The events in Cologne sparked protests across Germany
According to Deutsche Welle, the news of the rampage on New Year's Eve at the station square in Cologne shook all of Germany. Drunk men behaved aggressively towards women, taking away their mobile phones. There were also cases of sexual harassment and rape. The police have already received more than a hundred complaints from victims, many of whom described the attackers as men of 'Arab or North African appearance'.
The police are conducting an investigation, several people have already been identified as accomplices in those mass crimes. Who they are is not yet disclosed in the interests of the investigation, but given the influx of a huge number of refugees from Arab countries, they have become the focus of public attention.
Thus, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere stated that the attacks were 'committed by a large group of people, obviously of foreign origin.' At the same time, he stressed that this fact does not mean that all refugees should now be viewed with suspicion.
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, for his part, speaks of a new dimension of organized crime. 'When a thousand men gather, and many of them become accomplices in crimes – taking women's mobile phones, sexually harassing them – then it all looks like coordinated actions,' he said on January 6 in an interview with the second German television channel (ZDF).
Maas believes that the organizers of such mass crimes must be found, which the police are now doing by combing through various social networks. The justice minister is not rushing to conclusions, considering it premature to talk about the nationality of the criminals and their status in Germany. 'Those who are now starting debates about refugees again were just waiting for a suitable pretext,' he said.
Heiko Maas was obviously referring to the leader of the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), Frauke Petry. For her, the situation is crystal clear. Petry has no doubt that refugees were rampaging at the Cologne station on New Year's Eve and calls the incident a 'terrifying consequence of the catastrophic migration policy' of the German government.
There are indeed indirect pieces of evidence that do not favor refugees. For example, among the approximately one hundred men whose documents were checked by police at the Cologne station that night, there were a number of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Among those detained at the station on Sunday, January 3, the official representative of the Cologne police told journalists, there were also Syrian citizens. A little later, however, it turned out that they were detained on suspicion of pickpocketing committed there that same day.
However, no matter how the investigation into the Cologne rampage ends, whoever the criminals turn out to be, it is clear that the ideas about gender relations among many migrants from Arab and North African countries – both those who have lived here for a long time and those who have recently arrived – differ from those accepted in Germany.
The first German television channel once showed a report about a quite intelligent Syrian refugee family that had already received temporary residence permits, and with them the right to move from a hostel to a separate apartment paid for by the social welfare office. So, the head of the family flatly refused to inspect the offered apartment solely on the grounds that the real estate agent was a woman.
Some German newspapers compare what happened in Cologne to the events in Tahrir Square in Cairo, where in 2011, parallel to mass public protests, groups of young men also sexually harassed women. Journalists recall gang rapes in India, Arab countries, Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic. In the view of men from some countries, for example, the Berliner Zeitung points out, 'women are either holy mothers or, if they do not wear a veil, sluts.'
Many local politicians are alarmed. Berlin Senator of the Interior Frank Henkel called 'unbearable' the situation when 'criminal gangs of sex offenders in the center of Germany hunt women', demanded their punishment and, if possible, deportation from the country. The Secretary General of the Berlin organization of the Christian Democrats, Kai Wegner, is against sweeping accusations of refugees, but, he said, 'an honest analysis of what happened also implies pointing out the cultural and ethical background of the criminals.' Those wishing to obtain asylum in Germany, Wegner stated, must adhere to the rules of conduct in force here.
But how to achieve this? How to change the ideas about women and relationships with them that prevail among many migrants? Answering such a question from a DW correspondent on Wednesday, January 6, Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere pointed to the government's increase in spending on integration courses for those migrants who have good chances of staying in the country. And this, he said, is not only assistance in learning the German language, improving qualifications, finding work and housing, paying social benefits, but also a whole range of requirements for the migrants themselves, the main of which de Maiziere called 'full recognition of our value system, including equality between men and women.'
Also serving this purpose, the minister added, is a smartphone application developed by two leading German TV channels together with experts from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and the Goethe Institute, which clearly illustrates the rules of behavior in German society.
At the same time, Thomas de Maiziere understands that the process of adaptation to life in Germany and its norms will be longer for 35-year-old men than for children brought to Germany by refugees. 'We will not allow the emergence of parallel societies in the country and the change of our values,' he said. 'So those who are not accustomed to the independence of women will have to change their behavior themselves.'