There were massed attacks on women across Germany by groups of men of ‘north African or Arab appearance’…the BBC reports this and the appearance of the attackers and yet…and yet the BBC plays down that identity and the fact that they are almost certainly migrants. The BBC seems a little too eager to tell us that some of the sites of the attacks were well known to be areas where pickpockets are operating or a street has ‘boisterous nightlife’…
….is the intention to suggest that the women perhaps had it coming being in such areas?…..erm like outside a train station and Cathedral….get raped or sexually assaulted..it’s your fault….
The pretty Christmas market and medieval setting may look idyllic, but at Christmas and New Year the area around Cologne Cathedral is a notorious danger zone when it comes to pickpockets and theft.
In Hamburg several women told police that gangs of men had molested and robbed them on New Year’s Eve on the Reeperbahn – a street known for its boisterous night life.
Some similar attacks were reported in Stuttgart.
Pickpockets? Yes you may expect that, what you don’t expect is this…
Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.
Nice of the BBC to play down the seriousness of such attacks.
And of course it shouldn’t be linked to migration…..
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted that “we won’t tolerate these abhorrent assaults on women – all those responsible must be brought to justice”.
But he also warned against simply linking the crimes to the issue of migrants and refugees.
A policeman who was outside Cologne station during the New Year’s Eve trouble told the city’s Express news website that he had detained eight suspects. “They were all asylum seekers, carrying copies of their residence certificates,” he said.
However, there was no official confirmation that asylum seekers had been involved in the violence. Commentators in Germany were quick to urge people not to jump to conclusions.
The Telegraph in contrast is more rounded and reveals that there is concern with immigration and a link to these attacks…
One MP from Angela Merkel’s party called for the numbers of refugees in the country to be reduced in the light of the attacks.
“It can’t go on like this,” Steffen Bilger wrote on Twitter. “Urgently needed: reduction of influx, secure borders, intensifying of deportations and meaningful justice. #Cologne.”
There were allegations of a police “cover-up” on social media after it took five days for the scale of the incidents to emerge, with some claiming the authorities wanted to hide the ethnicity of the perpetrators to avoid social tensions.
“The crimes were committed by a group of people who from appearance were largely from the North African or Arab world,” Wolfgang Albers, the Cologne police chief, told a press conference.
“It is intolerable that such offences are committed in the heart of the city,” he said.
In Hamburg, witnesses described groups of young men who followed women calling out “Bitch! Ficky ficky!”
The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne lies, vowed to take action.
“We will not take gangs of North African men humiliating defenceless women with brazen sexual attacks,” Ralf Jäger, the state’s interior minister, said.