Assaults in Cologne and other European cities part VI

[HelpTheAnimalsFirst]

Thread 6.

Glen, that sounds good. Ideally (here's hoping!) you can include a link to the petition.

I know MN also want it put up on their petitions page.

Thanks to everyone who has worked hard on this.

I am working so can only dip in and out.

AH Emily so besides everybody else on this thread the German police is racist as well? It's possible if course but it is also possible that the women who were attacked and who talked about it (and I do understand them even the ones with the funny Koelsch dialects) really meant it when they said they had never experienced anything like it before.
I would look up the crime statistics from the Oktoberest for you but I'm about to board a plane.

Allison Pearson tweeted:

@allisonpearson Would you please promote a petition, started on Mumsnet, linked to your article? telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…

So let's make sure she's got a link to tweet.

Suggest:
Links to read regarding Cologne reporting and the wider issues that highlights

Lists of MPs who've been approached and those who respond positively

Lists of well known people who have condemned the events

Academic research from the Norwegian, Belgian and Finnish authorities who have used education as an integration tool and how that success is measured

There was an excellent idea about having cartoon/posters/stickers published illustrating that touching women inappropriately is illegal

Btw, Interesting programme now in R4 about Finnish lectures in refugee centres in equality for women on the equality of women in Finnish society.

"Everyone should understand that in Finland women are equal and to overstep the mark is illegal."

They have increased the number of police in the streets after Cologne style sex attacks last autumn.

They see it as a phenomenon not isolated attacks and are intelligence gathering in the asylum centres as well as spending time talking to the asylum seekers there.

Igne, women at Oktoberfest have been raped and assaulted too on a large scale. I find your dismissal of it quite peculiar.

I haven't said the police are racist. The furore in the press, when previous attacks didn't receive such outrage, is clearly because it can be tied to current fears about foreigners, refugees and immigration.

Your attitude seems to be that previous attacks in Germany are not significant because of the demographic that did them.

On average 10 reported assualts at Oktoberfest, 7 in 2014. Yes that is exactly the same as 700 reported assaults in one night at a public train station. No difference whatsoever.

Great!! I am not on twitter and dont know how to

I think there is also the issue that previous assaults have not involved the ripping off of clothing and digital penetration on the scale that happened in Cologne. I would protest about that regardless of the race or religion of the perpetrators

To try to stop protest at such a horrendous occurrence is very odd. If this was a thousand white right-wing males assaulting possibly Muslim, possibly immigrant females I would protest just as much and suspect emily would be singing a very different tune which, to my way of thinking, suggests that those of us standing up against this are the ones treating races equally

I am running the Twitter account, Alison retreated from.

retweeted

Oktoberfest:
16 days
6 million people attend.

Telegraph, Sept 2014:
So far there have been seven sexual assaults this year, inlcuding two rapes, compared to twelve last year. Overall there have been 659 crimes reported in the first week of Oktoberfest, compared to 831 last year.

So let's assume that if the first week of the 2014 Oktoberfest saw 7 sexual assaults reported, then 2 weeks would see 14 reported. Let's also assume that there was serious under-reporting of sexual assaults, say by a factor of 20. So maybe 280 sexual assaults took place. That comes in less than 20 a day. It's 20 a day too many, I agree, but you have to remember that several million women were there over the course of the two weeks, so probably there were over 100,000 there every day.

Even so, it's all a bit different from hundreds of sexual assaults in ONE area (just looking at Cologne here) in ONE night, where there can't have been anything like as many potential victims.

That's why people are so agitated.

Please create me some suitable tweets.

Petition:

It's not just Cologne, other countries reporting mass sex attacks (then add links)

Get behind a petition to debate and demand Cologne-style attacks do not happen here (link to petition)

I'm not in Twitter but I was sent a link to Alison's retweet.

There are a huge number of people wiring for this petition! Will it just appear automatically once ratified?

Emily I understand your concerns and i'm sure there have been assaults before at large gatherings but this kind of open group assault is different. It happened to me and a friend 25 years ago in Istanbul - just as has been described - it is very different. The day to day open harrassement you get from some majority muslim countries is very different from what we are used to in the UK. To say otherwise is just false. Does every muslim or person act like this - of course not but it is a cultural behaviour for many.

I didn't realise petitions had to be pre-approved by government.

I genuinely thought anyone could start a petition without needing permission, as the main point of them is to make the government aware of items the public are worried about etc. If government can say no before it's even started then it takes away some of the power that petitions are meant to be for imo.

Is this a recent thing? I remember years ago when I lived at home, ore internet, a petition to stop local library closing, or post office closing was as simple writing a few sentences on a pad of paper, making some columns for signatures with a ruler and that was it.

I've a nice long list ready to type. I was going to pop it in feminist chat if that's Ok? Title something like cologne and Europe wide attacks on women petition and suggestions?

Yes I know rubbish title. Please feel free to suggest a better one

LumelaMme Mon 18-Jan-16 13:56:36 that article you mention is here:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11127814/British-man-raped-at-Germanys-Oktoberfest.html

Lisel, I didn't realise that either. Who has to 'approve' of this petition?

Perhaps we should have started it on Change.org - I assume there aren't all these hoops to jump through there.

'Does every muslim or person act like this - of course not but it is a cultural behaviour for many.'

Bamba, it's a cultural problem for a lot of men sadly. I have been publicly groped twice in the pubs I worked in, no Muslim men to be seen.

Day to day harrassment is very much a problem for women in Western countries when unfortunately and stating that it is new is wrong .

I think asserting that this behaviour is anything to do with being a Muslim or religion whilst disregarding the role of misogyny is harmful. The threads have attracted a number of people eager to incite sentiment against particular population groups.

It is a the behaviour of a few men and I still don't see what being Muslim has to do with it. There isn't even any proof that the men were Muslim.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3404602/Shocking-video-shows-Swedish-woman-harassed-groped-gang-migrant-men.html

Watch this ladies I think many of the Nordic counties are rueing the day they welcomed these people in

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/cologne-attacks-algerian-asylum-seeker-arrested-new-years-eve-assaults

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/cologne-attacks-algerian-asylum-seeker-arrested-new-years-eve-assaults

First arrest over cologne attacks!!

'A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, Ulrich Bremer, said 497 women had alleged sexual assault, including three rapes.'

So the number of assults has gone up

Calmyo, you have no evidence that that didn't happen at Oktoberfest. The details are evidently not as salacious for the press when the perpetrators are a different demographic. Women were raped at Oktoberfest, some years it was estimated that the real number of rapes was over a hundred. I'm not sure why you think rape is not as bad as what happened in Cologne. Regardless, groping of women doesn't need to have removal of clothes to be horribly wrong.

How on earth you can claim to be treating race equally is beyond me when you are clearly aiming the petition at a particular group. A poster on these threads, pinkchamp, even said they saw the attacks as an attack on white European women and suggested a protest March against the attacks linked to immigration.

I wonder if any Muslim women are reading this thread and what they think of the so called desperate need to address the problem of sexually dangerous Muslim men.

Kate Green, the Labour shadow cabinet minister for women, has very quickly sent me a sympathetic reply when I emailed her about the issue

OK I'm done now. I've tried to rationalise with you emily but your wilful ignoring of all evidence put forward by others and constant repetition of your opinion as fact is just wearing beyond belief.

Statistics and a reasoned argument about Oktoberfest have been put on this page (see *Lumela's post of 1.36pm) and on previous threads by other posters but you are wilfully ignoring those posts to just keep trumpeting your unsubstantiated opinions. There is an old saying that there's none so blind as those who will not see.

The only person here viewing races differently is you as you clearly would not be using the same arguments of misogyny and excusing the behaviour if it was reported as mostly from a different group of men

COULD EVERYBODY PLEASE REMIND ME NOT TO ENGAGE AGAIN? I can probably find a nice bit of wall to bang my head on which would be more rewarding than this

Looking forward to the petition and thanks to al who have driven this