This graph focuses on the over -representation of the number of foreigners implicated in acts of sexual assault in Germany, compared to the number they are in the general population of the country. An illustration of trends present, once again, everywhere in Europe.
But Germany has a particular history with the subject for having lived, on the night of December 31, 2015, in Cologne, chaos scenes that had stunned Europe. The next day, witnesses reported an invasion of the city center by hundreds of people-described as being able to be migrants-violent, especially towards women. But the authorities were slow to react, some referring this reality to simple rumors propagated by social networks …
Until the facts are specified. Ten days later, the German authorities indicated that 561 complaints had been filed by women victims of violence, or even rape. And the report was concerned about the importation of the practice of “Taharrush Gamea”, a modus operandi Known in Arab countries, consisting in sexually harassing women in crowds. The few people identified or arrested were not Syrian – the nationality concerned by the reception policy of Angela Merkel in 2015 -, but the vast majority came from North Africa. No doubt she had taken advantage of the migratory wave to enter Europe: in an interview with Figaro In 2021, the director general of the French Office of Immigration and Integration revealed that “Of the 1.2 million people who entered Germany, only 36 % were Syrian”.
It was ultimately in July 2016 that an report from the Federal Criminal Police Office came to add details on what had happened in Cologne, as elsewhere in the country: that night, 1,200 women were allegedly attacked by more than 2,000 men. Only 120 suspects were then identified, but the confirmation was clear: “There is a link between this phenomenon and strong immigration, especially in 2015”cut Holger Münch, president of the Federal German Criminal Police Office, with the German press.
