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German Justice Minister Tells Facebook to Clean Up Racist Posts

A major influx of refugees is fuelling racial tension and xenophobia.

German justice minister Heiko Maas has criticized Facebook for not doing enough to keep racist and xenophobic content from being posted to the site. The minister's plea comes as a major influx of refugees fleeing war and poverty continue to arrive in Germany this year, fuelling racial tension and xenophobia in the country.

In a letter to Facebook, as first reported by Tagesspiegel, Maas wrote that it is "incomprehensible" that content such as nudity is not allowed under Facebook's rules, but racist and xenophobic statements remain even after being flagged by multiple users.

"There must be no mistaken tolerance for users that offensively preach xenophobia and racism," he wrote, according to Bloomberg.

Last weekend neo-Nazi protestors clashed with police near a shelter built for refugees near the city of Dresden as part of a "no refugee camps in my neighbourhood" campaign orchestrated by far-right German groups.

Maas's party was also the target of racist emails and phone calls for denouncing anti-refugee violence. A Facebook spokesperson said the company was looking into how to prevent related hate speech from appearing on Facebook, and is interested in meeting with Maas.

"There is no room for racism on Facebook," the spokesperson told Reuters. "That kind of content violates our community standards and we appeal to people not to use our platform for the spread of hatred … We work hard every day to protect people on Facebook from abuse, hatred and bullying."