No country has been more welcoming of Middle Eastern immigrants than Germany, which has looked to a influx of one million new residents a year as a solution to its demographic population implosion. But now Germany, along with other European nations, is having second thoughts.
Even sympathizers of the refugees are having problems with what happened in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. In the square between the train station and the magnificent cathedral (a place I’ve actually been to with my friends who live there, including at another crowded fire works night), around a thousand men of “Arab or Northern African appearance” sexually assaulted every non-hijab wearing woman in sight. They crowded around women and groped and robbed them, with reports of at least two rapes.
From ‘Night Of Shame,’ Week Of Soul-Searching: Cologne Attacks Divide Germany : The Two-Way : NPR:
Germany has started 2016 with a deep and bitter debate: How should the country respond to the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, in which mobs of men allegedly robbed and sexually assaulted women on the streets?
Concrete information about the night is sparse, and competing narratives abound.
“A lot happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined,” wrote the staff of Der Spiegel, who obtained an internal police document about the night’s events. “Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying.”
This much is known: A group of men, reportedly numbering more than 1,000, gathered at Cologne’s central train station late on New Year’s Eve. The station, by the city’s famous cathedral, was a central hub for people traveling between the city’s fireworks display and its nightclubs, the New York Times notes.
In smaller groups, witnesses and authorities say, men surrounded women, groped them and stole their belongings.
Cologne police are currently investigating 379 criminal complaints, about 40 percent involving allegations of sexual abuse, the Associated Press reports. The wire service earlier noted two allegations of rape.
The Cologne police chief described the assailants as “Arab or North African” in appearance. As a result, the outcry over the attacks has not only centered on victims and perpetrators: it’s extended to a broader national debate over migrants, multiculturalism and Germany’s open-door policy to asylum seekers.
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