'I’ve
never experienced anything like that': Cologne in deep shock over
attacks
As
police reveal that 18 of the 31 New Year’s Eve suspects were asylum
seekers, the far-right is using the fear to fuel its anti-immigrant
campaign
Kate
Connolly in Cologne
Friday
8 January 2016 18.14 GMT
Laden with an armful
of single white roses, each with a message attached, Abdessadbour Ben
Hamed stood at the main entrance to Cologne’s main station and
gestured to women coming in out of the rain to take a flower.
Some flapped their
hands in rejection, and walked on quickly. Others nodded in
appreciation and took a rose; some stopped to talk and read the slip
of paper.
“The events of New
Year’s Eve did not happen in our name,” it read. “But we also
strongly condemn the fact that they are being instrumentalised for
far-right gain.”
The 28-year-old
chemistry student, who came to Germany from Tunisia ten years ago,
says he was shocked by what happened on the spot where he and members
of the groups Tunisian Youth and the German-Turkish Association are
now standing.
Here, on Cologne’s
Domplatz or Cathedral Square in front of the station, hundreds of men
gathered with other revellers on New Year’s Eve, and over the
course of the evening sexually attacked and mugged an unknown number
of women.
The number of
attacks was so large that there is a growing belief they may have
been coordinated. The violence was not confined to Cologne, but took
place in some form in some other German cities and other European
metropoles from Helsinki to Zurich.
Police statements
backed up by victims’ own accounts initially suggested the men
involved were of north African and Arabic appearance and did not
include refugees. But on Thursday police said that of the 31 people
identified, 18 were asylum seekers. Overall, nine of the suspects
were Algerian, eight Moroccan, five Iranian, four Syrian, two German,
as well as an Iraqi, a Serb and a US citizen.
“What happened
hurts enormously,” said Ben Hamed. “Most of us were born here and
could not be better integrated into society. North Africans have been
coming to live in Germany for 60 years or more. But suddenly we’re
being looked at with great suspicion, because we look exactly like
the people who are accused of carrying out these horrible acts.”
He was not alone in
his anger. “We’re here to apologise to people on behalf of any
Tunisians who might have carried out these attacks,” said
34-year-old Abdullah Brik, a Cologne bus driver, who arrived as a
political asylum seeker 18 years ago. “We want to show not all
dark-skinned people should be put in the same boat, which we feel is
happening right now.”
Nasan Nandinian, who
runs a nearby newsagent, recalled the “large numbers” of women
who entered his shop during the evening asking for shelter. “They
came from the station, and said it was absolutely horrible – crowds
so deep you could hardly move, and men who were intensely aggressive
towards them. They were shaking. Some were crying. I let them stay
here and use the toilet,” he said.
The 63-year-old came
from Iran 18 years ago, and has German citizenship. “I’ve seen it
all – the raucous carnivals that are a mainstay of Cologne life,
the Christopher Street Day parades, and 18 New Years. But I tell you,
I’ve never experienced anything like that night. It was very
unpleasant and not at all joyful.”
His son Robin, 18,
said since the start of “the large wave of refugees last summer”,
he has felt the mood towards what he calls “dark-skinned Cologners”
starting to turn sour. “I get on the train and it quite often
happens that anyone say a couple of generations older than me refuses
to sit next to me. For sure they think I’m a terrorist,” he said.
Since the events of New Year, he believed it would only get worse. “I
try to ignore it but it’s hard.”
Back in the station
forecourt a woman wearing a pair of white hot pants and matching
thigh-high leather boots was posing for a photograph, holding a sign
saying: “We will not be cowed.”
“Well, I wouldn’t
go that far to demonstrate my feelings,” tutted a 53-year-old
hairdresser called Beate – who declined to give her last name –
on her way home from work and clutching a rose. “But it does feel
like we’ve lost our city a little bit after what happened and I
guess all that woman is trying to do is reclaim it.”
She said her
neighbour’s 19-year-old daughter had been out on the square that
night. “She had bruises to show for how she was pushed around,”
she said. “They pinched her behind and grabbed her breasts, and
shouted offensive remarks at her.”
Picture taken on 31
December shows people gathering in front of the main railway station
in Cologne. Photograph: Markus Boehm/AFP/Getty Images
Concert goers on
their way to the traditional New Year’s Eve concert in the
Philharmonie told the Kölnische Rundschau the mayhem had started as
early as 5.30pm when young, clearly drunk men, who according to
eyewitnesses spoke mostly Arabic and French, gathered on the steps of
the cathedral, and began throwing bottles and setting off fireworks
into the crowds. By the time people spilled out of the concert around
three hours later and tried to get back to the station, the mood had
grown considerably more aggressive.
The question many
Cologners are asking is why it took the police so long to realise the
gravity of the situation. The square was not cleared until 11.30pm,
and even then in such a chaotic way that one police officer, in an
internal report, said he feared “people could have died in the
crush”.
Inside the station,
as people tried to get back home, the abuse of victims continued.
“The place stank of vomit and marihuana,” said a cleaner called
Rita, who said she would lose her job if she revealed her full name.
“I saw girls desperate to get back outside despite the dangers,
because they felt even more trapped by the male-dominated crowds
inside.”
Was it, as some have
suggested, because the police have been so primed not to stoke racial
tensions that they did not intervene and then later insisted there
were no refugees among the suspected perpetrators, even though they
had not arrested anyone?
An initial internal
police report released to the Kölner Stadt Anzeiger said that among
an estimated 100 men questioned by police over their behaviour during
the evening there were not only trickster pickpockets typical to the
area – so-called ‘Äntanzer’ or ‘waltzers’ – who dance
with their victims, unbalance them and use the opportunity to rob
them, but also newly arrived refugees from Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan. The compiler of the report admitted he had suppressed
detailing their nationalities because it would have been “too
politically sensitive” to do so. The police have declined to
confirm or deny the reports.
But Cologne now
finds itself in a deep state of shock. Many are aware that the events
which took place in a space that could hardly be more public,
underneath the floodlights of the country’s most popular tourist
attraction, the towering gothic spires of Cologne cathedral, may be
looked back on as the tipping point of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
open door policy. Germany has seen more than a million new arrivals
in the past 12 months, many fleeing war and persecution.
That so many women
were reportedly forced to take refuge from the groping hands and
weapon-like fireworks within the cathedral itself has only added fuel
to the arguments of those who say that a fundamental clash of
cultures is at play.
Many of the voices
are those of rightwing populists. A leading member of the fledgling
anti-immigrant political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)
called it a “foretaste of our country’s impending cultural and
civilisational collapse”.
Mina Ahadi, of the
Central Council for ex-Muslims, who lives in Cologne, said she was
convinced darker forces were at play than just a group of young men,
their inhibitions dissipated by drugs and alcohol, who all happened
to have found themselves on the square at the same time.
“I have no
evidence, but to me it seems too much of a coincidence that young
Muslim men were seen to deliberately fire their rockets in the
direction of the cathedral,” she said.
“That and the
entire way this appears to have a political element to it, including
the humiliation of women and undermining the law – I would not be
surprised if it wasn’t coordinated by people who want to
destabilise Germany and undermine the refugee policy,” she said in
a cafe close to the square.
Germans have been
stunned by the way in which, since details of the violence began to
emerge, they have even seeped into the US election campaign. Donald
Trump remarked on Twitter: “Germany is going through massive
attacks to its people by the migrants allowed to enter the country.
New Year’s Eve was a disaster. THINK!” Such comments aptly
reflect the increasingly brazen views of anti-immigrant protesters in
Germany.
Lutz Bachmann of the
anti-Islam movement Pegida tweeted that Merkel and other politicians
held “joint responsibility for the abuse in Cologne and Hamburg”.
Using offensive terminology, the far-right website Politically
Incorrect wrote of the “hordes” who had enjoyed “great days in
the cathedral city”, while videos posted on YouTube filmed during
New Year’s Eve called for “gas chambers for Muslims” adding
that “Merkel can join them”.
A Cologne policeman
who took part in the New Year’s Eve policing operation, told a
German paper: “I have followed Merkel’s politics. It’s a really
horrible feeling that this is now playing smack-bang into the far
right’s hands.”
The anxiety has
extended to the media, including the evening news programme that
tweeted the question to its viewers: “How should we cover the
events in Cologne?” and baulked at even touching the item itself
until five days after the event.
But nowhere has the
nervousness been felt more than in the office of Henriette Reker, the
mayor of Cologne, who struggled even to find words to describe the
events of that night, initially calling them a “phenomenon”, and
later urging women to adopt a “code of conduct” at night by
“keeping at something more than an arm’s length” from strange
men.
In the fury
following her remarks there was little room for any recollection of
how she herself narrowly survived an assassination attempt on the eve
of the mayoral election in October when her windpipe was sliced
through by a knife-bearing man who resented her support for refugees.
Merkel, who stood
accused this week by Christian Lindner of the liberal Free Democrats
of having “plunged the continent into chaos” with her refugee
policy, has outwardly at least retained her characteristic calm and
conviction that she is doing the right thing.
But this week she
insisted the nation had to “keep talking about the basis of our
cultural coexistence in Germany”. There was no repeat of her upbeat
appeal just over a week earlier, when, dressed in a shimmering red
taffeta jacket, she had urged Germans in a televised new year’s
address accompanied by Arabic subtitles, to see refugees as an
opportunity for the country.
Back in Cologne
station, Marcus Schmidt, a musician, was picking up a special edition
of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the
anniversary of the attacks in Paris last January.
“It’s out of
respect,” he said. “We haven’t suffered a terror attack like
that in Germany, and I would be cautious about drawing parallels, but
we are feeling particularly vulnerable,” he said. “I never
thought I’d be in a situation where I have to tell my 16-year-old
daughter to take care in her own city. I’m a tolerant and open
person. I hate the feeling that my fear is directed at people of
another skin colour.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário