Merkel Condemns `Repugnant' Public Assault on Women Revelers
- Witnesses report sexual harassment, rape on New Year's Eve
- Cologne incident stokes German debate on asylum seekers
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned a “repugnant” series of sexual assaults on women by groups of young men during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne and said the perpetrators will face a tough response.
With Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere saying “people apparently with a migrant background” were responsible, Merkel stepped into the fray on Tuesday as an escalating outcry among German politicians threatened to conflate the incident at the city’s train station with her open-door policy toward asylum seekers. Germans shouldn’t harbor “blanket suspicion” against refugees escaping persecution, de Maiziere said.