Germans search for pepper spray and guns following mass sex attacks by migrants

THINGS are getting ugly in Germany as backlash grows over alleged sex attacks by migrants. This depressing graph says it all.

Scary graph explains nation’s fear

INTERNET search data paints a bleak picture of the situation facing Germany as the country struggles to come to grips with the growing scandal around mass sex attacks by migrants.

Searches for pepper spray (“pfefferspray”) and firearms licences (“waffenschein”) have skyrocketed since the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne, Google Trends data shows.

Meanwhile, interest in the term “refugees welcome” — more popular than the German translation — has plummeted from its peak in August and September.

According to Google AdWords, which has not yet released January data, Germans searched for firearms licences 293,530 times in December, up 16 per cent on the previous month.

The term “waffenschein”, which had been steadily increasing since June last year, saw a massive spike between October and November, when it jumped by 84 per cent from 138,180 to 253,830 searches.

“Pfefferspray” has seen a similar surge in search volume. Between August and September searches nearly doubled from 52,204 to 105,170, peaking in November at 146,490.

December saw a dip to 88,490 searches, but partial monthly data from Google Trends suggests there will be another spike in January. On Amazon.de, 14 of the top 20 selling items in the sports and leisure category are currently pepper spray brands.

The top selling products on Amazon’s German site.

AdWords data shows searches for “refugees welcome shirt”, the top search term associated with “refugees welcome”, spiked at 242,760 in the month of September, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel now infamously opened Germany’s borders.

When migrants began arriving, many Germans turned up to reception centres to welcome them with flowers, often wearing shirts and holding banners proclaiming “We love refugees” or “Refugees welcome”.

In November, the Refugees Welcome organisation in the western city of Bonn was forced to apologise to attendees of a welcoming party after women were “molested, touched and harassed” by male refugees.

“Single men, who do not know how to behave, exist in every country and society as well as patriarchal structures which come to light through such behaviour,” the group wrote on its website.

“However, we do not want to deny that there are cultural differences. But instead of just adversely pointing fingers at those who misbehave, we believe it’s as important for everyone in our civil society to tackle these differences in the daily integration.”

German police patrol in front of the central railway station in Cologne on Monday.

According to a poll by the Sunday edition of the newspaper Bild, less than 40 per cent of Germans now believe the police can ensure their safety, and about half of those polled worry a Cologne-style attack could occur in their own area.

It comes as vigilantes vowed to “clean up the streets” of Cologne, with local police saying at least 11 foreigners, including Pakistanis, Guineans and Syrians, had been injured on Sunday evening in revenge attacks.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on Monday condemned the reprisals, warning against a broader backlash against refugees.

Thousands of protesters rallied in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Monday against a record refugee influx they blamed for the New Year’s Eve sexual violence.

“We are the people”, “Resistance!” and “Deport them!”, chanted the flag-waving crowd at the rally of LEGIDA, the local chapter of xenophobic group PEGIDA, the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”.

“Refugees not welcome!” read one sign, showing a silhouette of three men armed with knives pursuing a woman, while another declared “Islam = terror”.

The Times reports police have identified 19 suspects over the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults, including 10 asylum seekers and nine illegal immigrants, after 516 criminal complaints, 237 of which were of a sexual nature.

Michelle described on German television how she was attacked.

In an interview with German television station SWR Fernsehen, a 26-year-old victim named Selina described how she and her friend were surrounded by up to 100 men who “[overwhelmingly] spoke Arabic”.

“They all looked at us like we were free meat at the supermarket, fair game, checking to see if it’s still fresh,” she said. “There were hands that touched us, our butts and other parts of our bodies. It is simply indescribable. Never in my life before was I so afraid.”

Asked what she thought the attackers wanted, she said: “Humiliation. Take my dignity. I don’t know. Make me afraid. I just don’t know. Satisfaction of sexual lust ... I have no idea.”

Another victim, a 26-year-old woman, told the Telegraph: “It was terrifying, I got separated from my boyfriend and they were pulling at my clothes.

“I thought I would be raped right there in public. I screamed for help but everywhere I looked the same thing was happening; attack and robbery. But just women. They targeted us because we were women.”

According to a leaked police report, published in German media, one of the attackers told police: “I am Syrian. You have to treat me kindly: Mrs Merkel invited me.”

The report, written by a senior officer, added: “When we arrived [at the square] our vehicles were pelted with firecrackers. On the cathedral steps were a thousand people, mainly of immigrant background, who were indiscriminately throwing fireworks and bottles into the crowd.

“Women literally had to run the gauntlet through the mass of drunk men in a way you can’t describe ... many came to officers shocked and crying to report sex assaults. We were unable to respond to all the offences. There were just too many.”

More than 500 criminal complaints have been filed over the Cologne attacks.

Last week, two suspects, a 16-year-old from Morocco and a 23-year-old from Tunisia, were arrested outside the main station and briefly held in connection with the attacks but released for lack of evidence.

One of the men was allegedly carrying a handwritten crib sheet with crude phrases in German and Arabic including “great t***”, “I want to f*** you” and “I’ll kill you”.

Reports of similar attacks, which Justice Minister Heiko Maas said over the weekend appeared to have been co-ordinated, have emerged across Europe in cities including Frankfurt, Hamburg, Helsinki, Zurich, Salzburg, Stuttgart and Dusseldorf.

In Sweden, authorities have been accused of attempting to cover up similar mass sexual assaults at a music festival in the centre of Stockholm in August, and failing to warn the public of similar incidents the previous year.

Dagens Nyheter reported over the weekend that around 90 migrants — including up to 50 Afghan refugees — sexually assaulted girls as young as 11 at the crowded festival, with the newspaper saying police did not mention the attacks until it published details about them.

In a memo seen by the newspaper, police urged vigilance at the festival, catered to 12- to 17-year-olds, due to problems the previous year “with young men who rub themselves against young girls”.

“As soon as you came out in the crowd they began to grope,” one 15-year-old girl told the newspaper. According to the AFP news agency, there were reports of 17 sexual assaults and one rape during the 2014 music festival, and 19 sexual assaults and one rape in 2015.

The police chief was quoted as saying the police had avoided publicising the incident “because we’re afraid that it plays into the hands of the Swedish Democrats”, referring to the populist anti-migration party.

Counter demonstrators hold a sign reading “Rascist, you are disgusting”.

The Dagens Nyheter newspaper itself has now been accused of participating in the cover-up, with the evidence emerging that it was informed of the attacks in August, but refused to publish the story after an editor labelled the claims a “fabrication” by the Swedish Democrats.

The mass sex attacks came on the same night Chancellor Merkel used her New Year’s Eve address to call on Germans to see the record migrant influx as “an opportunity for tomorrow”.

According to the UNHCR, 58 per cent of the more than 1 million migrants who arrived in Europe last year were adult men, 17 per cent were women, and the remainder were children, the ABC reports.

Authorities in Denmark and the German region of Bavaria are experimenting with special education classes for male migrants, first pioneered in Norway, to prevent sexual and other violence and “know the difference between right and wrong”.

A course manual for students in Norway sets out a simple rule: “To force someone into sex is not permitted in Norway, even when you are married to that person.”

One African asylum seeker, 33-year-old Abdu Osman Kelifa, told The New York Times when he first arrived in Europe he was shocked to see women in skimpy clothes and drinking alcohol in public — something only prostitutes do back home.

Mr Kelifa said he had learned how to read previously baffling signals from women who wear short skirts, smile or simply walk alone at night without an escort.

“Men have weaknesses and when they see someone smiling it is difficult to control,” he said. “[In Eritrea] if someone wants a lady he can just take her and he will not be punished.”

He added that Norway treated women differently. “They can do any job from prime minister to truck driver and have the right to relax [in bars or on the street without being bothered],” he told TheNew York Times.