Merkel backs tougher expulsion rules for migrants

Proposal follows growing anger over New Year''s Eve assaults on women.

Police drive back protesters at a demonstration by the anti-Islam Pegida movement and right-wing extremist party Pro Koeln in Cologne on January 9, 2016. Roland Wehrauch / EPA

COLOGNE // German chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday backed a toughening of expulsion rules for refugees convicted of crimes, as brief clashes broke out during a far-right protest against a string of New Year’s Eve sexual attacks blamed on migrants.

Police used tear gas and water cannon to clear a rally of the xenophobic Pegida movement in Cologne, after protesters flung firecrackers and bottles at officers. The protesters accuse police of failing to prevent assaults during New Year’s festivities in the western city.

As outrage grows in Germany over the attacks, Ms Merkel declared that any refugee handed a jail term – even if it is only a suspended sentence – should be kicked out of the country.

“If the law does not suffice, then the law must be changed,” she said, vowing action to protect not just German citizens, but innocent refugees too.

Germany was stunned by revelations that hundreds of women ran a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in mob violence in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Police said yesterday that the number of cases filed was now up to 379.

Most of the assailants were of Arabic or North African background, according to eyewitnesses and police. The majority of suspects identified by federal police so far are asylum seekers or illegal migrants, adding fuel to criticism of Ms Merkel’s liberal migrant policy, which brought 1.1 million new asylum seekers to Germany last year.

Waving German flags and signs meaning “Rapefugees not welcome” and “Germany survived war, plague and cholera, but Merkel?”, hundreds of Pegida supporters shouted “Merkel raus” (Merkel out), before the protest briefly turned violent.

The rattle of a helicopter circling in the skies and the occasional bang of a firecracker added to tensions as counter-protesters, separated from the Pegida crowd by police, chanted “Nazis raus”.

Earlier, some 500 mostly female protesters had also held a noisy rally against sexist violence. The mob violence has played into popular fears, and threatened to cloud what had been a broadly welcoming mood in Germany where crowds cheered as Syrian refugees arrived by train in September.

* Agence France-Presse