Cologne attacks spark rival rallies
Tempers flare in Germany as thousands take part in anti-Islam, left-wing protests
COLOGNE, GERMANY— As Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed tougher laws regulating asylum seekers in the wake of the New Year’s Eve assaults on scores of women in Cologne, the city again bristled with violent tension Saturday.
The scene near the square where the assaults occurred was a tableau of the doubts and perils coursing through Germany with the arrival of more than one million migrants in the past year.
In the afternoon, the police clashed with right-wing protesters opposed to Islam while leftists rallied against sexism and nationalism.
Earlier, Merkel met leaders of her Christian Democratic Union in the southwestern city of Mainz and sounded the more stringent tone she has adopted since word of the New Year’s Eve assaults spread last week.
Details remain murky, but on Friday the authorities for the first time linked asylum seekers to the wave of theft, violence and sexual assault on Dec. 31. By Saturday, the number of complaints to the police about those events had risen to 379.
Merkel seems keenly aware that the Cologne episode has awoken doubts even among those who welcome the new migrants, and Saturday she proposed toughening expulsion laws for foreigners who commit crimes.
“The right to asylum can be lost if someone is convicted, on probation or jailed,” the chancellor said.
Under current German law, only foreigners convicted of a crime and sentenced to serve more than three years are deported, and only if their expulsion would not endanger their lives.
In Cologne, which has a population of about one million and is one of Germany’s most diverse cities, more than 2,000 police officers, equipped with water cannons, dogs and horses, were deployed Saturday to control the rival demonstrations, which the police said drew about 3,000 people. The police spent hours keeping the two sides apart, as hooded youths in both camps, many wearing masks and sunglasses, spoiled for a fight.
Tempers snapped during the rally by about 1,700 supporters of the farright Pegida movement. The rally was punctuated by chants for Merkel’s ouster and contempt for the government. The movement opposes the arrival of mostly Muslim refugees and migrants fleeing war in Syr- ia, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa.
Setting off on a protest route negotiated with the authorities, the Pegida supporters hurled bottles and firecrackers at the helmeted police officers, who then shut down the demonstration because it had turned violent. The police used water cannons and pepper spray to disperse the crowd, said a police spokeswoman, Gudrun Haustetter.
At least four police officers and one journalist were injured, Haustetter said. Supporters of Pegida, the German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, meandered for at least an hour afterward through the train station, loudly chanting their credo and singing the Nazi-era version of Germany’s national anthem.
Left-right tensions have marked German street politics for decades, and the police prepare carefully for such protests, pledging to uphold freedom of expression even if that requires hundreds or even thousands of officers to prevent violence.
In the other rally Saturday, hundreds of women carried placards with messages such as “Stop Macho Violence,” “No To Sexism, Racism, Capitalism,” or “Violence Against Women Knows No Nationalism or Religion.”
Other signs offered positive messages for Germany’s new arrivals — “Those who have fled are most heartily welcome,” said one, with a red heart drawn on it.