Germany is edging closer to anarchy as citizens grow increasingly frustrated with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome one million refugees into the country. Germans are becoming more and more concerned that their country’s so-called democracy is inching closer towards a totalitarian state, Alternative for Germany party member Hansjoerg Mueller told Russia Today in a recent interview.⁽¹⁾

Tensions have escalated even further since Muller issued his comments in November. Dozens of women were reportedly sexually assaulted, raped and robbed during a New Year’s Eve street party in the Western city of Cologne. While it’s unclear whether or not the perpetrators were immigrants, the New York Times reports the “gangs of men” had “a North African or Arabic” appearance and “spoke neither German nor English.”⁽²⁾

Hundreds of young men descended on the street party before separating groups of women, encircling them and preventing their escape, groping women and stealing some of the victims’ cell phones and wallets.

Some witnesses say firecrackers were thrown into the crowd, startling partygoers. More than 90 complaints were reported to police in Cologne, but no arrests have been made. Five hours away in Hamburg, Germany, 10 more women reported similar crimes, saying they were robbed and sexually assaulted.

“It was not clear that any of the men involved were among those who arrived in Germany over the past year from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” the NYT reports. Yet, the extensive assaults fueled those already upset about Germany’s immigration crisis.

“The attacks and the livid reaction to them presented a new political challenge for the chancellor, whose decision to take in refugees from conflict-ridden nations opened the doors to waves of migrants last summer and fall. As the number of asylum-seekers has grown and the challenge of assimilating them has become clearer, Ms. Merkel has come under intensifying criticism for failing to anticipate the social and economic costs of her policy.”

In response to Merkel’s proclamation to welcome one million refugees into Germany, Bavarian official Peter Dreier said his town of Landshut would only take in 1,800, any others would be put on buses and sent to Merkel’s Chancellery in Berlin, reported RT.

“What we are now looking at is more and more Germany sliding towards anarchy. In this situation I think less and less is determined by law, more and more is determined by who acts. And the person who acts in fact has the power. So if he [Dreier] sends … refugees to Berlin, he sends them!” said Mueller.

When asked by an RT reporter if Bavaria, a state in southeastern Germany that borders Liechtenstein, Austria and the Czech Republic, would be the only region to threaten to turn away migrants, Muller answered:

Yes, of course, Bavaria is the first region because we are affected the most – we are living on the border to Austria where the influx of refugees stems from. But the second regions of Germany where this happens are Saxony and Thuringia. First of all, they have also borders to the Czech Republic, that’s the first reason. And the second reason is that in former Eastern Germany people are still aware of what it is living in a dictatorship. They are feeling quite well that our so-called democracy is sliding more and more towards a totalitarian state.

Meanwhile, following the large-scale sexual assaults in Cologne, Christopher Freiherr von Mengersen, head of the nationalist Pro-NRW movement told NYT:

It is time to send a signal. We locals can no longer put up with everything that is being routinely swept under the rug based on a false sense of tolerance.

Sources used:

(1) RT.com

(2) NYTimes.com