Women are sniggered at, insulted, and find men’s hands down their tops and between their legs. Dark corners are dangerous; girls who are drunk and alone are chased and raped. Security and police are nowhere to be seen. Welcome to Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual beer saturnalia. The worst, say barmaids, are Brits and Italians.
Cut to New Year’s Eve in Cologne. Crowds of people, mostly young men in various stages of inebriation, gather on the square between the cathedral and the station to let off fireworks and let themselves go. The crowd, about 1,000 strong, is watched by around 200 police, worried about youths throwing fireworks at each other.
But something more sinister is going on. Women and girls are surrounded, poked and jeered at as “whores” and “cunts”; their blouses are ripped and their underwear torn off. “I had mens’ hands on every body opening,” a distraught girl told the police. More than 100 women file sexual molestation charges against men “of north African or Arab origin”. Yet the station is not cleared, few arrests are made and, the next morning, the police report a “quiet night”. It takes almost four days for Germany to wake up to what happened. » | Alan Posener | Saturday, January 9, 2016
