Over 1,000 men of what the local police chief described as “of Arab or North African appearance” sexually assaulted around 90 women in a mass attack in the German city of Cologne on New Year’s Eve.
Yet astonishingly the Mayor of Cologne’s response to his outrageous attack on her own female voters was not to unequivocally condemn it, but to suggest some blame lay with the victims.
Henriette Reker says women should adopt a “code of conduct” to prevent future attacks by what is almost certainly members of the one million asylum seekers Germany has mistakenly welcomed in.
According to the Daily Telegraph, “dozens of women reported being touched and groped. There was also one case of rape”.
In response Ms Reker said it was important to prevent such incidents “from ever happening again” which I at first thought was a sensible suggestion for Germany to rethink its disastrous migrant policy.
But no. Instead, her proposed “code of conduct” – an instruction on how German women should behave around these men of “Arab or North African appearance” – will include staying at arm’s length away from strangers, remaining in their own groups, and asking bystanders for help or at least act as witnesses to any assault.
Ms Reker also said “visitors” from “other cultures” should be taught what is and what is not acceptable behaviour in Germany – which suggests she does know after all who the perpetrators are most likely to be.
But then she adds insult to injury by saying: “We need to prevent confusion about what constitutes happy behaviour and what is utterly separate from openness, especially in sexual behaviour.”
Well, how very reassuring that must be for the young women of Cologne who were set upon by a 1,000-strong sexually-charged mob of 18 to 35-year-old men of “Arab and North African appearance” while they tried to enjoy New Year’s Eve.
Oh, and not a single person has been arrested yet, even though, as the assaults happened in a square outside the city’s main railway station, it is presumably surrounded by CCTV surveillance cameras.
I sincerely hope that is not because the German police feel uncomfortable about upsetting the “other cultures” that Ms Reker refers to.
Just imagine if Mayor of London Boris Johnson had said something similar had such an attack taken place in Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve.
We would rightly be up in arms and questioning his sanity.
Perhaps it’s time the good people of Germany who never asked for these million migrants in the first place to consider the same of their Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and her liberal cheerleaders such as Ms Reker.
Because the decent German people of today are still paying for something that was not their fault – a post-war guilt for a Holocaust they had nothing to do with but which unfortunately still infects their political masters.
The result is women being sexually assaulted en masse and weak politicians strangulating themselves from telling the truth about why.
Paul Nuttall MEP is Deputy Leader, Ukip, and also Head of the British Delegation of Ukip MEPs in the Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament.