Media Caught Covering Up ‘Muslim Refugee Rapes’

Media Caught Covering Up ‘Muslim Refugee Rapes’

Sexual assault of women en masse was unheard of in modern Germany since the rape of Berlin in 1945, following the invasion of Soviet troops. But it became an abrupt reality again in January of 2016. Yes, this year.
The news from Cologne shocked Europe, though the incidents were at first covered up to protect migrants. Police reports show that more than 2,000 men were involved in the sexual assaults. Only 120 of them were ever identified by the authorities. Those who were found were given suspended sentences of a year or less.
Both the scale of the crimes committed and the nationalities, religion and ethnicity of the assailants were obscured by both government and the media. Similar attacks in Hamburg and Stuttgart were simply not reported by journalists at all. But recent interviews with victims have revealed the scale of the horrors they endured. One 23-year-old woman recounts: “They were everywhere with their hands. I had fingers in every orifice. I screamed the entire time.”
Women report having their underwear ripped off and being pushed to the ground after being circled by up to 50 men. One policeman described these events as rapes accompanied by thefts and robbery. There are several reasons these attacks have not been reported on, or been reported on inaccurately. Firstly, the German police force itself covered them up. The Cologne police report released on January 1, described New Year’s Eve as “peaceful” and “relaxed.” Even more astonishingly, an interviewee on Polish state TV has claimed CCTV footage of Cologne was deleted by senior police officers.
Germans aren’t surprised by such reports any more. According to the tabloid Express, the government is trying to find and prosecute a leaker in their own ranks who gave the press confidential information – namely, that the German government requested that Police did not include the word “rape” in their Cologne report. State-funded ZDF initially refused to report on the incidents for reasons that remain unclear. After a massive wave of criticism and mockery on social media the broadcaster was forced to issue a public apology, after which the ZDF started extensively reporting on Cologne, but not on similar incidents in Stuttgart and Hamburg.
Among the German population there are now repeated accusations that German media has an agenda set by the government and that it sets editorial demands in line with the government’s wishes, which are dictated by politics and ideology. These allegations may have merit, if the former head of ZDF Bonn Dr. Wolfgang Herles and the WDR Journalist Claudia Zimmermann are to be believed — although the latter later retracted her statement.
Lack of coverage isn’t the only issue at play. Many German media outlets refused to name or indicate the ethnic origin or religious affiliations of the assailants, fearing that they would feed racist and xenophobic sentiment. The Police did the same and it was only later revealed that they were under orders to not inform anyone about the criminal activities of so-called migrants.
Some politicians on the left and some parts of the media still refuse to acknowledge that it was overwhelmingly refugees and Muslim migrants, as stated by the chief prosecutor Ulrich Bremer, committing these sexual assaults. Others go so far as to attempt to re-frame the issue. It has become clear that these are not isolated incidents driven by “toxic masculinity.” Yet Claudia Roth, a member of Germany’s Grüne party and Vice President of the Bundestag said the following: “It is wrong to pretend that the events of New Year’s Eve was one of the first breakouts of sexual violence against women. The same thing happens around carnival and Oktoberfest.
“A large portion of the current rage is not directed against sexual violence, but on reports that the potential assailants are North-African and Arabic in appearance. An internet mob is trying to call out a hunt on non-whites and exact revenge on them.”
Germany’s interior minister, Ralf Jäger, was quick to try and one-up her, going so far as to say that what was happening in right-wing chat rooms after the Cologne attacks was at least as bad as the attacks themselves.