Indian mob attack victim says feared going home

DOEBELN, Germany, Aug 23 (Reuters) An Indian victim of mob violence in eastern Germany said today he was too afraid to sleep at home following the attack last weekend and had gone to stay with friends.

About 50 Germans chased Kulvir Singh and seven other Indians through the town of Muegeln after people insulted and attacked them at a fair. The eight took refuge in a pizzeria until around 70 police cleared the mob and restored order.

Singh, sporting a black eye, told a news conference he had only returned home today.

''Last night I slept alone in my flat in Muegeln but I got up three times to check the door was shut,'' he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the attacks and said they need to be cleared up as quickly as possible. The minister responsible for Germany's eastern states said support for Nazi ideas there was enough for some people to fear for their lives.

Singh was also critical of the treatment he and the other victims received from police after the attack, saying officers showed little compassion and did not offer them medical aid.

Others criticised police for being slow to regard the violence as a racist crime. Police so far say they have not ruled out anything in their investigation into what sparked the attacks.

''If the victims are all Indians and you have calls of ''foreigners out'' resounding, we have to assume that we're looking at xenophobic aggression,'' Christian Pfeiffer, director of the state of Lower Saxony's criminological research institute, told the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

India's foreign ministry has asked Germany to take action on the incident and prevent future attacks.

Some politicians and industry leaders have warned the violence could put people off emigrating to Germany, which is currently suffering from a serious shortage of skilled labour.

Since German re-unification in 1990, racist violence has broken out sporadically in the poorer east of the country. Last year crimes committed by neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists reached their highest level since 1990.

REUTERS DKS RK2212