A large number of Europe’s swift and sudden torrent of newcomers are young, single men, jobless and unmoored. The idea that they can be integrated quickly …show more content…
The overwhelmed police were unable to stop the attacks. As one internal police report described the scene, “Women, accompanied or not, literally ran a ‘gauntlet’ through masses of heavily intoxicated men that words cannot describe.”
The Cologne police media department initially described the celebration as “peaceful.” As disturbing details began to emerge, police were reluctant to identify the origin of the alleged attackers because of its “politically awkward nature,” as one leading German broadcaster put it. The main German TV station took a pass on the story. Henriette Reker, the pro-refugee mayor of Cologne, said there was no evidence that the assailants were “refugees.”
Until now, sensitivity to anti-immigrant backlash has prevented honest talk about sexual misconduct among immigrant men; such talk has been condemned as racist in the past. In Norway, for example, there have been reports that immigrants commit a disproportionate number of rapes, but there was pushback. Mainstream politicians and the media have been terrified of inciting xenophobia and fuelling the rise of the right-wing