Officials refuse to release the nationality or race of the men, claiming it has no bearing, but one official in Berlin said they were mostly Syrian and Afghani.
In most cases, women were “groped between their legs or their buttocks,” Thomas Neuendorf from the Berlin police press office told Ruptly. “The suspects were predominantly young men from Syria or Afghanistan,” he said.
In Cologne, nine women claimed to have been touched inappropriately during the celebrations, a police spokesman said on Monday, adding that three suspects were identified. German media reported that these three suspects were later arrested. The spokesman, however, noted that there were no incidents like those of the notorious New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne two years ago.
Police in Hamburg stated that they received “a very small number” of reports of sexual assaults during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Munich police have yet to assess the situation. “Experience shows that such a thing [sexual assault] often emerges only one or two days later,” a Munich police spokesman said.
Germany was hoping for a sexual assault-free New Year’s Eve but that didn’t quite work out.
Two years ago on New Year’s Eve, a leaked document showed that throughout Germany, police reported on January 1, 2015/2016 1,200 women were sexually assaulted and they estimate that at least 2,000 men were involved, acting in gangs.
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Many of these women were gang raped, mostly by Migrant or “Arab or African looking” men.
Police also reported that the perpetrators were men of “Arab or North African appearance” and said that Germany had never experienced such mass sexual assaults before. [Before they let more than a million unvetted foreigners in.]
The numbers were down January 1, 2016/2017 but still high so this year the officials decided to set up safe zones for women who have been assaulted or are fearful.
A German police union boss Rainer Wendt told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung daily in an interview that establishing such a safe zone sends a “devastating message.”
“By doing so one is saying there are safe zones and unsafe zones” for women that could result in “the end of equality, freedom of movement and self-determination,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Germany now needs displays that advise women where to go when sexually assaulted. We are quickly losing our freedom pic.twitter.com/7PY0OQxX4J
— Voice of Europe 🎆 (@V_of_Europe) January 1, 2018
