Who are the Germans going to believe, the police or their lying eyes?
Bild quoted a senior police officer in Frankfurt as saying it was standard policy to keep offences by asylum-seekers from the media.
“There are strict orders from the chiefs not to report offences by refugees,” the unnamed officer said. “We are only allowed to answer if journalists ask specifically about such incidents.”
The Frankfurt authorities said police spokesmen had been told to be careful when speaking about asylum-seekers.
“Press spokesmen were warned the far-Right could exploit cases involving refugees to stoke sentiment against those seeking protection,” Michael Shaykh, a spokesman for the Hesse state interior ministry, said….
More than 170 women have now come forward to file criminal complaints about that night,120 of them for sexual assault. But in the days that followed, most of Germany had no idea what had
happened in the heart of one of its biggest cities, as the events went
almost completely unreported.In fact the truth began to emerge
on social media within hours. One of the first accounts was posted on
the Facebook page of Nett-Werk Köln, a group of around 140,000 members
who more usually share tips on party venues and advertise missing cats.More information emerged on Twitter, and the local Cologne newspapers
began to report the story, but still the national media stayed away.
Hans-Peter Freidrich, a former interior minister, has accused the media
of imposing a “news blackout” and operating a “code of silence” over
negative news about immigrants.Editors have replied that they
were following the official account of the Cologne police that the night
had been “peaceful”. But it has also emerged that even after the story
hit the national media, guests on public service television were asked
not to mention asylum-seekers in interviews about the Cologne assaults.A week after the incidents, government ministers and the Cologne
authorities were still insisting there was no evidence refugees were
involved. On Friday, suspicions against then were confirmed for the
first time, when the federal police said asylum-seekers are among 31
people it is seeking in connection with events inside the station that
night. They are wanted for physical violence and theft, but not for
sexual assault.Now, however, the taboo has been broken, and Mrs
Merkel’s critics have seized on the suspected involvement of
asylum-seekers as evidence of the failure of her “open-door” refugee
policy.
This is disastrous. Those who claim to care about the refugees should be clamoring to send them back, because the mood is turning openly murderous now. I very much doubt the German government is going to survive the year unscathed.
They have no respect for the German people. And the German people are rapidly losing respect for all authority. There is very little the police could do that will fuel the fire more than telling these stupid lies about their obvious failure to maintain order.
The Merkel government is more feckless than the Weimar Republic.