Reports of Attacks on Women in Germany Heighten Tension Over Migrants

The tensions simmering beneath Germany‘s willingness to take in one million migrants blew into the open on Tuesday after reports that scores of young women in Cologne had been groped and robbed on New Year’s Eve by gangs of men described by the authorities as having “a North African or Arabic” appearance.

The German authorities expressed outrage at the attacks and called them unprecedented in scale and nature, saying hundreds of young men appeared to have participated.

It was not clear that any of the men involved were recent arrivals to Germany over the last year from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa and elsewhere. But the situation created a new political challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose decision to take in refugees from conflict-ridden nations opened the doors to waves of migrants last summer and fall. As the number of asylum-seekers has grown and the challenge of assimilating them has become clearer, she has come under intensifying criticism for failing to anticipate the social and economic costs of her policy.

She quickly issued a statement calling such assaults disgusting. “Everything must be done to investigate as completely and quickly as possible those who are guilty and to punish them regardless of how they look, where they come from or what their background is,” she said.

The police in Cologne said they had received 90 legal complaints from victims, including a woman who said she had been raped. No arrests have been made.

The police in Hamburg said another 10 women had reported that they were sexually assaulted and robbed in a similar fashion on the same night in that city, and the police urged witnesses to come forward.

The descriptions of the assailants — by the police and victims quoted in the news media — as being young foreign men who spoke neither German nor English immediately stoked the debate over how to integrate such large numbers of migrants and focused new attention on how to deal with the influx of young, mostly Muslim men from more socially conservative cultures where women do not share the same freedoms and protections as men.

The assaults, which went largely unreported for days, set off accusations on the right and among some political commentators that authorities and the news media had tried to ignore or cover up the attacks in order to avoid fueling a backlash against the refugees.

Far-right and anti-immigrant groups and other Germans who are outraged by the influx swiftly seized on the attacks, saying they demonstrated the dangers associated with accepting huge numbers of migrants.

“It is time to send a signal,” said Christopher Freiherr von Mengersen, head of the nationalist Pro-NRW movement, based in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. “We locals can no longer put up with everything that is being routinely swept under the rug based on a false sense of tolerance.”

Even beyond the usual circle of anti-immigration activists, similar concern could be heard over whether the government’s policy had come at too high a price to social stability.

“The government’s loss of control is not only taking place on the borders,” wrote Alexander Marguier, deputy editor in chief of the monthly political magazine Cicero, in its digital edition. “For whoever gives up control of who enters the country no longer has control over the consequences of this action.”

Henriette Reker, Cologne’s mayor, who was stabbed during a campaign event in October by an attacker who opposed her welcoming attitude toward migrants, sought on Tuesday to play down the links to refugees, after a crisis meeting with police, state and city officials.

“There are no indications that this involved people who have sought shelter in Cologne as refugees,” Ms. Reker said.

The assaults reported in Cologne are said to have taken place late on Thursday in the city’s main train station and the public square in front of it. The station was a central transit point for anyone coming or going from a fireworks display over the Rhine and the bars and nightclubs in the heart of the city, in the shadow of its landmark cathedral.

The police in Cologne say they believe several hundred men, ages 15 to 35 and visibly drunk, were involved in the violence that began when they were throwing firecrackers into the crowd that thronged the square.

The police cleared the area shortly before midnight, blocking the main entrance to the station, in an attempt to control the situation, said Wolfgang Albers, Cologne’s chief of police.

Only after the square was reopened, after midnight, did the police begin receiving reports of the assaults.

During that time, young men appeared to have broken into smaller groups that would encircle a victim, with some groping her while others would steal her wallet or cellphone.

“Nobody knew where to go,” Sascha Frohn, who said he was in the station on Thursday, told the public broadcaster WDR. “We stood with our backs to the wall and could see how people were robbed and German girls were groped. I was surrounded by a group of 50 to 60 people from Arabic countries. They would come up to us, shake hands and then try to reach into our bags.”

With roughly one million inhabitants, Cologne is among Germany’s most ethnically diverse cities, and it took in more than 10,000 refugees last year, many of them young men from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The city authorities said they would increase security after the assaults, including installing closed-circuit surveillance cameras, even as they urged anyone who filmed the events on Thursday night to come forward.

But the situation quickly became as much about the politics of the situation as about the law enforcement response. Since the start of the year, Ms. Merkel has come under renewed pressure from within her own conservative bloc, with Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian sister party to the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union, calling for a cap of 200,000 refugees to be allowed into the country per year.

Calls came from the Bavarian Christian Social Union on Tuesday to deport any asylum-seekers who might be found to be among the perpetrators in Cologne, a sentiment echoed by the left-leaning Süddeutsche-Zeitung, in a commentary that noted that German law provides for such a measure.

Yet the commentary, by Heribert Prantl, also warned against the risks of the debate taking on a poisonous tone that would only make integration of the many young refugees and immigrants legitimately in the country that much more difficult.

“The young men who come to Germany must begin working as quickly as possible,” he wrote. “Work socializes. It is about our national peace, which is threatened by the excesses in Cologne and the excesses in the Internet.”

Several hundred people gathered in front of Cologne’s cathedral late Tuesday to protest violence against women. Several groups promoting women’s rights have complained that the authorities have not taken complaints about sexual abuse of women in refugee shelters seriously enough.

In an effort to prevent further violence in Cologne during the coming Carnival celebrations, when thousands of costumed revelers throng the streets to celebrate with parades and parties, Ms. Reker said that city officials would begin working on measures to help young women protect themselves and to explain the city’s attitudes and norms to its many newcomers.

“We will explain our Carnival much better to people who come from other cultures,” she said, “so there won’t be any confusion about what constitutes celebratory behavior in Cologne, which has nothing to do with a sexual frankness.”

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