Angela
Merkel’s domestic security crisis
Cologne
attacks ‘changed everything’ in German perceptions of migrants.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 1/10/16, 11:18 PM CET
BERLIN — For
months, many Germans have worried that the exodus of refugees into
their country would upend their comfortable existence, straining
state coffers and public services. Now, they worry something even
more dear is at stake: their safety.
In the wake of the
New Year’s Eve attacks on hundreds of women by foreigners in
Cologne and other cities, Angela Merkel’s greatest challenge has
shifted from convincing Germans they can shoulder the burden of more
than 1 million newcomers to reassuring her citizens she can keep them
safe.
That won’t be
easy. Since the attacks, hundreds of women, many of whom say they
were assaulted on the square in front of the main train station, have
come forward to file criminal charges. By Sunday, police had
registered more than 500 complaints, 150 alleging sexual molestation.
Most of the
attackers were described as being of “Northern African” or Arab
descent. Authorities have said some of the suspects were refugees but
the details remain unclear. Justice Minister Heiko Maas said over the
weekend that authorities believed that the New Year’s Eve attacks
may have been coordinated over social media in advance.
Germany’s national
media, initially slow to report on the attacks, is now full of
breathless first-hand reports of the night’s events and
soul-searching over whether it’s acceptable to discuss criminality
among refugees.
The cover of the
weekly Der Spiegel, which hit newsstands on Saturday, carried a fuzzy
picture of the chaos on the square under the headline: “Germany on
the Brink.”
“Simultaneously,
the fears of both pro- and anti-foreigners were realized,” the
magazine concluded.
While security is
important to the public in every country, maintaining strict public
order in Germany, in big ways and small, borders on obsession.
Focus, another
glossy weekly, ran a cover picture of a naked white woman with black
handprints on her body, an image some said was as misogynistic as it
was racist.
In one television
interview, a woman who said she was assaulted at the train station
even displayed the underwear ripped from under her dress.
Less than 40 percent
of Germans now believe the police can ensure their safety, according
to a poll conducted after the attacks for the Sunday edition of the
newspaper Bild. About half of those polled worry that an attack like
the one in Cologne could occur in their own area.
“The events in
Cologne have left many Germans deeply shaken because it became clear
that night that the state hasn’t just reached its limits but is
internally weak and indecisive,” said Berthold Kohler, a publisher
of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and a prominent
conservative voice.
German law and
disorder
While security is
important to the public in every country, maintaining strict public
order in Germany, in big ways and small, borders on obsession.
Pedestrians famously
obey red lights at crosswalks, even if no cars are approaching.
Households devote assiduous attention to separating trash into a
panoply of recycling bins. Public transportation operates on the
honor system. Street demonstrations are coordinated with authorities
down to the last detail.
In short, Germans
expect stability and order in every facet of life.
That yearning, like
much else in contemporary German life, is rooted in the country’s
tumultuous modern history. For decades, Merkel’s Christian
Democrats, which have run the country for most of the postwar period,
have been regarded as the guarantors of that sense of security.
Personified by
leaders like Wolfgang Schäuble, a former interior minister and the
current finance minster, the party stands for law and order.
While the public has
yet to panic, tension is building, both on the street and online.
Police in Cologne clashed with anti-Islam protestors on Saturday,
breaking up their march with water cannons after it turned violent.
Two women survey the
scene at Hauptbahnhof station in Cologne this week. Photo by Sascha
Schuermann/Getty Images
Online forums,
meanwhile, have exploded in vitriol since the attacks. What has
shocked many observers is that radical comments previously found on
extremist websites are making into more mainstream platforms.
The operator of a
popular Cologne-based Facebook forum called Nett-Werk Köln, meant
for users to share local tips, decided to suspend the group after a
rash of extremist comments. The site had almost turned into “a
warzone of verbal violence,” Phil Daub, the man behind the site,
complained.
Attacks changed
‘everything’
At a meeting of the
CDU’s executive board in Mainz over the weekend, Merkel and other
party leaders were told the mood among the party base over the
refugee crisis had hit a new low. The attacks changed “everything,”
said Volker Bouffier, CDU chief in the state of Hesse.
The party leadership
responded with a pledge to get tough, including by making it easier
to revoke residency rights of criminal foreigners and to deport
rejected asylum applicants.
The public “expects
us to follow through with our political will and what we want as a
country of laws,” Merkel said at a press conference in Mainz.
That’s easier said
than done. German courts have made it clear the government cannot
deport foreigners to countries where they could face torture or the
death penalty. Given that virtually all of the recent refugees hail
from such countries, the likelihood that Germany will deport any
foreign convicts is slim.
At this rate,
another 1.5 million refugees will arrive in Germany by end of 2016.
“With this
initiative, the CDU is trying to mask both its own failure to deal
with these challenges and the internal dispute within the party over
the future refugee strategy,” said Roger Lewentz, a regional leader
of the Social Democrats.
Merkel’s refusal
to place a limit on the number of the refugees entering the country
is becoming increasingly difficult to sell to her party. Her strategy
of relying on the European Union and Turkey to help stem the flow has
yet to bear fruit.
If anything, the
events in Cologne, together with the recent terrorist attacks in
France, have made it even less likely other EU countries will take in
large numbers of refugees.
Turkey, which agreed
in November to take steps to prevent Syrian refugees from leaving the
country, has yet to follow through, despite an EU pledge for at least
€3 billion in aid.
Cologne’s
Hauptbahnhof, where the incidents took place on New Year’s eve
(Getty)
Over the weekend,
Merkel again urged her party colleagues to give her more time. But
with the CDU’s Bavarian sister party pressuring her to limit the
number of refugees allowed to come in 2016 and public confidence
waning, her position has become increasingly tenuous.
Further violence
involving refugees, in particular a terrorist attack, would make her
strategy untenable.
So far this year,
German authorities have registered 3,000 to 4,000 new refugees per
day, a rate that if sustained would see another 1.5 million refugees
arrive by the end of 2016. On Sunday, the country’s minister for
international development raised alarms by warning that only about 10
percent of the refugees who had left Syria and Iraq had arrived in
the EU.
“Eight to 10
million are still on their way,” the minister, Gerd Müller, told
Bild.
This article was
updated to correct spelling of Berthold Kohler.
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