Mass sexual assaults in Cologne on New Years Eve Part II

[Pinkchampchoccies]

Just in case people want to continue discussing this.

Justanotherlurker

I've posted on CIF since it started, and comments are usually up for two or three days. They only close them early when they lose control of the thread and can't moderate adequately. Like now.

Venus, feel free to try out any wordings on us for comment and advice if you think it would be helpful. Sounds like you may be in a position to do something useful. (One of the things I'm finding so frustrating is that I feel so powerless - what the hell can I, in my rural backwater in England, do to help women in Germany? I salute that woman performance artist for her brilliant riposte.)

People in Germany are outraged by the way this has been (mis)handled. The authorities underestimated German women massively as they had the courage to report the attacks and prevent it from being ignored.

It's the silence and media blackout that also needs addressing. I don't think we've learnt anything from Rotherham

^^ Ego is spot on with this. Unfortunately, I am not so convinced that anyone convicted would be deported, no matter what their status: it very rarely happens even without the added complication of application for refugee/asylum status, and it's woefully easy to get national courts to back down with the most spurious of proof relating to article 8 of the ECHR (the right to family life) as recent cases have shown. It is often hard to make a case for derogation too (though the French often manage) as the criteria under which this can be done are quite specific and probably wouldn't be met in this particular case.

I've just been catching up with the thread from last night - a lot of people asking why we still have relations with nations where women have second class status: whilst it's nice to think "ethical foreign policy" is a possibility, you need to remember your Palmerston - countries "have no permanent friends... only permanent interests."

And they are very resistant to ever discussing male sexual violence against women as having any pattern to it - it is continually minimised as "just something that some bad men (who are totally different from us) sometimes do".

Yeah, this.

Thanks. Good u, take care

Venus, feel free to try out any wordings on us for comment and advice if you think it would be helpful.

Thanks. I don't want them to stick their fingers in their ears and say lala they're not listening so I can't be too direct. But I don't want a WEP style fudge response either. I totally know what you mean about feeling really powerless at the moment. It feels like women's rights have been set back massively in the last few years, and if we lie down and let them, people are all too willing to steamroller right over us. It's pretty exhausting trying to get the message across to people and I understand why people just give up on it. Some sort of (non-violent, obviously) direct action on a large scale would probably encourage our concerns to be taken a bit more seriously than they currently are but i don't think most women have quite reached that point yet, plus the media constantly minimising our issues makes many question that their own feelings/concerns are reasonable or legitimate.

I think what you have said is enough. More than enough, extraordinary.
But enough is good enough. Take time until the next time xxx

The authorities are now saying that there is evidence that the attacks were coordinated in both Cologne and Switzerland. I am starting to suspect that this is ISIS related. And (before people pooh, pooh this) rape is one of the most commonly used methods of war and it's one ISIS use. It's also an effective one as it requires no weapons but instantly spreads fear.

I think the way CiF has responded is appalling. They only reported the story when forced. Prior to that they were deleting anything which mentioned it. The stories on there have more deleted comments than those allowed to stand, a lot of them were pretty innocuous. And the opinion piece today contained lots of victim blaming and justifying of rape, including saying that the men were seeking 'sexual release' (which implies that their actions are the result of a compelling need and somehow more understandable) and that rape or sexual assault which includes the theft of belongings is a lesser crime because the motivation is robbery rather than sex. Which makes it much more palatable apparently.

The way the Guardian has manipulated it's stories is atrocious. The story about what the Mayor said just includes advice to stay with your group. It entirely ignored the fact she told women they had to 'adopt a code of conduct' to stop attacks. Or that she said it was 'always possible' to stay an arms length from strangers. From which I can only assume she has never been in a crowd at a public event or a station in rush hour.

They've also had stories which have implied that the rapes weren't committed by asylum seekers, saying that none of the asylum seekers has been arrested for rape. Which is true. But nobody has been arrested for rape. Which given the identities of those arrested so far, still makes it seem quite likely that the rapists probably were asylum seekers, or at least migrants.

billsykes I agree that Isis may be behind this. Which means they have thousands of operatives in mainland Europe. Was expecting it but not in those numbers.
Way to go, Angela.

The authorities are now saying that there is evidence that the attacks were coordinated in both Cologne and Switzerland. I am starting to suspect that this is ISIS related. And (before people pooh, pooh this) rape is one of the most commonly used methods of war and it's one ISIS use. It's also an effective one as it requires no weapons but instantly spreads fear.

That makes perfect sense and of course ties in with the NYE Munich alert, which was clearly based on 'chatter' picked up by a non-German national security agency.

I wonder if that performance artist will be out today?

I never go into town really but I'm going to head to the Domplatz today and see what's happening for myself. I want to see police on the streets. If the performance artist is there I'm going to shake her hand.

Excellent thread. I spent a long time in North African countries when I was younger and experienced sexual violence frequently, almost daily there was some sort of unwanted occurrence to deal with. So I did anticipate sex crimes against women would escalate given Europe's open door policy to migrants. I'm so angry, mainly for my daughters. This is going to be huge and very ugly. If the right wing seize cologne then so be it. The left have let us down.

Guardian app deleted from phone.

This article Einreiseland by a Prof for Integrationresearch was on the Spiegel website yesterday afternoon. I started reading, got interrupted, came back to it 20 minutes later and it had disappeared. I searched for it in the archives, found it, it had one comment and wasn't accepting anymore. I assume they got flooded with angry comments and pulled it.
The author suggests building houses, getting teachers out of retiterment and other things but I think the sentence, right at the end, that will have got reader's heckles up is this one "Dabei muss die Politik auch eine Debatte darüber führen, Normen und Werte der Vergangenheit für die Zukunft zu überprüfen." So we have to discuss our values and norms (is that an English word) of the past for the future. She doesn't specify which ones these are but I bet every reader's, including mine, first thought was women's rights and free speech. If I would have had a chance I would have commented, very very angrily, too.
I grew up reading the Spiegel in my political, lefty, working class family and I'm every bit as dissappointed with it than the Guardian readers here are with the Guardian.

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cologne-attacks-trigger-raw-debate-on-immigration-in-germany-a-1071175.html

Good morning everyone. Just wrote a long post but lost it so apologies if it appears again. I have only skimmed thread since last night so far, so don't know if this has been addressed:

The more this becomes about immigration and not about women

This is a untenable position because this argument strips away the important inter-related aspects of the context of the incident, and the posters on this thread have rightly recognised this. The reason why it's untenable is because by splitting the incident into discrete, stand-alone parts, it becomes very easy to disengage from or render as unimportant some aspects of the incident over others. Although some feminisms get a short shrift on these boards, feminists have long drawn attention to this in relation to many behaviours. If you shift the debate, in this case (and obviously, different aspects are differentially important at different times) from 'crime of sexual assault, gender, immigration, ethnicity' to 'crime of sexual assault', then, by focusing only on the crime aspect of the incident, you are actually shifting the spotlight away from the perpetrator's identity, thus rendering this as relatively unimportant. Some would say that's a pretty effective patriarchal strategy

This is why, in my ideal world, on an ideal march, my slogan would not be "Reclaim the night" or "Women against sexual violence" but "Change the perpetrator, change intolerant religions beliefs" (but snappier).

BillSykesDog, do you have any links for that - the authorities thinking the attacks are linked? I've just seen on the Huffington Post a reference to Dusseldorf police thinking it's an organised criminal gang of North Africans.

speakergirl, fine, ok, if you like - yes, I can see that this is extreme patraiarchy in action. We all can. This is part of the point. Instead of having a go and crowing at those of us who try to push against the remnants of it here, why don't you try to think about what you can/ should be doing to stop the 'real patriarchy' coming in.

I have, rather nervously, emailed my MP now. No doubt not very articulately but at least it's done. I said I'd like to see a supporting blanket condemnation of these attacks and confirmation of the principle of women's freedom to roam and right to bodily autonomy from the government/ parliament. That such supporting condemnations are usually issued after extraordinary events like these and that I was surprised nothing had been said. Prerhaps our extensive spying rings could be useful for once to help the affected countries find out what the hell was going on. Further that the question of immigration of large numbers of single males from cultures so opposed to our own and their impact on our culture needs to be examined and analysed openly and honestly. See what response I get.

I'd suggest you all do the same. Thinking about it I should also find and contact my MEP, presumably they would be good for this, and add as someone said upthread that the rights of women ought to be enshrined in the heart of Europe. Perhaps we could all email the existing 'Reclaim the Night' people as well for solidarity marches.

Thanks for that link justanotherlurker I always read the German version and didn't see this one.

Just caught the end of what looked like an excellent interview with a German journalist, on BBC breakfast this morning.

She was saying the German woman, were outraged at the victim blaming of women, the cover up, that women are not listened to...

Sorry I it was just the end of the interview so can't say much more,

Anyone know if the interview would likely be on iPlayer?

On the BBC, Merkel is now considering making it easier to deport immigrant criminals. Which is good and another thing to ask for.

TwatTheNinja it was good, until she added the bit about German men harassing too, and this incident being used as anti immigration propaganda.

This is a fantastic thread, I'm still reading through it from the start.

In 2016, Merkel will import hundreds of thousands more young, sexually aggressive, poorly educated North African and Muslim men who do not share the European progressive liberal world view - particularly in regard to women.

We are at the thin end of a very thick wedge.

I wouldn't even give these bastards a trial. Once they were IDed beyond doubt they'd be on the next plane home. Fuck their human rights, what about the human rights of German women.

Yes, I thought she put across more like, it takes this to happen from immigrants, when in the past women's rights are not listened too either.

Or something like that..