Bremen police have admitted that they have at least 24 alleged sexual assault investigations open following a cultural festival where women say they were sexually harassed by young migrant men.
“Breminale” is a multi-day festival in the city of Bremen designed to celebrate the different cultures in the city. Police have revealed that some have used the festival as an excuse to harass and sexually assault at least 24 young German girls. The perpetrators are all said to be asylum seekers and authorities say they currently have 5 suspects, all Afghan nationals aged 17-18. The migrants are said to have committed the crimes in broad daylight, reports German broadcaster ARD.
The main incident occurred at a concert of punk band “Alltag” at around 3:05pm. The sexual harassment was so brazen and obvious to the crowd and the band that the band even stopped playing music in order to tell the migrants to stop groping and attacking the young girls at the concert.
Two of the victims of the attack came froward to German media to give their side of the ordeal. The pair of teens aged 17 and 18 claimed they were groped with one saying: ” I was pinched right on the chest.” The other girl claimed that the sex attackers were widespread among the crowd: “I would say definitely more than half of the women who were at this show and stood toward the far front, were touched by these types. I would say definitely 30 women.”
Harald Lührs, head of the Bremen Police Commissariat for sexual offences, said that the phenomena, known in the Arab world as “taharrush,” is totally new to them. ” We have not had groups of women deliberately surrounded in Bremen. There has never been sexual touching on this scale. This is a new problem for the police to deal with,” Mr. Lührs said.
Expert on Islamism, Ahmad Mansour, blamed the attacks on cultural differences between the Islamic world and western Europe noting that: “These are not isolated cases. These are people who come from certain cultural backgrounds who have enjoyed certain educational methods, with patriarchal structures which certain religious understandings bring favour to, and that has to be mentioned.”
Mr. Mansour himself is an ex-Islamist who warned earlier this year that young Muslim migrants’ cultural differences could be much more pronounced than the German government could have expected at the start of the migrant crisis. Both migrants and German-born Muslims are more prone to radicalisation according to Mr. Mansour who refers to the teens as “Generation Allah”.
The festival attack is the latest mass sex attack that has occurred at a European music or folk festival in Europe. Earlier this month in Sweden a similar mass sex attack occurred and 40 young women reported being assaulted. Only days ago another music festival was targeted, not for sex attacks but by a Syrian migrant who attempted to target festival goers in a suicide attack, but was turned away and ended up killing himself in the detonation, injuring 12 others.