With a record 1.1 million asylum seekers arriving in Germany last year and no end in sight, Merkel is facing what she has called the “most complex” challenge of her 10 years in power.
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As roughly 2,000 anti-Muslim “LEGIDA” – the Leipzig chapter of PEGIDA, a far right group which opposes Muslim immigration – protesters marched peacefully in the city center, police said a separate group of 211 people walked through the southern Connewitz district before setting of fireworks, erecting barricades and vandalizing property.
In Cologne, as many as 1,000 men described to be of Arab and North African origin formed rings around women, who tried to fight their way out.
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday more foreign criminals would be expelled once new restrictions are rolled out in the wake of sexual attacks on women blamed on migrants in Cologne.
“Since New Year’s Eve, nothing is like it was”, said one speaker, PEGIDA activist Tatjana Festerling, who decried the night’s “sex jihad against women”.
It is unclear what their condition is although the police are looking to press charges of “serious bodily harm” against their attackers who kicked, beat and abused them verbally.
Asylum rights rest on the basis that people from other cultures are safe to release into the cultures that accept them.
Furtner said he did not have details on where the migrants went next, saying some may try to re-enter Germany, while others likely sought asylum in Austria.
A gang of 20 men attacked at least six Pakistani nationals Sunday, Cologne police said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been struggling to deal with recent events, with her approval rating slipping to 35 percent as politicians continue to question her open-door refugee policy.
The selection follows hundreds of robberies and sexual assaults on girls in Cologne on the Eve of New Year by guys of North African source and mostly Arab.
Cologne police Chief Wolfgang Albers was sacked Friday amid criticism of his department’s handling of the violence. Separately, 32 suspects have been identified by federal police, who are responsible for train station security.
The proposed law would reduce the minimum sentence for a criminal conviction that allows for the deportation of asylum seekers, or those already granted asylum, from three years to one.
“We are vulnerable because we don’t have the orderliness and management of the refugees under control yet”, Ms Merkel said on Monday.
On Monday, it was revealed that the man had been previously arrested in the German city of Cologne for sexually assaulting a woman, reported German newspaper Bild.
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Checks are still being carried out, but police say some of the suspects were among the 1.1million migrants who flooded into Germany a year ago from countries like Syria, Iraq and Algeria.
