Anger over sex attacks

Merkel’s migrant policy under fire GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel came under mounting pressure yesterday for her welcoming stance towards migrants, which opponents have linked to a shocking rash of apparently coordinated sex attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Police in the city said they had received more than 100 complaints by women reporting assaults ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city’s main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral. Victims blamed men of “Arab or North African” appearance, inflaming a heated public debate about Germany’s ability to cope with the nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers the country took in last year. Authorities have said there was no concrete indication that the perpetrators were asylum seekers. However, critics of Merkel’s liberal refugee policy charged that the Cologne assaults proved she was playing with fire without clear plans how to integrate the mainly Muslim newcomers. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party, which hopes to gain seats in three regional elections in March, seized on the attacks as a result of unchecked immigration.

“Here we see the appalling consequences of catastrophic asylum and migration policies on Germany’s everyday reality,” party leader Frauke Petry said. “If asylum seekers or refugees carry out these kinds of attacks it will bring their stay in Germany to an abrupt end,” Christian Social Union (CSU) general secretary Andreas Scheuer warned. The CSU, Merkel’s Bavarian ally, has demanded she set a strict limit of 200 000 newcomers a year. Merkel was due to speak at a meeting of the CSU in Bavaria late yesterday, just weeks after its leader, Horst Seehofer, gave her a humiliating dressing-down over her position on refugees at another party event. Justice Minister Heiko Maas warned against using the refugees as scapegoats for the assaults, which he said appeared to be coordinated. “Even if asylum seekers were among the perpetrators, that is no reason to place all refugees under general suspicion,” he said. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Union migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos was hosting a meeting of ministers from Sweden, Denmark and Germany amid concerns for the Schengen passport-free zone after Stockholm and Copenhagen this week tightened their border controls due to the migrant crisis.