TradCatKnight: Another Day in Germany: Sex Assaults, a Burning Church, “Allahu Akhbar”, And… Racial Profiling

Silvester in Cologne

Amnesty: Investigate Cologne Police operation

January 2, 2017

Amnesty International now demands an investigation into the Cologne Police operation on Silvester Night. The proceeding must be critically investigated by an independent authority.

The human rights Organization Amnesty International criticized the police Operation of New Year’s Eve in Cologne and demanded an independent investigation.

“Hundreds of people were, only because of their factual or assumed northern African background, bottled up and screened,” Amnesty expert Alexander Bosch said in Berlin on Monday. The most important decisive criteria for the police was the characteristic of the assumed background, Bosch explains, and concludes: “So the operation of the Cologne Police is a clear case of racial profiling.”

The organization’s expert for police and anti-racism stressed that maintaining public order was an important task for the police. The officers fulfilled this by their increased presence, “to prevent a repetition of the inhuman assaults of Silvester 2015.” But the Cologne Police ignored their duty to protect people from discrimination.

Their proceedings must now be critically investigated into by an independent authority, Bosch demands. “Racial profiling is a human rights violation and not an adequate means of the rule of law to reinstall public security,” he said. Racial profiling means that people are controlled because of their appearance, and their thereby assumed background. On Silvester Night, the Cologne police mainly screened Northern Africans and in part retained them. (epd)

Silvester in Dortmund: “Allahu Akhbar” and a church on fire

January 1, 2017

A mob of more than 1,000 men allegedly fired pyrotechnics at police. Syrians shouted the Islamic battle cry “Allahu Akhbar”, and the fire brigade had to extinguish a burning church. “Essentially, from the viewpoint of the City of Dortmund, it was a normal Silvester night for Dortmund,” a municipal spokesman said on Sunday morning.

Ruhr Nachrichten, who reported with a live ticker about Silvester Night in Dortmund, wrote at 11:28pm: “Downtown, according to the police, there are strikingly many young men from Northern African countries on the way. At the main train station, dismissals have already been pronounced. Individual drunk men behaved aggressively towards the police and were sent away.”

Purposefully firing at the police

Around midnight, an escalation of the situation was threatening: “From 11:45pm on, at least 1,000 mainly young men gathered at Leeds Square in downtown Dortmund. Risky handling of pyrotechnics was repeatedly observed. Several unidentified persons threw firecrackers at the policemen and fired pyrotechnics into the crowd, in which there were a few families with children. The police asked the crowd not to fire firecrackers and New Year’s rockets into the crowd of people.” The mob of “at least 1,000 mainly young men” primarily consisted of migrants, as the Photo Gallery of the Ruhr Nachrichten shows. These people purposefully threw firecrackers at the police forces, WDR reports.