2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults

Cologne 's Bahnhofsvorplatz between the central railway station (left) and the city's cathedral (right) was the main site of the sexual assaults and robberies on New Year's Eve 2015–16. There are conflicting accounts about when reports of sexual assaults during New Year's Night 2015–16 first reached the Cologne police. One high-ranking Cologne police officer reported that in the evening around 22:00 on 31 December 2015, passers-by in the plaza between the Cologne Central Train Station and the Cologne Cathedral informed police officers on the spot about fights, robberies, and sexual assaults on women taking place in and around the train station; During the night, three emergency calls concerning harassment or robbery near the railway station and the cathedral had reached Cologne police headquarters. Also the Cologne tabloid Express that day at 21:08 reported the incidents: "New Year's Eve, Central Train Station: Young women sexually harassed". During the rest of 1 January, several more notifications of sexual assaults or robberies reached the Cologne police. Also the national commercial TV channel RTL that day reported the sexual assaults in Cologne in the New Year's Eve. Cologne's police chief Wolfgang Albers stated that "a very large number of sexual assaults" had been committed on Cologne's New Year's Night by groups of young men "with an appearance largely from the north African or Arab world", with all witnesses having uttered this same racial description. The Cologne police force had received 60 crime reports at that time, 15 With that press conference, publicity about the Cologne sexual attacks started to spread in news media around the world. The German public service TV broadcaster ZDF, though, did not report on the Cologne developments at all in its news bulletin Heute Journal on 4 January 19:00, for the reasons that they could not yet find an eyewitness willing to talk on camera, Challenged that day by a journalist about his police force's announcement on 1 January that the situation on New Year's Eve had been "relaxed" ("entspannt"), Cologne police chief Albers now said that statement "was wrong". on 6 or 7 January they appeared to include two alleged rapes. By 11 January, the total number of complaints totaled 553, with sexual offences comprising nearly half of the cases. By 15 January, the total number of complaints was 676; 347 of these included sexual offences. while some complaints included more than one victim; 1,049 people were affected in total. By 30 January 2016, the number of complaints and reports of sexual offences concerning last New Year's Eve in Cologne totaled 433. By 15 February, the number of complaints over sexual offences had risen to 467. By 6 April, the total number of reported crimes on Cologne's New Year's Night was 1,529; a total of 1,218 victims were involved, 529 of them victims of sexual offences. By 25 November 2016, 509 sexual offences had been reported concerning Cologne's last New Year's Eve, among them 22 rapes. Stuttgart The local newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten on its website on 3 January 2016 reported that in the city centre of Stuttgart in the Silvesternacht (New Year's Eve) two 18-year-old women had been sexually assaulted by a group of around fifteen men about 30–40 years of age, who had the appearance of black-haired "southern people" with "Arab" looks. On 5 January, the same website reported that a handful of further purported victims had made reports themselves, not specifying how many of them had purportedly been sexually assaulted. These Stuttgart incidents were briefly mentioned in international news media as of 5 January in the slipstream of their reporting on the Cologne sexual assaults. in the New Year's Eve 2015–16 took place on the Große Freiheit street. Hamburg During New Year's Eve 2015–16, only one telephone call concerning sexual harassment, at 03:00, reached the Hamburg police. On New Year's Day, 14 people have reported to the Hamburg police to have been sexually assaulted on New Year's Eve, but those earliest reports were then lost in the police records, to be rediscovered around 20 January. and that day – possibly incited by the news from Cologne the previous day, as a political scientist suggested That same day, these Hamburg incidents were briefly mentioned in international news media, in their reporting on the Cologne sexual assaults. On 6 January, the number of complaints of sexual harassment in Hamburg had increased to 39, 108 complaints on 10 January, 153 complaints on 11 January, 195 complaints on 14 January. On 14 January, the weekly paper Die Zeit reported over 150 complaints in Hamburg strictly concerning sexual attacks. and on 4 February, there were 236 complaints, including two for rape, involving 400 women reportedly being sexually harassed. The Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police) in July 2016 confirmed that in Hamburg over 400 women reported being victims of sexual violence on New Year's Eve. This was reported in German news media on 6 January, By 8 January, the Frankfurt police had counted fifteen reported sexual attacks by groups of "Arab" or "North African" men. By 11 January 2016, the police had counted 22 reported sexual attacks by such groups on New Year's Eve. Dortmund On 5 January 2016, two complaints of sexual assault on New Year's Eve in Dortmund, by groups of men addressing the women in broken German or English, have been reported to the police. By 14 January 2016, according to a report of the Minister of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia, five suspicions of sexual assaults in Dortmund in the New Year's Eve had been registered.]". The Bielefeld police stated on 6 January that two complaints had been filed by women about physical harassment on New Year's Eve. On 16 January, the police stated that six women had filed complaints of sexual harassment; most of those reports only came after calls in the local news media. By 18 January, the Bielefeld police were investigating five sexual offences on New Year's Eve. In November 2016, a news source reported twenty offences in Bielefeld concerning last New Year's Eve, not specifying how many of them were sexual offences. Between 4 and 6 January, around 20 reports of women having been sexually harassed were recorded; by 8 January, the number had increased to 41. On 18 January, the police in Düsseldorf counted 69 complaints of sexual offences on New Year's Eve. Sexual assaults on New Year's Eve may have taken place in Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin, and cities in Baden-Württemberg, but the one newspaper mentioning those places did not discriminate between trick robberies (Antanzdiebstahl) and sexual offences. == Circumstances and assaults in detail ==

In Cologne Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city, is traditionally a popular venue for locals and visitors to celebrate New Year's Eve (Silvesternacht), watching the fireworks over the river Rhine and the skyline of the city. The area around the medieval Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), with its Christmas market, is specifically popular around New Year's Eve, but also notorious for pickpockets and theft. strongly intoxicated with alcohol, after which this 'Arab/North African' group had grown to 1,000 men by 23:00. Around 23:30, because of considerable danger to people and objects Research by Kölner Express in March would show that it had actually been only 150 policemen: 80 state police (Landesbeamte) and 70 railway station security police (Bahnhofsinnere Bundespolizei). Between 22:00 and 05:00 on New Year's Night, the personal details of 71 people in the crowds near the central railway station were recorded, 32 offences recorded, 11 people were taken into custody, and four others arrested. On 2 January 2016, the police estimated the sexual attackers had worked in groups of 2 to 20 men. By 17 March 2016, 51 complaints had been filed against either Cologne's chief of police Wolfgang Albers or the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of the Interior Ralf Jäger. In other cities Hamburg – Sexual harassment by presumed "refugees" which purportedly had troubled Hamburg's nightlife scene since the autumn of 2015 apparently reemerged on New Year's Eve 2015–16, when groups of young men in Große Freiheit encircled women, groping them between the legs, and tearing their tights and underwear. ==Criticism of media and government coverage==

Critics have accused the government and media of not adequately reporting the events to avoid talking about the controversial topic of the suspects' ethnicities. Well-known newspapers, as Süddeutsche Zeitung or Die Welt have reported about the hesitation shown by the police. The latter stated, on January 10, 2016, that "for a week, the truth about the New Year's Eve in Cologne was only available under the counter. Piece by piece, it came to light, because police officers who had been deployed began to talk." Although the Cologne police directly mentioned the "North African appearance" of the suspects in their first press release about the sexual assaults on 2 January 2016, apologized for their not-reporting on 4 January: Accusations and suspicions of a media cover-up Because of the perception that the ethnic background of the assailants had been reported 'too late' by the mass media (see above), anger and accusations arose on Twitter and other social networking sites as of the afternoon of 4 January 2016, holding that 'the national media' or 'the news media' had been engaged in a cover-up of these New Year's Eve events or had deliberately under-reported them, for fear of encouraging anti-immigrant or anti-refugee sentiments. – were invigorated on the social networking sites. News website The Local on 5 January suggested that "the national media" had only started to report on the ethnicity of the assaulters because they were forced to do so by "social media". The German political scientist Klaus Schroeder in an interview on 6 January 2016 confirmed that, until 4 January, prominent German newspapers had indeed kept negative news about migrants away from their readers, to avoid driving the public "into the hands of the extreme right". Since those New Year's Eve events, that press codex has been revised in 2017, and both political scientist Schroeder and newspaper Die Zeit have suggested that since 4 January 2016, the German mainstream media may now mention an ethnic background of crime suspects more easily. and by the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta who contended that Berlin pretended that nothing out of the ordinary had happened; regional and national German media then demonstrated an astonishing solidarity with the politicians by refusing "to illuminate the extent of robberies, assaults and rapes committed by refugees". Criticism of authorities, government, and police In addition to the distrust towards national news media, political commentators and right-wing politicians accused the authorities or police of trying to cover-up or ignore the New Year's Eve sexual attacks or the ethnic background of the suspects to avoid fueling a backlash against the refugees or migrants who had recently arrived in Germany in great numbers, == Speculation that the attacks were premeditated ==

The fact that the sexual attackers on New Year's Eve in Cologne – and later in Hamburg, On 8 January 2016, it was discovered by police that one of the suspects had prepared himself for contacting or harassing women, with Arabic–German translations written on a piece of paper for phrases like: "beautiful breasts", "I want sex with you" in a coarse idiom, and "I kill you". Ralf Jäger, Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, on 21 January, nevertheless dismissed the suggestion of premeditated organized attacks: "...groups of men had agreed via social networking sites to meet at the Cologne New Year's Eve celebrations, but there was no information so far that the perpetrators had agreed upon the assaults before New Year's Eve, nor that the groups of offenders had been structured hierarchically," Jäger said. The tabloid website Daily Express nevertheless kept suggesting that the "Cologne mass sex attack 'was organised and plotted on social media', says police chief". == Descriptions of offenders before their identification ==

Stuttgart – In the first reported case of sexual assault on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Stuttgart, reported on 3 January 2016 by a local newspaper, the attackers were described as a group of "southern people" with "Arab" looks. or between 18 and 35. Hamburg – The Hamburg police in its announcement on 5 January 2016 described the perpetrators of the sexual harassment on New Year's Eve as men "with southern or Arab looks" "in some cases", operating in groups of perhaps 20 to 40 persons. The Hamburger Abendblatt stated on 20 January that "most of the victims have supposedly described the perpetrators as southerners (Südländer), North Africans, or people with dark skin". Of the first eight identified suspects of sexual offences in Hamburg on New Year's Eve, some were refugees, while others had a migration background, said the police on 14 January 2016. Dortmund – Several of the perpetrators of sexual attacks on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Dortmund were described on 5 January as speaking broken German or broken English. Frankfurt – The victims of the first 22 reported sexual attacks on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Frankfurt described the perpetrators, between 5 and 11 January, as groups of men from Arab or north African origin. Bielefeld – All six women who had been sexually harassed in Bielefeld on New Year's Eve 2015–16 described their harassers as men with migration backgrounds; these same men were described by the police on 6 January as "immigrants", mostly Algerians and Moroccans. Düsseldorf – On 8 January 2016, all 41 victims in Düsseldorf of sexual attacks on New Year's Eve described their assailants as North African or Arab in appearance. By 14 January, in nearly all 48 reported cases, the perpetrators had been described by the witnesses as "Arab", "North African" or "southern". Further German cities – Several women who reported having been sexually harassed in Paderborn on New Year's Eve 2015–16 described the perpetrators as "North African" men; two victims in Detmold described the offenders as "foreign" looking men. The federal state of Hesse described some of the perpetrators of sexual assaults in its cities that New Year's Eve as men with "north African/Arab/southern European/eastern European" appearance. == Confusion over the role of refugees ==

All of Germany In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) stated that approximately half of the 120 identified suspects nationwide of sexual violence on New Year's Eve appeared to have come to Germany in 2015 with the great flow of refugees which that year had reached Germany, and most of the suspects came from North Africa. The Bundeskriminalamt further explained that in their terminology, asylum seekers, people granted asylum, and people only on sufferance (Duldung) in the country (because expulsion had not yet occurred), are all referred to as "refugees". However, Arnold Plickert, President of the German police union Gewerkschaft der Polizei in North Rhine-Westphalia, said on 7 January that "there were most certainly refugees among the perpetrators". On 8 January, 31 suspects of various offences during New Year's Eve in Cologne had been identified: 18 of them appeared to be asylum seekers, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The same day, several of the mobile phones stolen in the New Year's Eve were traced by the police within or in the vicinity of refugees' residences. In June 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police Office) further explained, that the majority of the men harassing women on the Cathedral Plaza in Cologne in the New Year's Eve had been of north African or Arab origin and most offenders in Cologne had come to Germany as refugees in 2015, and that in the police's terminology, asylum seekers, people granted asylum, and people only on sufferance in the country (because expulsion had not yet occurred), are all referred to as "refugees". Hamburg – Some of the first eight identified suspects in the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Hamburg were identified as "refugees" according to the police on 14 January 2016. Frankfurt – The first ten arrested suspects of sexual attacks on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Frankfurt were all refugees, said the Frankfurter police on 11 January. Detmold – Two reported rape attempts on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Detmold, by "foreign" looking men, were reported as having taken place "in direct vicinity of a refugees' shelter". Borken (NRW) – Two reported sexual assaults on girls in Borken (North Rhine-Westphalia) on New Year's Eve 2015–16 were attributed by police to "several asylum seekers". == Comparisons and interpretations ==

Tahrir Square :''See also subsection 'Bundeskriminalamt: a combination of six factors' '' Newspapers on 4 and 5 January 2016 immediately pointed out that, although massive sexual harassment was unknown in modern Germany and Europe, the Cologne New Year's Eve events strongly resembled mass sexual assaults on Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, during political mass demonstrations in 2005, 2006 and 2013. The Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police Office) on 10 January asserted that the phenomenon of communal sexual harassment is known in several Arab countries, where it purportedly is called taharrush gamea. In January 2016, an Iranian-American writer and student of anthropology Shams had put in perspective suggestions from Western commentators that mass sexual harassment is part of Arab culture, saying that such sexual harassment is not common practice in Egypt or in other parts of the Arab world, where it is as shocking to average people as anywhere else. Comparison to violence on other celebrations from native German-born men On 6 January 2016, during a women's discussion in Cologne, one of them contended that the sexual harassment on New Year's Eve had not been different from the violence during other big celebrations in the city, and that it had only become a burning topic for the media this time because "refugees" or "migrants", who had recently became a controversial issue in Germany, were the accused perpetrators this time, instead of native German-born men. Likewise, two female journalists, in a column in Time on 11 January, noted that the public discussions since "Cologne" had quickly focused on migrants and Muslim men not being adjusted to Western culture, and had thus become one more fight with men against other men, thereby ignoring the fact that sexual harassment during public festivals in Germany had become an urgent problem in recent years. Likewise, on 13 January, 22 German feminists pleaded in an open letter that the anger after the Cologne incidents should not be directed against groups or ethnicities like Muslims, Arabs, blacks, and North Africans; sexualised violence is omnipresent every day and not only a problem of 'the others' who are not white 'non-Germans'. Sexual assault as a tactic for robbery On 2 January 2016, when nearly 30 complaints about robbery and/or sexual assault in Cologne during New Year's Eve had reached the Cologne police, the police had presumed, via a press release, that the suspects had used sexual groping as a mere tactic to distract women, while at the same time robbing these same women of mobile phones and wallets. Five days later, several Cologne police officers anonymously told the press their contrasting view, which was that most of the sexual perpetrators had been groping or assaulting primarily for their "sexual amusement". Inadequate police response :''See also subsection 'Bundeskriminalamt: a combination of six factors' '' On 11 January 2016, the North Rhine-Westphalian Minister-President Kraft (SPD) and North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Jäger (SPD) criticised the Cologne police for not having requested police reinforcements which they said had been on standby on New Year's Eve. After parliamentary inquiries lasting from March until November 2016, the SPD fraction in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament concluded again that "the deployment of the security forces in the Silvesternacht (New Year's Night) in Cologne had gone wrong, with grave consequences for the women affected". • In North Africa and Middle East– where most of the suspects presumably have cultural roots – sexual assault or harassment by groups of men is, according to the Bundeskriminalamt, a widespread form of everyday violence against women, especially in "economically weak" countries and in "crisis regions". According to the Bundeskriminalamt, this is called taharrush gamea or taḥarrush jamāʿī in Egypt; • Group pressure and imitating behaviour, after seeing a large number of sexual assaults by others already taking place; • Disinhibition from the special occasion of New Year's Eve, as well as by the effects of alcohol or drugs; • Disinhibition from the absence of family and social security, and by the lack of integration in labour or in the school system; • Absence of visible intervention by police forces, giving potential perpetrators the impression that they would get away with their sexual assaults unpunished; • Frustration and aggression, caused by a long-lasting lack of perspective due to the diminished possibilities for obtaining asylum and work. == Further reactions ==

Shock The President of the German police union Gewerkschaft der Polizei in North Rhine-Westphalia, Arnold Plickert, said on 4 January 2016 over the sexual attacks in Cologne: "This is a totally new dimension of violence. Such a thing was unknown to us, until now"; the strongly alcoholized perpetrators had acted "fully unleashed violent". Shock dominated the headlines of the German newspapers of 4 and 5 January. On 12 January, Hans-Jürgen Papier, former head of the German Federal Constitutional Court, stated that the government should separate its granting of asylum from its migration policies and "secure the borders" of Germany. On 19 January 2016, the German Minister of Transportation Alexander Dobrindt of the Bavarian CSU party also recommended closure of the German borders. Hardening attitudes towards migrants and refugees Von Mengersen, head of the nationalist Pro NRW party in Germany, reacted on 4 or 5 January 2016, recalling the recent large influx of migrants into Germany: "We locals can no longer put up with everything that is being routinely swept under the rug based on a false sense of tolerance". The German CSU's secretary-general Andreas Scheuer between 4 and 9 January tweeted: "It is unbearable that in major German cities, women are sexually assaulted and robbed in the street by young migrants"; The Belgian immigration minister on 8 January ordered migrants to take courses in "respect for women". On 7 January, the North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Ralf Jäger said that anti-immigrant groups were using the New Year's Eve sex assaults to stir up hatred against refugees: "What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women...This is poisoning the climate of our society." On 11 January, at a rally in Leipzig organized by Pegida, banner signs read: "Rapefugees not welcome". On 12 January 2016, research by online Internet research firm YouGov showed that the percentage of Germans who consider the number of asylum seekers in Germany "too high" had sharply risen from 53% in November 2015 to 62% in the period of 8–11 January 2016. This drew outrage not only on social media, Demonstrations against sexual violence '' or in the sleeping room at home" In the evening of 5 January 2016, between 200 and 300 people, mostly women, protested outside the Cologne Cathedral, demanding respect for women and action from Chancellor Angela Merkel. On 9 January, a second flashmob demonstration took place, on the forecourt and steps of the Cologne cathedral, against "violence against women", by at least a thousand men and women. Deportation In reaction to the sexual assaults, Hannelore Kraft (SPD), Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, said on 5 January 2016 that perpetrators should be deported if possible. On 8 January, vice chancellor for the SPD and Minister for Economics Sigmar Gabriel fell in line with these sentiments, saying: "criminal asylum applicants [should be] sent back to their homeland" and Hamburg's mayor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also advocated faster deportation of criminal migrants, specifically the perpetrators of these New Year's Eve assaults. In July 2016, Germany's parliament passed a new law on sex crimes which would make it easier to deport a migrant after committing a sex offence. In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) President Mönch demanded more police presence and video surveillance in response to these assaults. On 10 January, journalist Harald Martenstein wrote in Der Tagesspiegel: "An Islamic socialization produces a conception of women that often leads to such crimes". President Kaddor of the German Liberal Islamic Society retorted that Schwarzer is doing "what many Islam-hostile instigators do." The usage of the term 'Sharia-Islam' shows that Schwarzer is not interested in clarifying, but just in using provocative language, said Kaddor. She dismissed the charge of trying to infiltrate the German legal system with sharia as "nonsense". Generally, the press places European values in opposition to Islamic values, as shown by a statement of a German Member of the Parliament published the German newspaper FAZ. He explains that migrants need to realize that they have not come to a ‘value-neutral societal system’ but that Germany, in contrast to their home countries, is a progressive country with fundamental values that everyone must respect. This media representation of Muslim men as sexist and aggressive criminals has provoked an increasingly discriminating discourse among the population. Whereas sexual attacks of Germans have been underrepresented in the period following the New Year’s Eve, such crimes committed by refugees have almost always been in the news. Suggestion of terrorist links to the European migrant crisis On 7 January 2016, Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski contended that the migration wave to Europe, which he linked to the Cologne events, had been used by ISIL or other terrorist organizations. Economics Professor Emeritus Hans-Werner Sinn, ranked by several papers as one of the leading German intellectuals, reacted on 1 February 2016 to "the Cologne New Year's Eve events", stating: Criticism of racism in reactions The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper published on Saturday, 9 January 2016 an illustration of a black arm reaching up between white female legs, which has been criticised as racism by other media and journalists. The Süddeutsche apologised for it the next day. On 11 January, columnist Jakob Augstein, writing in Spiegel Online, denounced this as an implicit racist message, suggesting: 'it's okay for white men to abuse white women, but not for men of the other human racial groupings'. Al Jazeera America condemned the cover image as a "racist machination as archaic as the tale of Shakespeare's Othello". Satire The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 13 January 2016 published a cartoon, recalling the Kurdish-Syrian three-year-old boy Alan Kurdi who, in September 2015, while fleeing with his family from the Syrian civil war, had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The dramatic photo of his dead body, published by nearly every serious news medium in the Western world, had elicited on the one hand awe and commiseration, and on the other hand irritation at 'dead-child porn for progressives'. Charlie Hebdo pictured Alan Kurdi as a grown-up man lecherously chasing a running blonde woman. The accompanying text goes: ''"Migrants. Que sérait devenu le petit Aylan s'il avait grandi? Tripoteur de fesses en Allemagne"'' ("Migrants. What would little Aylan have grown up to be? Ass groper in Germany"). Remarks that the federal government had suspended the constitutional state Two professors of constitutional law and former members of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Udo Di Fabio and Hans-Jürgen Papier, remarked on 14 January 2016 that the federal government had suspended the constitutional state by unconditionally opening the country's borders in 2015. German imam purportedly blames the victims On 17 January 2016, Russian television channel REN TV quoted Cologne imam Sami Abu-Yusuf as blaming the victims for the sexual assaults, because they had been walking around perfumed and 'half-naked'. The imam later protested in a German newspaper that his words had been taken out of context, and that he had only tried to explain the assaults, without justifying them. He argued that they resulted from women being scantily dressed and wearing perfume, along with young men being disinhibited by drugs, or alcohol. Germany facing migration challenge Within weeks, it was clear that most suspects of the sexual assaults had come from North Africa. Analyst Michelle Martin, for website reuters.com on 28 January 2016, considered that Germany appeared "unprepared for the migration challenge": "300,000–500,000 young men, without families in Germany, sitting around without much to do, having come from a male-dominated culture" in North Africa, as a German criminologist and former justice minister from the SPD party had put it. Also, these men were not legally permitted to work. Virtually none of them was entitled asylum as a 'genuine refugee'. About 40% of migrants from North Africa in Germany committed a crime within a year, said a North Rhine-Westphalia police report from 8 January 2016. These young men had arrived with high hopes for life in "paradise", but soon found out all they got was a bed and a small stipend, as the vice-president of the German Moroccan society described it. Thus, these men were vulnerable to being "corrupted by a ringleader who says: let's rob the department store or steal a mobile phone or clothes, and we'll have a bit of money when we sell them". Suggestion that a wrong perception has taken hold In May 2016, the Dutch news website De Correspondent, in an analysis of the publicity since 4 January 2016, suggested that an incorrect public perception of the Cologne attacks, as "a mob of 1,000 refugees going after the women of Germany", had taken hold in the first three days and never went away. It suggested as a more accurate perception, that only "dozens" of young men were suspected of sexual assaults in Cologne. "An end to euphoria" Two years later in 2018, the editorial staff of the Spiegel Online magazine postulated that the events of Cologne's 2015–16 New Year's Eve had ended "the sense of euphoria that had accompanied the welcoming of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany in 2015". == Responses (in actions) ==

Pepper spray, weapons licences Immediately after 4 January 2016 reports about Cologne, sales to women of pepper spray for self-defense exploded in Germany. In the first three weeks of January 2016, requests for small weapons licences (Kleiner Waffenschein) in Cologne and Leverkusen doubled in comparison to the previous year. Vigilante committee In Düsseldorf, where later 103 complaints over sexual offences in the New Year's Eve would be registered, Cologne police chief discharged (l.) and Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers (c.) in the press conference in Cologne, 5 January 2016 Cologne's chief of police Wolfgang Albers was soon criticized, also bearing in mind his questionable performance in two affairs in previous years. On 6 January 2016, the FDP's leader Christian Lindner bluntly stated: "Cologne needs a new start for security, also regarding personnel". On 8 January, even the German Police Trade Union's president Rainer Wendt severely criticized Albers, saying the chief of police together with the police force under his responsibility had caused a communication disaster by first stating the New Year's Eve had passed calmly, later having to admit this first information had been wrong. not informing her that 58% of the first 31 suspects of various offences in the New Year's Eve had indeed appeared to be asylum seekers. Investigation on communal sexual harassment On 10 January 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police) announced a nationwide investigation in Germany on communal sexual harassment, purportedly known as taharrush gamea in Arab countries. Violence against foreigners On Sunday, 10 January 2016, six Pakistanis were attacked in the city of Cologne by around 20 people. Two of them briefly needed treatment in a hospital. Five people that same night attacked one Syrian man in Cologne who also was injured. According to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, "a group of thugs" in Cologne was planning a "manhunt" for migrants. Around 12 January 22 self-declared German feminists in an open letter pleaded that the German law should make sexual harassment a criminal offence, Restraining orders On 27 January 2016, the Cologne police placed restraining orders on some of the New Year's Eve suspects, for the area of Cologne's old town, cathedral, and central train station, during the Carnival celebrations lasting from 4 until 9 February. Closing of a girls' high school On 30 January 2016, a girls' Gymnasium, the archiepiscopal Ursulinenschule in Cologne, announced that the school would remain closed on the day of Weiberfastnacht (women's fasting night), on 4 February. Other schools in Cologne, however, chose to discuss the New Year's Eve's events in the classroom, educating the pupils on alcohol use, date rape drugs, and pepper spray. == Suspects and convictions ==

Investigations Evaluating video recordings As of early January 2016, the Cologne police evaluated 1,100 hours of video footage from surveillance cameras and from telephones of witnesses, but on 18 January, a policeman anonymously said to the press that several of the video recordings of the Cologne Cathedral plaza on New Year's Eve were unusable. In November 2016, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed that because of those crime scenes in Cologne having been both dark and overcrowded, those video images had mostly proven to be of poor quality and therefore not very helpful for the investigations. who was suspected to have groped two young women on New Year's Eve, which led to him being recognized by one victim and his subsequent arrest. Offers of rewards Cologne On 15 January 2016, the state attorney of North Rhine-Westphalia offered 10,000 euro as a reward for informations that would lead to the tracing of perpetrators of the Cologne New Year's Eve sexual assaults, to be shared among all informants. In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) stated that more than 2,000 men had participated in sexual offences on New Year's Eve in all of Germany, but in July 2016 they said that only 50% of the identified suspects had been in Germany for less than a year. On 10 January 2016, the Cologne police were investigating 19 named suspects of various offences in Cologne on New Year's Eve: ten were asylum applicants, nine others presumably illegally in Germany, 14 of them were men from Morocco or Algeria. On 11 January, the number of identified suspects of various crimes in Cologne on New Year's Eve was reported to be 23. On 21 January, Ralf Jäger, Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, stated that those 30 identified Cologne suspects were not members of a known pickpocketing gang. Around 7 February 2016, a young woman identified from police photos eight presumed perpetrators of sexual offences in Cologne on New Year's Eve. By mid-February, 73 suspects of various criminal offences during Cologne's New Year's Eve had been identified. They included 30 Moroccans, 27 Algerians, 4 Iraqis, 3 Tunisians, 3 Syrians, 3 Germans, and one each from Libya, Iran, and Montenegro. In June 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) declared that the majority of the men harassing women on the Cathedral Plaza in Cologne in the New Year's Eve had been of North African or Arab origin, and that most offenders in Cologne had come to Germany as refugees in 2015. One identified suspect of sexual assault in the New Year's Eve in Hamburg was arrested on 21 January and another on 5 February. The suspects were migrants from Afghanistan and Iran. Dortmund In Dortmund, on 18 January 2016, the police said that of the first nine identified suspects of various offences on New Year's Eve, seven were foreigners. On 14 January, five accused men were still in custody in Cologne. On 18 January, the first suspect of sexual offences in the Cologne New Year's Eve attacks was taken into investigative custody, an Algerian young man living in a refugee shelter 30 km away from Cologne. on 16 February to 15 suspects. In late April 2016, the Swiss police arrested another suspect of attacks on women on Cologne's New Year's Eve and extradited him to Germany. Frankfurt On 11 January 2016, the Frankfurt police said that the first ten arrested suspects of sexual attacks on New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Frankfurt were all refugees. Cologne In July 2016, the first two men were convicted in Cologne for sexual assault on New Year's Eve: a 21-year-old Iraqi and a 26-year-old Algerian. They were given suspended one-year sentences. On 25 November 2016, six suspects accused of various offences on Cologne's New Year's Eve were found guilty. The longest sentence was 1 year and nine months, but it was not yet legally valid since the convict appealed against his sentence. The proceedings against 52 suspects were stopped. Düsseldorf By 25 November 2016, in one case for sexual offences on New Year's Eve in Düsseldorf, the accused had been sentenced to 1 year and ten months imprisonment; his appeal against that sentence was still ongoing. Dortmund By 25 November 2016, two accused of sexual offences on New Year's Eve in Dortmund had been convicted. One was sentenced to 25 hours of community service for insults on a sexual basis, the other was fined 1,000 euros for exhibitionism. == Later comparable incidents in Germany ==

Carnival 2016 The 2016 Carnival celebrations were from Thursday, 4 February, until Tuesday, 9 February. After the first night, 22 sexual offences including two rapes were reported to the Cologne police, whereas the two previous years saw 10 and 9 reports of sexual offences after the first night. The Cologne police director commented that "the readiness to report [such assaults] clearly has changed". Of one of the rapes in Cologne, a 17-year-old asylum seeker from Nigeria living in a residence for refugees was suspected, and he was arrested. One rape was reported in Schloß Holte-Stukenbrock that first night, and four sexual assaults were reported in Bonn. A female reporter covering the Cologne Carnival for Belgian television was groped live on camera by attackers of native European origin. Other • At the Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) festival in Kreuzberg, Berlin in May 2016, a four-day music and theatre festival with one million visitors, eight sexual assaults were reported. Four men were arrested: a 40-year-old man from Turkey and three boys ranging between 14 and 17 years old, born in Berlin with a Turkish or Lebanese background. • At the Schlossgrabenfest in Darmstadt in May 2016, a four-day music festival with 400,000 visitors, three alleged sexual assaults led to 18 reports to the police. Young women reportedly were encircled and touched indecently by groups of men. Three suspects, asylum seekers aged between 28 and 31, were arrested. • In Wolfhagen, near Kassel, during a village feast in 2016, the police recorded four sexual assaults by refugees who were lodged nearby. All suspects were arrested. • In the German city of Freiburg in July 2016, a young male African asylum seeker attempted to rape a 27-year-old woman in the ladies’ room of a discothèque; he was arrested. • In Freiburg in October 2016, two women aged 21 and 29 were sexually harassed by 17 young migrants in a park. Three suspected migrants from Gambia aged 18 to 20 were arrested. • In the Leipzig cultural centre of Conne Island in 2016, several of the refugees in the audience were observed staring intently at women or groping their bottoms, purportedly not understanding this was prohibited. To counter this problem, the management of the club abolished the substantially reduced entrance fees for refugees, except for those who registered themselves with an e-mail address. == Alleged sex assaults elsewhere ==

We Are Sthlm 2014, 2015 At the Stockholm annual music festival for youths between 13 and 19, 'We Are Sthlm', in both 2014 and 2015 the police received reports of sexual harassment from around 15–20 women or girls, often younger than 15 years of age. The police did not publicise those reports, but Sveriges Radio reported about them shortly after the August 2015 festival. Finland 2015 According to one Helsinki police chief, after the arrival of 32,000 asylum seekers in Finland in 2015, many from Iraq, 14 sexual attacks on streets or in parks in the capital Helsinki occurred up until the following New Year's Eve. According to the Helsinki police chief, such incidents never previously occurred in Finland. Three Iraqi asylum seekers were arrested for sexual assaults at the square. Sweden In the Swedish city of Kalmar, 15 young women reported to the police that they were groped by groups of men on New Year's Eve 2015–16; 11 reports of sexual assault were made. Groups of men reportedly encircled women on a crowded square and groped them. The first two identified suspects in Kalmar were asylum seekers. Switzerland In Zürich, Switzerland, six women reported to the police being surrounded by "dark-skinned men" on New Year's Eve 2015–16 who robbed, groped, and molested them. Austria In Austria, several sex attacks on New Year's Eve 2015–16 were alleged in local news media. One alleged victim of a sex attack in Salzburg related to an Austrian newspaper that while walking with her friends in the historic centre of Salzburg, they were attacked by a group of 10–15 men. One man grabbed one of the girls, put her head into headlock in his jacket, cuddled her, and licked her face. She had to hit and kick the man to free herself. ==Care for victims==

Hamburg In Große Freiheit in Hamburg, club bouncers arranged a protection zone in a backyard for the sexually offended women on New Year's Eve 2015–16. Stuttgart In at least one case passersby and a club bouncer came to the rescue of sexually harassed women in Stuttgart on New Year's Eve 2015–16, causing the offenders to flee. Dortmund In one of the sexual harassment incidents in Dortmund on New Year's Eve 2015–16, witnesses intervened, enabling the two harassed women to escape. ==See also==