In Germany, New Year's Sexual Assaults Have Given Way to Intense Social Debates

Almost a week later, Germany is still reeling from the sexual assaults that took place in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Gathering outside the city’s main station, a group of up to 1,000 men stormed into the celebrating crowd under a volley of fireworks, grabbing women violently, stealing bags and purses. To date there have been 90 complaints of assault from shaken, bruised women, including one of rape. So far, owing in part to the size of the crowd, the number of arrests is zero.

A rampage like this would always provoke outrage, but the Cologne outbreak (matched by a smaller but similar incident in Hamburg) has one particularly incendiary detail. According to city police, the male attackers appeared to be of “Arab or North African origin.” Now the country has been plunged into a bout of heated self-questioning. Why did police prove so ineffectual? Why did the story take four days to break in the national media? And do the attackers origins suggest, as some have claimed, that Germany’s immigration and integration policies are failing?