Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
A NUMBER OF different protests are taking place in Cologne this afternoon, a city still shaken by a spate of sexual assaults.
Polic fired tear gas and used water cannon to clear a rally in Cologne by the far-right xenophobic Pegida movement, after protesters hurled firecrackers and bottles at officers.
It follows sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in the city in which most of the assailants were of Arabic or North African background, according to eye-witnesses, police and media reports.
The anti-Islam Pegida protest took place in the same central square where hundreds of women last week ran a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in mob violence that has shocked Germany.
Sirens wailed and police told peaceful protesters to leave as they deployed water cannon to disperse the increasingly agitated crowd.
Police estimate that around 800 hooligans were among the 1,700 who took part in the Pegida march.
A spokesman for the group urged “all participants to go home”.
Separately, around 500 women staged a noisy protest earlier today.
Carrying signs bearing slogans like “No violence against women” and “No means no! It’s the law! Stay off of us!”, the women banged pots and blew whistles as they rallied outside Cologne’s famed Gothic cathedral.
Others waved banners saying “Protect our women and children”, as outrage grew in Germany over the spate of assaults.
Far-right groups have pointed to the assaults, including two reported rapes, as proof that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal migrant policy — which brought 1.1 million new asylum seekers to Germany last year — is driving the country into chaos.
The co-founder of Pegida, short for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, Lutz Bachmann, posted a photo of himself on social media with the slogan “Rape Refugees not Welcome”.
In a similar vein, a leader of the populist right-wing Alternative for Germany party, which has polled at around 10% in surveys ahead of several state elections this year, claimed that the events gave a “taste of the looming collapse of culture and civilisation”.
Police expect around 2,000 backers of PEGIDA and the local far-right group Pro NRW, as well as counter-demonstrators from the group “Cologne against Right-wingers”, local media said.
The rally comes a day as Merkel backed a toughening of expulsion rules for convicted refugees.
“If the law does not suffice, then the law must be changed” she said, vowing action to protect not just German citizens, but innocent refugees too.
Under current laws, asylum seekers are only forcibly sent back if they have been sentenced to jail terms of at least three years, and if their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin.
Merkel said it was time to ask, “When do you lose your right to stay with us?”
A Pegida rally in Dresden in November 2015. Jens Meyer
Jens Meyer
“We should ask ourselves whether it might be necessary to take this away earlier (than is currently the case), and I have to say that for me, we must take it away sooner,” the chancellor said.
“We must do this for us, and for the many refugees who were not present during the events in Cologne,” she told a meeting of party officials in the southwestern city of Mainz.
Frenzied crush
The mob violence at the start of 2016 has heightened popular fears of worse to come, and threatened to tip what was long a broadly welcoming mood that last September saw crowds cheering Syrian refugees arriving by train.
Details of what happened in the frenzied crush remain hazy. Police have laid no charges but pointed to more than 30 suspects, almost all of them migrants and including many asylum seekers.
Among the suspects were nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, one Iraqi and one Serb, as well as two Germans and one US national, the interior ministry said Friday.
It was unclear how many offenders may be long-time migrants or from a scene of drug dealers and pickpockets known to lurk around the central railway station, and how many may have been newly-arrived asylum seekers.
The police force faced criticism in the wake of the attacks. Hermann J. Knippertz / PA Images
Hermann J. Knippertz / PA Images / PA Images
On Friday, criticism of the Cologne police’s failure to stop the violence, and subsequent obfuscation, claimed the scalp of police chief Wolfgang Albers, who was suspended in a bid to “restore public confidence” in the police force.
Cologne police were slow to unveil the true extent of the carnage, and the politically-charged fact that the hostile crowd was made up mostly of migrants.
‘No need’ to call Camogie Association before sporting committee over skorts (yet) says Kelly
6 mins ago
206
2
University Challenge
Dublin student Oscar Despard leads team to victory in final of BBC's University Challenge
Updated
32 mins ago
15.4k
35
Road Safety
CCTV from petrol station captured clear images of crash that killed Garda Kevin Flatley
Updated
8 hrs ago
104k
Your Cookies. Your Choice.
Cookies help provide our news service while also enabling the advertising needed to fund this work.
We categorise cookies as Necessary, Performance (used to analyse the site performance) and Targeting (used to target advertising which helps us keep this service free).
We and our 187 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device. Selecting Accept All enables tracking technologies to support the purposes shown under we and our partners process data to provide. If trackers are disabled, some content and ads you see may not be as relevant to you. You can resurface this menu to change your choices or withdraw consent at any time by clicking the Cookie Preferences link on the bottom of the webpage .Your choices will have effect within our Website. For more details, refer to our Privacy Policy.
We and our vendors process data for the following purposes:
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development.
Cookies Preference Centre
We process your data to deliver content or advertisements and measure the delivery of such content or advertisements to extract insights about our website. We share this information with our partners on the basis of consent. You may exercise your right to consent, based on a specific purpose below or at a partner level in the link under each purpose. Some vendors may process your data based on their legitimate interests, which does not require your consent. You cannot object to tracking technologies placed to ensure security, prevent fraud, fix errors, or deliver and present advertising and content, and precise geolocation data and active scanning of device characteristics for identification may be used to support this purpose. This exception does not apply to targeted advertising. These choices will be signaled to our vendors participating in the Transparency and Consent Framework.
Manage Consent Preferences
Necessary Cookies
Always Active
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
Targeting Cookies
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then these services may not function properly.
Performance Cookies
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to monitor our performance.
Store and/or access information on a device 126 partners can use this purpose
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development 165 partners can use this purpose
Use limited data to select advertising 129 partners can use this purpose
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Create profiles for personalised advertising 91 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Use profiles to select personalised advertising 92 partners can use this purpose
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Create profiles to personalise content 44 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Use profiles to select personalised content 41 partners can use this purpose
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Measure advertising performance 150 partners can use this purpose
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Measure content performance 69 partners can use this purpose
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources 88 partners can use this purpose
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Develop and improve services 95 partners can use this purpose
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Use limited data to select content 40 partners can use this purpose
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
Use precise geolocation data 56 partners can use this special feature
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Actively scan device characteristics for identification 29 partners can use this special feature
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Ensure security, prevent and detect fraud, and fix errors 107 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Deliver and present advertising and content 111 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Match and combine data from other data sources 79 partners can use this feature
Always Active
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Link different devices 60 partners can use this feature
Always Active
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Identify devices based on information transmitted automatically 100 partners can use this feature
Always Active
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
Save and communicate privacy choices 83 partners can use this special purpose
Always Active
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
have your say