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Tensions Rise in Germany Over Handling of Mass Sexual Assaults in Cologne
The Guardian reports:
A ferocious debate has erupted in Germany over the handling of mass sexual assaults and muggings carried out by groups of young males during New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne, amid accusations of a police and media cover-up over fears of whipping up anti-foreigner sentiment in the wake of the migrant crisis.
About 100 complaints have now been made to police, two-thirds of which are linked to sexual assault, including two rapes. According to police and witnesses, the perpetrators were of north African and Arab appearance, although neither the identity nor origin of any of them has so far been established.
If you're not already feeling queasy enough be sure to read the link "Asian sex-grooming gangs in the UK" in the article. Apparently you can find similar stories from all over the UK, these sexual crimes against underage girls perpetrated by muslims are sickeningly common.
Conspiracy of Silence - or Sensationalist Reporting?
There are a number of marginal news sites posting stories out of Europe these days, mostly from Germany, Sweden, as well as other claims made regarding Finland and the UK. The claims all center around a huge increase in rapes by immigrants, outright take over of public train stations, and mass groping of women passing through the stations.
According to these reports, the incidents started in midsummer and continue to this day, but the local news organizations have refused to publish reports of these incidents even after arrests have been made. Often police are accused of withholding the news of any complaints or arrests for months.
The clear implication, more often implied than stated is that the national leaders who went public in their pledges to accept refugees from the middle east war zones as well as northern Africa are leaning on main stream news outlets to suppress news reports of these rapes and sexual assaults. This suppression, if it exists, also appears to extend to the US press.
The assaults aren't limited to European women, but also include women in the immigrant shelters, some as young as 16. The immigrant shelters population in Munich is 80% male. But not all the alleged perpetrators are migrants from the recent wave of mass migrations over the summer and fall. Some are earlier immigrants from North Africa who don't necessarily live in the camps.
Finally some reports are leaking into the western press in the US, such as this brief report in the New York Times about events on New Years Eve. That same event was reported by a couple of the British tabloids.
Many reports are in German, Here and Here. (Google Translate does well with these pages). Others are in English such as this one and this one.
Are any Soylentils living in the EU near refugee centers seeing these problems? Is it being reported? Is it being repressed? Or is the whole thing a made up issue by biased articles in fringe news sites?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 08 2016, @05:33PM
I really appreciate Soylent News reporting this. I have been seeing headlines about this on one site that I frequent, but they are putting it all in an anti-immigration context that I can't stomach.
FTA: "There’s no evidence that we’re dealing here with people who are refugees.”
That's A bit at odds with frojak's claim that "But not all the alleged perpetrators are migrants from the recent wave of mass migrations over the summer and fall. Some are earlier immigrants from North Africa who don't necessarily live in the camps."
Also, the conspiracy theory that "they" aren't reporting on it due to the immigrant angle, when there actually isn't an immigration angle yet, is amusing.
"They look Arab," really shouldn't be sufficient evidence for rape accusations.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by moondrake on Friday January 08 2016, @05:57PM
well, the story is, as far as I followed it, is that the police (and hence some articles) at first claimed they were not refugees, and then other news outlets started reporting that anonymous sources within the police actually did claim they were refugees. Which obviously fits perfectly in the believe we are being lied to...
The truth, as far as I have been able to establish, is simply that the police themselves had little clue what was going on at first and of the group of people that has been identified so far was rather diverse. Some may be refugees, but others were not. Most were however, sadly, foreigners, and a large part with a North African identify (it is likely these are indeed not refugees, but that matters little to some as they are still immigrants...). It remains to be seen how large the group of refugees involved actually was. Obviously the fact that part of this group may have been refugees is now being used to say the police lied. But I do not envy the job of these people...
Fact is however that a group of mainly migrants committed a type of organized sexual assault that is relatively unprecedented, and since they "look Arab" (and are mostly foreign), all people who look like that will probably pay for it.
To answer the editors question: Even though I live relatively close to a refugee center, I did not see problems. But then, I tend to stay away from large groups of young people pretending to have fun parties. Usually all kind of shit happens at such places, regardless of their nationality.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday January 08 2016, @06:33PM
You, of course, are taking the other side, and downplaying the problem. Let's take one statement from your comment:
"Fact is however that a group of mainly migrants committed a type of organized sexual assault that is relatively unprecedented..."
...aaaaand stop. The rest of your sentence is irrelevant. They didn't just "look Arab", they were Arab. It's not "anonymous sources" claiming that many are recent Syrian refugees, it's an internal police report that was suppressed because it might be "politically awkward".
Will the muslim community as a whole take a hit because of this? Yes, of course, that's inevitable. People generalize, and it's not bands of Chinese grandmothers assaulting people.
What's missing here is the outrage of the Muslim community, and any attempt to police it's own bad actors. We could have leading muslim scholars publicly calling down shame on young men who behave like barbarians. Instead, leading muslim scholars are calling on members of the police force to resign [www.welt.de], because they failed to stop said barbarians before they could assault people.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 08 2016, @07:36PM
They didn't just "look Arab", they were Arab. It's not "anonymous sources" claiming that many are recent Syrian refugees, it's an internal police report that was suppressed because it might be "politically awkward".
[Citation Needed] This information is certainly not included in any of the articles linked to this story. And, we have a direct quote from one article that explicitly contradicts this assertion.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday January 08 2016, @08:09PM
Were the assault by Arabs? Was this known at the time?
First, the local Cologne newspaper reports that the police deliberately hid their knowledge that most of the people whose identities they checked at the time were new refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan [www.ksta.de]. This was suppressed, because it was deemed "politically awkward". I've given you the original source - Google will give you English articles referring to it.
Identifying individuals out of the mass is difficult, and so far they only have 31 suspects definitely identified [wochenblatt.de] - these in association with non-sexual crimes like simple theft. They include 18 refugees, and the nationalities are: 9 Algerians, 8 Moroccans, 5 Iranians, 4 Syrians, 1 Iraq, 1 Serbian, 1 American and 2 Germans. By the common definition of Arab, that makes 27 of 31, and of those 27 some two-thirds are refugees.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 08 2016, @10:36PM
In particular, Germany has a large German-born ethnically-Turkish population that could easily "look Arab" without actually being Syrian refugees, so part of what seems to be going on is the connecting of dots that may or may not be connected. It could be entirely true that (1) Thousands of people have come to Germany from the Middle East, and (2) People who look like they might have been from the Middle East committed these crimes, and (3) The people who committed the crimes weren't part of the thousands of people who came to Germany.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2016, @11:32AM
All of which won't matter to those opposed to "letting in foreigners with bad cultures".
So say it's the German born Turkish who did it, then it'll be:
1) We shouldn't have let in the Turkish in the first place
2) Letting in the Syrians in just makes such incidents more likely later on.
In my opinion countries should be choosy on which immigrants can become residents or citizens. Pick the best of the bunch who have a good chance of helping your country. Immigration can't really help the source countries that much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE [youtube.com]
Doctors Without Borders can help others but their effectiveness in doing so would be reduced if they randomly let in anyone who wanted to join their organization.
If you want to help countries, _go_there_ and help them. But more importantly stop screwing them up like the USA intentionally does. The USA is one of the main parties responsible for the mess in Syria (they supported the Syrian opposition and extremist groups to try to weaken or topple the Syrian Gov), as such if any country should take in the bulk of the refugees it's them and the other countries who helped create the mess in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 08 2016, @08:42PM
Well, if you used to have N Arab related events in a place, and you swell the Arab population by a factor of 10, it would not be unexpected to have Nx10 of those same type of Arab related events after the population increase.
Unprecedented, maybe N was 0.1 before the influx?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:49AM
Oh come on, its much more complex than that.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/13/muslim-prof-rape-gangs-inevitable-muslim-men-live-in-britain-as-if-it-was-pakistan/ [breitbart.com]
Rumy Hasan, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Migration Research, said “do-what-you-want” and “laissez-faire” policies had let immigrant communities live as if they were still in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
This has led to a “psychiatric detachment” from mainstream British culture, he added, which in turn leads to a “social detachment” where minority communities do not mix with wider society.
Dr Hasan – who is a former Muslim – also said that Muslim rape gangs in towns such as Rochdale and Rotherham were an “inevitable consequence” of this.
The Sun quotes him as saying: “The authorities in towns and cities — Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford, Oldham, Birmingham — kept quiet because they were embarrassed.
“It’s time we woke up and smelled the coffee.”
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:15PM
Yeah, what's really needed is to segregate the immigrant men and women, locate them on opposite sides of the host country, then force them to intermarry with the indigenous population so their children are properly integrated. In the meantime, the new immigrants should be forbidden from congregating with their own kind, given extra hours of social integration schooling, and obviously watched extra closely by police.
I think what I said still applies, 10x the population, 10x the incidence of whatever they do. I also think everybody would expect new Chinese to gravitate toward Chinatown and do Chinese kinds of things, even though they live in the UK now - why would Arabs be any different?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:38PM
Yeah, what's really needed is to segregate the immigrant men and women
That part has already been done by the immigrants themselves, They came that way.
Some 80% of the immigrants in Koln are un-attached males of military age.
Nobody in germany is separating families. You made that up.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 15 2016, @02:10AM
Reread the previous comment and try to separate out the sarcasm, it should be pretty obvious.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Monday January 11 2016, @10:25AM
It depends a little bit on how exactly you define Arab, but fine. I used that phrase because it was used in the first reports, and I pointed out that people who look like that are going to be the subject of violence now. This has indeed already happened according to the news today.
Also, the first reports that refugees were involves were anonymously leaking an INTERNAL report. You mention that yourself. Not sure what your problem is with that.
The fact that people from all sides call for officials to resign is not so surprising, you also imply they made mistakes. But you are right that various communities should take responsiblility, but I am not only waiting for the Muslim side. Public apologies of the leading extremist politicians calling down shame on the young men who currently behave like barbarians would be nice as well.
It wont happen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Friday January 08 2016, @07:50PM
But then, I tend to stay away from large groups of young people pretending to have fun parties. Usually all kind of shit happens at such places, regardless of their nationality.
+6 for that sentence; that is the most insightful thing that has been said in this entire thread. (With all due respect to the victims of this crime, who may not have had a choice as to where they were at the moment.)
When all the fuss was going on about black kids in "hoodies" my wife was quick to point out she was scared of plenty of kids in hoodies regardless of their color. And I realized I was, too!
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @06:02PM
There’s no evidence that we’re dealing here with people who are refugees.
It's a diversion tactic. They're immigrants (because native Germans are not black) but by claiming "there's no evidence they were refugees" they can shift away your attention.
Also, the conspiracy theory that "they" aren't reporting on it due to the immigrant angle
Gewalt von Köln "keinesfalls neu", sie wurde totgeschwiegen, sagt Ex-Polizist [epochtimes.de]
Violence of Köhn "in no way something new", is being silenced, says ex-policeman
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @06:53PM
Oh just fuck off with your racist drivel. There are plenty of native black Germans. Not as many as there might have been because of a previous racist twat who had some slightly black-unfriendly policies. Name a field which doesn't have an obvious bias, and you'll find a black native german. Let's start with an easy one, footie - Jerome Boateng, Dennis Aogo, Antonio Rudiger, Sidney Sam, and probably others, those are just the ones that have played for the national team AFIAK. (Where national = German, I ought to add, as it's not entirely certain you'd have the intelligence to work that out yourself.)
Perhaps learn the difference between "ethnic" and "native".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @07:06PM
>this is what liberals actually believe
mixed race (other parent is from Ghana)
mixed race (other parent is from Nigeria)
mixed race (other parent is from Sierra Leone)
mixed race (other parent is from Nigeria)
I wonder what color the other (German) parent is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 08 2016, @07:07PM
They're immigrants (because native Germans are not black)
There are plenty of black German citizens who were born in Germany and are clearly not immigrants. This is poor logic even for someone who literally judges people based on the color of their skin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @07:19PM
someone who literally judges people based on the color of their skin.
Judges? That's a bold statement: how about something to back it up? Distinguishment, yes, but there was no value judgement.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 08 2016, @07:32PM
You literally just said black people can't be "Real Germans."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @07:36PM
Did I now? I said 'native' Germans; not 'real' Germans. Not very 'literally', now is it?
I have been informed above that I should probably have used the word 'ethnic' which is more what I was going for. Not that you need to believe me, mind you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @07:42PM
I will just point out that being born in Germany does not automatically confer German citizenship; Germany does not have the same citizenship rules that we have in America. ("If the first foot falls on US soil...") I can't recall exactly what the requirements are, but if memory serves, among other requirements you had to have been born there and your grandparents had to have lived for a time in Germany (and your parents, of course) and you have to have a "German" name. I could be wrong about these so if someone knows better, please chime in. I lived in Germany for three years as a visiting scholar. I still find it incredible that I could more easily obtain German citizenship (three grandparents from Germany) than someone who was born and had lived their entire lives there.
Back over to your previously scheduled rant.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday January 08 2016, @09:22PM
You can apply for German citizenship after 8 years of living here amongst other possibilities (such as being an ethnic German from Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, etc.; being of Jewish descent, where the ancestors were in a concentration camp; getting adopted; being born with one parent being German; etc.).
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @09:48PM
Germany does not have the same citizenship rules that we have in America.
We? What fricking "we" do you refer to here, you damn crypto-Nazi!! Yeah, American. Sure you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2016, @01:09AM
Crypto-Nazi?!? I'm referring to the current law of the land here in the US of A, ya blithering fuckwit! Currently, if someone is born here in this country they are eligible for US citizenship, regardless of the status of the parents. If you have a problem with that, then go find another fascist utopia to call your new home! All ist klar, no?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 09 2016, @12:39AM
Citation? What percentage of German citizens are black, or brown, or any race other than Caucasian?
Do you know, or are you just assuming something that you hope to be true?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2016, @04:27AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Migrant_background_and_foreign_nationality [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Jiro on Friday January 08 2016, @06:45PM
They don't have to actually be immigrants in order for the news/politicians to think that it makes immigrants look bad, and keep it quiet as a result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2016, @09:13PM
18 of 30 suspects so far are refugees. The rest will be their handlers, no doubt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2016, @12:34AM
>>There is no evidence that this gang of Muslim rapists were refugees
Oh, so they've been rooted in Germany for a long time then. I feel so much better.