referring to the former communist state which surrounds Berlin.

"There are small and medium-sized towns in Brandenburg and other places where I would recommend that nobody with a different skin colour go," Heye, a former government spokesman, told radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur.

"They would possibly not leave there alive."

Thousands of foreign fans will travel to Germany for the tournament, which begins on June 9 and runs for a month.

A German-Ethiopian man was seriously injured in what police suspect was a racially motivated attack in the Brandenburg capital of Potsdam last month.

Around 100 people have been killed in far-right violence since German reunification in 1990. The attacks have often been directed at dark-skinned foreigners and most have occurred in the ex-communist east.