Less than a month after a damning report emerged that a high-ranking police officer has alleged that his seniors tried to strike the word rape from an internal police report after the mass sexual assaults in Cologne over New Year, Germany is gripped in a new sexual assault scandal involving refugees. Eighteen German women have filed police complaints saying they were sexually assaulted at a musical festival in Darmstadt. Police arrested three refugees from Pakistan at the scene after three of the women immediately reported their attacks.
According to Die Welt, the sexual assaults are reported to have taken place at the Schlossgrabenfest music festival in the city of Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, on Saturday night. The festival in Darmstadt took place over four days and attracted some 400,000 revelers.
Three of the women immediately alerted police at the festival that they had been assaulted. They said they had been surrounded and then sexually harassed by a group of men who were of South Asian appearance.
"Unfortunately several women were sexually harassed on Saturday, when the dance floor area was completely packed,” the police said in a statement, quoted by RT.
And once again, refugees are implicated: as RT adds, due to the quick intervention by the law enforcement officers, three suspects, who are asylum seekers from Pakistan and aged between 28 and 31, were promptly apprehended. Police added that there could be more who took part in the attacks that are still at large.
Since the arrests were made, a further 15 women have come forward since Tuesday, to say they were sexually assaulted at the festival. The women added that the pattern of the attacks was similar, as they were surrounded by a group of men, who proceeded to assault them sexually.
These attacks take place just over two weeks after two female teenagers, 17- and 18-years-old, were sexually harassed by a group of 10 men during a street festival in Berlin. The men allegedly pressed against the teens and groped them, blocking their attempts to escape.
Following that attack, police arrested three teenagers aged between 14 and 17 at the scene, while they tweeted that the three suspects were known to the police from prior incidents, adding that "two are of Turkish descent and the third is [of] unknown [origin]."
The attacks in May were reminiscent of numerous allegations of sexual assaults being reported in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Some 1,049 people said they were victims of attacks allegedly committed by men of North African and the Middle Eastern descent, while about 821 complaints were filed with the police.
German police were heavily criticized for their perceived lack of activity during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in the city as well as for their poor investigations into the crimes. Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers resigned a week after the incident.
A welcoming Germany has taken steps to try and assimilate asylum seekers into German culture, with one education center even holding classes to explain to refugees how they should interact with women in Germany, as well as flyers how to interact with women at local public pools.
Additionally, as reported recently, the country went so far as to create a website explaining the "nuances" of sex in Germany, what is allowed, what is prohibited, as well as providing a remedial high school lesson in male and female biology.
“The majority don’t have a clue how to approach the opposite sex in this country,” said sex therapist Christian Zech, who works with the Pro-Familia center, specializing in sexuality, partnership and family planning.
We doubt that excuse justifies the recurring stories of sexual assaults involving refugees and local women.
Meanwhile, the German government has said will allocate nearly €94 billion (US$105 billion) for incoming refugees over the next five years. The money will be used for housing, "integration", German language courses and social welfare benefits, as well as dealing with the underlying causes of the refugee influx.
The Federal Finance Ministry expects around 600,000 refugees to enter Germany in 2016, some 400,000 in 2017 and about 300,000 each consecutive year. In 2015, an estimated 1.1 million arrived in Germany seeking asylum.
Some in Germany have not taken kindly to the mass arrivals of asylum seekers, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa, with German police recording 45 cases of arson at refugee centers since the start of the year, while there have been calls for Chancellor Angela Merkel to cap the number of refugees entering Germany.
Curiously, none other than Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama opined on the current migrant crisis in Europe. Cited by Austria's Krone, the monk said that he is skeptical about the refugee trend in Germany: "Germany cannot become an Arabic country, Germany is Germany!", he told reporters of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".
He added that from an ethical point of view, it is justifiable to only accept refugees on a temporary basis. "The number of migrants in Germany is too high. The aim should be, that these people return to their home countries and help rebuilding infrastructure."
Ultimately, the future of such dramatic scenes may be in the hands of none other than Turkey's president Erdogan, who has repeatedly warned that if Europe does not follow through with its promises of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens, he may unleash another wave of refugees using the "land corridor" which ultimately ends in Germany.