Germany

Last weekend, some 1,700 Germans turned out for a PEGIDA rally in Cologne to protest the wave of sexual assaults that unfolded in the city on New Year’s Eve in the town center.

PEGIDA nearly faded into obscurity early last year when then-leader Lutz Bachmann posted a picture of himself dressed as Hitler on Facebook with the caption “He’s Back”, but thanks to the 1.1 million Mid-East asylum seekers that poured across Germany’s borders in 2015, the anti-immigrant group has seen something of a resurgence over the past six or so months.

On Sunday, we learned that the man who stormed a Paris police station while waving a meat cleaver and donning a fake bomb vest once lived in a center for asylum seekers in Germany and may have ties to the wave of sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

The revelations came just a day after some 1,700 people turned out for a PEGIDA rally where demonstrators waved anti-migrant banners and called for the ouster of Angela Merkel.

Angela Merkel just can’t catch a break these days.

The “Iron Chancellor” was already under intense pressure to effectively repeal Germany’s open-door policy on Mid-East refugees after attacks in Paris left 130 dead and a bomb scare in Hannover forced the evacuation of two soccer stadiums. Then, on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of men purportedly of “Arab origin” sexually assaulted women gathered in Cologne’s city center in what has been variously described as a premeditated mass attack.

In an interview in Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, the country’s Development Minister, Gerd Müller, says:

The people fleeing hunger, misery, violence, and because they see no future for themselves and their families. But we live in a globalized world. We can not build fences around Germany and Europe. When people suffer, they will come. … The biggest refugee movements are ahead: Africa’s population will double in the coming decades.

Und:

Anger over a wave of sexual assaults that occurred across the EU on New Year’s Eve reached a boiling point in Germany on Saturday when some 1,700 people attended a rally organized by the anti-Muslim PEGIDA movement.