"Hans-Peter Friedrich: "In den Sozialen Netzwerken sind die Vorgänge schon ... "Allensbach-Studie: Mehrheit fühlt sich über Flüchtlinge einseitig informiert", "Cologne attacks' profound impact on Europe", "Silence on sex crimes will make racism worse", "Der Pressekodex. This was clearly a misjudgement. On 17 January 2016, in Stuttgart, an asylum seeker from Iraq was identified and arrested as suspect of harassing two girls in the New Year's Eve. We've been negligent in not at least mentioning the events on 4 January in the 19:00 'Heute' bulletin. On 9 January 2016, Die Welt wrote that "several complaints" had been filed concerning sexual assaults in New Year's Eve in Bielefeld. [3], Cologne [58] A similar assertion about sexual harassment by "refugees" was given during a crisis meeting held by clubs from the Große Freiheit with police on 13 January 2016. [158] Around 12 January 22 self-declared German feminists in an open letter pleaded that the German law should make sexual harassment a criminal offence,[129][130] and the issue was further debated in German society. [33] That news was quickly, but selectively, copied by the prominent newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which reported the sexual attacks but not the ethnic profile of the suspects. The accompanying text goes: "Migrants. [72], By 14 January 2016, according to a report of the Minister of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia, five suspicions of sexual insults in Dortmund in the New Year's Eve had been registered. [190], As of early January 2016, the Cologne police evaluated 1,100 hours of video footage from surveillance cameras and from telephones of witnesses,[191] but on 18 January, a policeman anonymously said to the press that several of the video recordings of the Cologne Cathedal plaza on New Year's Eve were unusable. ", "Deutsche decken sich massenhaft mit Pfefferspray ein", "Leverkusen/Köln:Zahl der Waffenschein-Anträge explodiert", "Die selbsternannten Aufpasser von Düsseldorf", "Einsatz in der Silvesternacht: Kölns Polizeipräsident in einstweiligen Ruhestand versetzt", "Letzte Warnung für den Wachtmeister am Rhein", "Cologne sex attacks: Police chief Wolfgang Albers 'sacked' following heavy criticism", "Germany: Pakistanis, Syrian attacked in Cologne amid tension", "Cologne sex attacks: Mob attacks group of migrants in 'manhunt' for suspects", "Drei Vergewaltigungen nach Weiberfastnacht angezeigt", "Polizei NRW erhöht Druck auf kriminelle Asylbewerber", "Kölner Polizei schließt Tatverdächtige vom Karneval aus", "Gymnasium gibt Schülerinnen Karneval frei – zur Sicherheit", "Polizei nimmt Verdächtige von Fahndungsfotos fest", "Ich nehme nicht an, dass die Täter verurteilt werden können", "Auf Überwachungsfoto identifiziert: Polizei verhaftet Sex-Täter", "Polizei nimmt weiteren Tatverdächtigen fest", "Polizei sucht Mann wegen sexueller Nötigung an Silvester", "Übergriffe in der Silvesternacht: Kölner Polizei ermittelt gegen 73 Verdächtige", "Germany sex assaults could be linked to criminal gang", "10.000 Euro Belohnung ausgesetzt: Polizei sucht mit Fahndungsplakat nach Tätern", "Übergriffe in Köln: Staatsanwaltschaft setzt 10.000 Euro Belohnung aus", "Germany Says 22 Asylum Seekers Among Those Sought for New Year's Eve Assaults", "Übergriffe an Silvester in Köln: Das wissen die Ermittler über die Tatverdächtigen", "Bericht des Ministeriums für Inneres und Kommunales über die Übergriffe am Hauptbahnhof Köln in der Silvesternacht", "Mutmaßlicher Silvester-Täter: Auf und davon", "Übergriffe in Köln: Zahl der Anzeigen steigt auf mehr als 650", "Staatsanwaltschaft Köln: Mehr als 1000 Anzeigen", "Was die zähe Aufklärung der Silvesternacht offenbart", "Cologne attack suspect extradited from Switzerland", "Weiberfastnacht: Frau nachts niedergeschlagen und vergewaltigt – das ist das Fazit der Polizei", "Grapscher stellt sich – begleitet von seiner Mutter", "Mann vergewaltigt 24-jährige Frau beim Straßenkarneval", "Weiberfastnacht: Kölner Polizei nimmt mehr als 200 Anzeigen auf", "Hochproblematisches Klientel auf der Domtreppe", "In Cologne, reporter groped while covering Carnival on live television", "Zahl der "Antänzer" deutlich höher als bisher bekannt", "Frauen bei Schlossgrabenfest sexuell belästigt", "Versuchte Vergewaltigung in Freiburger Diskothek White Rabbit", "Warum Leipziger Linke ein Integrationsprojekt stoppten", "Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year, Finnish police report", "Poliisi varautui uuden vuoden häirintään tehostetusti – kaikista ahdisteluyrityksistä tulee ilmoittaa poliisille", "KRP:n tutkinnanjohtaja: Suomessa ei suunniteltu vastaavaa kuin Kölnissä", "Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year: police", "Swedish women report being groped by men on New Year's Eve", "Flera kvinnor ofredade under nyårsnatten", List of migrant vessel incidents on the Mediterranean Sea, List of migrant vehicle incidents in Europe, 2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2015–16_New_Year%27s_Eve_sexual_assaults_in_Germany&oldid=980436592, Sexual violence at riots and crowd disturbances, Articles with German-language sources (de), Articles with Dutch-language sources (nl), Articles with dead external links from May 2019, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from May 2020, Articles with dead external links from July 2018, Cleanup tagged articles with a reason field from May 2020, Wikipedia pages needing cleanup from May 2020, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from July 2019, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, In north Africa and Asia – where most of the suspects presumably have cultural roots – sexual assault or harassment by groups of men is, according to the. Detmold (near Paderborn): two[9] Cologne – The police president of Cologne, Wolfgang Albers, on 4 January 2016 at a press conference described the offenders of the sexual assaults in the New Year's Eve in Cologne as young men "from appearance largely from the north African or Arab world", after all witnesses had given that racial description to the police. – ordinary Germans don't want the generous immigration policies which led to one million immigrants in 2015; [12] ZDF on 5 January[38] apologized for their not-reporting on 4 January: "The available information was clear enough. [158][167] [160] Al Jazeera America condemned the cover image as a "racist machination as archaic as the tale of Shakespeare's Othello". [37][30], The national news media started reporting the ethnicity of suspects apparently on the evening of 4 January 2016: news website The Local at 19:23h,[11] TV broadcaster ARD at 20:00 in their news bulletin Tagesschau,[38] the Süddeutsche Zeitung at 20:19 in an adapted report on their website. Another tried to get us into his 'private taxi' "; a young woman believed a firecracker was put in the hood of her jacket to distract her: "Then it fell into my jacket and burned everything … My mobile phone was gone afterwards". [186], On the first night of the Düsseldorf Carnival of 4 February 2016, the police presence was also doubled compared to the previous year. [152], 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 such as Muslims, Arabs, blacks, or North Africans, as sexualised violence is omnipresent everyday and not only a problem emanating from 'the others' who are non-white 'non-Germans'. The price is only guaranteed at the time of reservation. The longest sentence was 1 year and nine months, but it was not yet legally valid since the convict appealed against his sentence. [16], Hamburg – The Hamburg police in its announcement on 5 January 2016 described the perpetrators of the sexual harassments on New Year's Eve as men "with southern or Arab looks" "in some cases," operating in groups of perhaps 20 to 40 persons. [50] By 15 February, the number of complaints over sexual offences had risen to 467. [175][176], 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. [14] By 14 January, in nearly all 48 reported cases, the perpetrators had been described by the witnesses as "Arab", "North African" or "southern". [36] The public-service TV broadcaster ZDF at 19:00 that day in its news bulletin Heute Journal completely skipped the item of the Cologne sex assaults because they had not yet found an eyewitness confirming that alleged ethnicity of assaulters. [13][37] The police had been present with 200 officers in the area of Große Freiheit and Reeperbahn but had not noticed any sexual assaults; the first and only telephone call to the Hamburger police concerning sexual harassment came at 3:00 a.m. that New Year's Night. These perpetrators probably knew this behaviour, of surrounding and then abusing women with many other men from their country of descent". [23] By November 2016, around 200 suspects of the sexual assaults, from a total of 2,000 presumed perpetrators,[1] had been identified nationwide. [18] On 21 January, Ralf Jäger, Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, stated that those 30 identified Cologne suspects were not member of a known pickpocketing gang. [21] In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (German Federal Criminal Police) estimated that around 650 women had been sexually assaulted in Cologne in the New Year's Eve. [20], A police officer described on 4 January 2016 what had happened: "Shortly after midnight, the first women came to us. [108] On 10 January, four named suspects were currently under investigative custody for robbery offences on Cologne's New Year's Eve. [18] On 28 January, the police knew of 35 suspects of New Year's Eve crimes, among them three suspects for sexual crimes; most suspects came from Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia. In Hamburg, on 20 January 2016 the police published photos of two suspects of sexual assaults on New Year's Eve,[59] [clarification needed][103][104] Mid-January 2016, Russian newspapers made similar accusations. [77], Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city dates back to 38 BC. Calls to this number will cost 13 pence per minute plus your providers access charge (only for Accor hotels). On 11 January 2016, the Frankfurter police had identified and arrested ten suspects of sexual attacks in the New Year's Eve 2015–16 in Frankfurt, they were all refugees. They included 30 Moroccans, 27 Algerians, 4 Iraqis, 3 Tunisians, 3 Syrians, 3 Germans, and one each from Libya, Iran, and Montenegro. [223], On Helsinki's Senate Square (Finland), where 20,000 people had gathered for New Year's Eve 2015–16 celebrations, women had complained to "security personnel" about asylum seekers groping their breasts and unwelcomely kissing them, as the police reported. [86][200] One Cologne policeman stated he had detained eight suspects for various offences that night, all asylum seekers. In late January 2016, police in Frankfurt were investigating ten men suspected of pickpocketing, but not directly sexual violence, on New Year's Eve near the Eiserner Steg footbridge in the city centre. Back to the top, Destination, hotel name (required fields). [4], The Hamburg professor of law Reinhard Merkel stated on 18 January 2016, "I don't suppose the perpetrators will be sentenced". [58] In late 2014, some underaged "refugees" had reportedly robbed clients of prostitutes during their negotiations; these youths were then ruthlessly beaten up by der Kiez, said this bouncer. [191], Since 2014, the Düsseldorf police [197] in the so-called "Casablanca"-project had registered 2,200 suspects from North Africa who were supposedly criminally active,[196][197] in Düsseldorf. [116], As of 6 April 2016, the Cologne police had traced 153 suspects in relation to various offences on New Year's Eve; 149 of them were foreigners, with 103 of this group from Morocco or Algeria, 68 asylum applicants, 18 others presumably illegally living in Germany. If a state, for example Germany, neglects to effectively protect its borders and thus to protect its public assets and its social security system, chaos, violence and inefficiency would damage that state to such a degree that it could no longer fulfil its aforementioned humanitary assignments. [36][13], On 5 January, also Cologne's police chief Albers called the sex attacks "a completely new dimension of crime",[114] but the German Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) that day went even further, declaring these assaults a "completely new dimension of organized criminality"[16]. [41], By 8 January 170 women had reported various crimes during New Year's Eve in Cologne, including two rapes. One man stole my friend's bag. [26][149][151] 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. [45] By 15 January, the total number of complaints was 676; 347 of these included sexual offences. [53], On 5 January, the same website reported that a handful of further purported victims had reported themselves, not specifying how many of them had purportedly been sexually assaulted. [33] Witnesses said five days later that the groups were about 30 to 40 men. [7] By November 2016, for 41 sexual offences on New Year's Eve in Düsseldorf, the officials had traced one or more suspects. [141]On 15 January, the German Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), also stated that: "We must now secure the outer Schengen borders". [71], Hamburg [125][19][110], In January 2016, an Iranian-American writer and student of anthropology 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. [77], All of Germany [3], After the breaking of the news of the mass sexual assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne, on 4 January 2016, similar reports started to reach the police in Düsseldorf. [46] On 21 January, the total number of complaints was 821; 359 of them included sexual offences,[18] three of them rape;[47][48][49] while some complaints included more than one victim, 1,049 people were affected in total. "[93][37], Because of the perception that the ethnic background of the sex assaulters 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-refugees sentiments. [191] By 17 March, the Cologne police held 14 people in investigative custody, two of them for sexual offences on New Year's Eve. [208] On 16 February 2016, an investigation ran in Cologne against 73 suspects of theft, sexual assault, or other offences on New Year's Eve, 60 of them of North African descent. [30] An analyst in Die Zeit has suggested that until 4 January 2016, those national media had suppressed reporting the ethnicity of the crime suspects of New Year's Eve because the press codex in force ordered them to do so. [128] 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 everyday and not only a problem of 'the others' who are not white 'non-Germans'. [185], On 11 January 2016, columnist Jakob Augstein in Spiegel Online argued that the German laws concerning sex crimes were lagging behind, because under the current law, unconsentual sex in Germany was only a penal offence in case the unwilling participant had physically, noticeably defended himself or herself:[160][167] simply saying "No" was not enough to find a defendant guilty. [161] President Kaddor of the German Liberal Islamic Society[162] retorted that Schwarzer is doing "what many Islam-hostile instigators do." [51][85][196], On 17 March, the Staatsanwaltschaft (state attorney) in Cologne was investigating 120 accused, but at the most two of them were accused of sexual offences. One man grabbed one of the girls, put her head into headlock in his jacket, cuddled her, and licked her face. [85], Between 22:00h and 5:00 a.m. 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. 'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Disney+, le futur service concurrent de Netflix de Mickey, se dévoile, “Un village à la diète”, la nouvelle émission de coaching de TF1, Open 13 : Interview d’Hugo Gaston, après son premier match ATP, alexandreboero.com – Le site Médias et Sports. [30] The 20:00h news bulletin Tagesschau from the German public-service TV broadcaster ARD however did report on the Cologne events, including the police statement that the offenders, judged by their looks, had come from the Arab or North-African regions. [228][229] Groups of men reportedly encircled women on a crowded square and groped them. [69][71] In one incident a group of ten "North African" men sexually assaulted three women,[37][69] in another incident three men harassed and indecently touched a group of four women and stole a phone from them. 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'. [205] After publishing photos of five suspects of sexual harassment on 8 March 2016, the police of Cologne arrested two of them within one day. [138] 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";[138] the CDU had between 4 and 9 January proposed in a draft announcement that allegedly suspicious refugees should be taken into custody. [3], Dortmund 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. [56] The Bundeskriminalamt further explained that in their 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". [115] 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. The Düsseldorf police said on 6 January 2016 that they were now investigating whether any of those suspects were involved in the theft and sex crimes on Cologne New Year's Eve 2015–16. Instead, the Cologne police chief suggested that the perpetrators had come from countries where such sexual assaults by groups of men are common. [7][7] By November 2016, at least five suspects strictly of sexual offences in Dortmund in the New Year's Eve had been identified, and persecuted. ), 'Silvesternacht. [187], 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, [59] On 21 January, it were 218 complaints regarding 351 victims,[68] and on 4 February 236 complaints including two for rape, involving 400 women reportedly being sexually harassed. OM Metz streaming direct Foot, streaming Marseille FC Metz en direct live, Regarder OM Metz streaming OM PSG streaming OL streaming foot MONACO streaming Rugby stream These perpetrators probably knew this behaviour of surrounding and then abusing women with many other men from their country of descent". By April 2016, two-thirds of the identified 153 suspects in Cologne of sexual and other crimes on the New Year's Eve were originally from Morocco or Algeria, 44% were asylum seekers, another 12% were likely to have been illegally in Germany, and 3% were underaged unaccompanied refugees. By subscribing I agree that BVB (Borussia Dortmund GmbH & Co. KGaA, Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. [14] Only as of 4 January 2016, after the news about Cologne was widely published, did reports about such sexual assaults reach the Düsseldorf police. What would little Aylan have grown up to be? [77] 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. [45] On 20 January, the Cologne authorities had traced 30 suspects in relation to various offences on New Year's Eve,[7] all North Africans,[49] 25 of them having originated in Morocco or Algeria. [192], General By 25 November 2016, two accused of sexual offences on New Year's Eve in Dortmund had been convicted. ', "Cologne Attacks: Our Response Must Be Against Sexual Violence, Not Race, Say Feminists", "Vorrangig ging es den Tätern um Sexualstraftaten", 'Kraft unterstützt Innenminister in seiner Kritik an Polizei', "Äußerungen zur Kölner Silvesternacht Kölner Imam nimmt frauenfeindliche Aussage zurück", "Papier rechnet mit deutscher Flüchtlingspolitik ab", "Dobrindt spricht von einem Pakt gegen Deutschland", "Germany's bad answer to the Cologne attacks", "After Cologne, Slovakian PM Fico seeks emergency EU summit", "German attitudes to immigration harden following Cologne attacks", "Europe in crisis over sex attacks by migrants amid calls for emergency EU meeting", "Cologne sex attacks 'require police rethink, "Angela Merkel says Germany has lost control of the refugee crisis amid public anger over Cologne sex attacks", "German protesters: 'Rapefugees not welcome, "Mayor of Cologne says women should have code of conduct to prevent future assault", "Twitter storm as Cologne mayor suggests women stay at 'arm's length' from strangers", "DUTCH CABINET, MPS ANGERED BY COLOGNE MAYOR'S MASS SEX ASSAULT REMARKS", "Cologne sex attacks: Women protest against assaults by gangs", 'Frauen flashmob am Kölner Dom, 9. On 8 January 2016, the German federal police knew the names of 31 suspects of various offences on New Year's Eve nationwide, most of them for inflicting physical harm or robbery; none of them were suspected of sexual offences. [168], 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. [3], Frankfurt has borne fruit. Rather it is so that such sexual assaults by groups are also a huge problem in, for example, Cairo. (In: The German press codex has been altered in 2017. [17], 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". [5], Düsseldorf From then on, we were keeping an eye out for women in the crowd. [28][81][83] But a high commissioner of the Cologne police deployed that night at the scene, contended on 7 January in Die Welt that at 21:45h the crowd on the plaza and cathedral steps randomly shooting fireworks and throwing bottles, "mostly men with migration background", counted already "several thousand", and kept growing until 23:00h. Four of these suspects were unaccompanied underaged refugees. [53], Cologne – The police president of Cologne, Wolfgang Albers, on 4 January 2016 at a press conference described the offenders of the sexual assaults in the New Year's Eve in Cologne as young men "from appearance largely from the north African or Arab world",[11][82] after all witnesses had given that racial description to the police. In July 2016, the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police) noted that nationwide, judicial proceedings against 120 suspects of sexual violence the last New Year's Eve in Germany had been instituted. [33] 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". [22] News medium Daily Telegraph presumed that this governmental cover-up had been motivated by the fact that most of the perpetrators of the assaults had been foreigners. They were given suspended one-year sentences. [52] By 6 April, the total number of reported crimes in Cologne's New Year's Night was 1,529, a total of 1,218 victims were involved, 529 of them were victims of sexual offences. [53][54] Many of the early reported victims were not residents of Stuttgart but came from minor cities like Ulm and Konstanz in the hinterland, visiting this Swabian metropolis for Silvester celebrations. [137], Mr. On Sunday, 17 January, nearly 300 police officers sealed off several streets in the vicinity of Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof, to check out some 300 North Africans in the area. In February 2016, an 18-year-old girl from Mönchengladbach, sexually harassed in Düsseldorf on New Year's Eve, recognized her harasser on television, which led to his arrest on around 14 February. [72], Coordinates: 50°56′32″N 6°57′28″E / 50.9422°N 6.9578°E / 50.9422; 6.9578, Overview about the 2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, Developing publicity over the extent of the assaults, Anger at media and government after 'late' reporting the attacks, Belated media reporting the ethnicity of assaulters, Anger towards authorities, government and police, Speculation that the attacks were premeditated, Description of offenders (before their identification), Hardening attitudes towards migrants and refugees, Demonstrations against sexual violence and against blaming it on migrants, 'The Government has suspended the constitutional state', 'Russian television misquoting a German imam', Investigation on communal sexual harassment, Police raids on criminal refugees and North Africans, Checking previously suspected North Africans, Background: previous troubles with 'refugees' or 'immigrants' in Germany. [30], Such suspicions towards government and media were enhanced by the specifically German memories of the racial policies of the German Nazi regime (1933–45)[30] and the already existing political controversy over Germany's 'open-door policy' towards refugees in 2015,[41] which made (further) criticism on the presence or the behaviour of ethnic minorities highly delicate. [21][209] 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. [181] The same day, Cologne's mayor Reker accused Albers of holding information from her,[183] 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. OM / Metz : Sur quelle chaîne TV et à quelle heure ? [91] 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 many of the incidents, women in public places had been surrounded and assaulted by groups of men. The Cologne police director commented that "the readiness to report [such assaults] clearly has changed". Two of the Pakistanis briefly needed treatment in a hospital. [31] Also the Cologne tabloid Express that day at 21:08 reported the incidents: "New Year's Eve, Central Train Station: Young women sexually harassed". Januar 2016', "Thousands protest in Cologne to 'reclaim feminism, "De Maizière übt massive Kritik an Kölner Sicherheitskonzept", "Köln: Sigmar Gabriel fordert schnellere Abschiebungen", "Olaf Scholz: Kriminelle Flüchtlinge schneller abschieben", "Germany rape law: 'No means No' law passed", 'Es geht um den Islam, nicht um Flüchtlinge', "Alice Schwarzer warnt vor 'Scharia-Islam, "Schäuble will Autofahrer in Asylkrise zur Kasse bitten", "Warum geschlossene Grenzen auch Freiheit bedeuten", 'Papers criticized for 'racist' Cologne covers', '"SZ"-Chefredacteur entschuldigt sich für Illustration', "German rape law finally accepts that no means no – but is a statute enough? According to the Helsinki police chief, such incidents never previously occurred in Finland. ", "Sexuelle Belästigung: Das Phänomen "taharrush gamea" ist in Deutschland angekommen", "Cologne attackers were of migrant origin – minister", "Cologne attacks 'not organized': police chief", "Taharrush Gamea and sexism are not Arabic cultural practices", "No one is asking the women in Cologne what they feel", "Reaction to Cologne Attacks Should Focus on Women's Rights", 'Against sexualised violence and racism. [86][131], 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.