Syria had a pre-war population of around 22 million, but six million left during the conflict. First world leaders should consider population numbers before putting out the national welcome mat these days.

Anyway, one big result has been increased crime in Germany, thanks to the Middle Eastern diversity, and some Germans have departed for safer, less diverse Hungary.

Dale Hurd reported that some Germans are missing the wall bordering East Germany that was torn down with such enthusiasm 30 years ago — a wall looks like a good idea now.

30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Some Germans Want a New Wall, by Dale Hurd, CBN.com, November 11, 2019

LAKE BALATON, HUNGARY, and BERLIN/FRANKFURT, GERMANY – On Saturday the world celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to the reunification of Germany.

But what has Germany become? Not what some had hoped. And the proof of that can be found in Hungary, about two hours west of Budapest, at a place called Lake Balaton. 
 
Why mark the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall from a lake in Hungary? Because it’s where a lot of Germans have fled to who are fed up with Angela Merkel’s new Germany.

Germans Fleeing Migrant Crime

The Lake Balaton region is full of Germans who have moved here for all sorts of reasons, but a local real estate agent told us the biggest reason is migrant crime in Germany.
 
”At the moment our clients are 80 percent German,” Hungarian Real Estate Agent László Kozma told us, “And the main reason is the immigration problem in Germany.”

Kozma says the number of Germans moving to Lake Balaton spiked immediately after Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed over a million mostly Muslim asylum seekers into Germany in 2015, while Hungary has turned migrants away.

“Yes, yes, yes, this is the reason,” Kozma says.  “They want to escape to Hungary and live here permanently.”

They include Germans like Gerhardt Boehm, who told us he would never move back. He feels safe in Hungary.

Kozma says there currently are not enough properties in the area for all the German buyers. (Continues)

Curiously forgotten is how Merkel declared in 2010 that multicultural society had “utterly failed” in Germany. Yet a few years later she reversed her view entirely and went extreme open borders. How quickly political leaders change their tune completely when it suits them.

Germany has become a prime example of how unwise, excessive immigration can profoundly damage a society through increased violent crime, disorder and political conflict. Modern life is complex enough without adding more variety.

Below, Below, Kandel townspeople demanded that “Merkel must go” as they protested the brutal murder of a 15-year-old girl by an Afghan asylum seeker who claimed to be a minor but was believed to be an adult.

Tucker Carlson discussed diverse immigration in Germany with Richard Grenell, the US ambassador there. A sensible fellow, Grenell is surprisingly plain-spoken for a diplomat, although he relies on the numbers argument against failed immigration and doesn’t mention the unfriendly culture of the new residents, many of whom answer to allah.

TUCKER CARLSON: America isn’t the only country facing economic pressure and social volatility from unrestrained immigration. Just three years ago Europe faced its own wave of migrants from Africa and the Middle East. the German Chancellor Angela Merkel responds to this by accepting nearly a million migrants in a single year. Adjusted for population that would be like this country taking in four million in twelve months.

Three years after that, how has that decision affected Germany and Merkel’s political career? Rick Grenell is the current ambassador to Germany and is joining us. Thank you for coming on.

AMBASSADOR RICHARD GRENELL: Of course. Thank you for having me.

CARLSON: You are seeing the figures on the left, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry most prominently, but others rethinking the political fallout of Merkel’s decision to do that in Germany. From where you sit, what was the effect of letting in those migrants?

GRENELL: First of all, let’s talk about the political effect. There was no plan in place, so the policy really fell apart. Chancellor Merkel and many in Germany had big hearts. They wanted to do something, but there wasn’t a plan, and so, even Chancellor Merkel all these years later has agreed that there was no plan, and therefore the entire policy fell apart. It wasn’t implemented with hardcore security measures and follow-up, so from the political standpoint, next week, Chancellor Merkel is giving up her chairmanship of the party. There are three other people running and the top issue is migration and her handling of migration. Politically I’d say it toppled her and has forced her now to give up the chairmanship of a party she once ran with a very strong arm.

CARLSON: What’s so interesting watching Germany from here is how the German press and its cultural leaders responded. This was three years ago, and it was immediately obvious ordinary Germans didn’t like it, and it caused the crime rate to go up and it was causing economic pressure on ordinary Germans. But people weren’t allow to say that for a number of years in public, or am I misreading it?

GRENELL No, you are exactly right, and I’d go so far as to say we still have that problem in Germany. there is still an overreaction if you complain about wanting secure borders or just an orderly process.

This is not about whether you have a heart; this is whether or not you have a plan, and we in the United States know a million people a year get US citizenship. We are very generous; this is not about not wanting immigrants. And the whole idea that the left or some on the right even, or the media are mixing up legal immigration with illegal immigration is really an outrage, and those of us in the public policy positions have to be able to push back and say look, we’re not talking about legal immigration. The United States is very generous. Germany has been very generous. This is about whether or not you have a plan because not everyone is going to be able to come.

That’s what you have to be able to say. we must prioritize. What is that number? One million people in the United States? is it four million people in Germany over a number of years? What is that number, because whatever that number is, it’s still going to be too low. You are still going to turn people away. So let’s have an orderly process and figure out how to do legal immigration and do it the right way.

CARLSON: I think that is what we need in the United States — an honest adult conversation about what we can afford, what is good for your country and what the next hundred years looks like demographically. We can’t have that conversation here. Can Germans have it?

GRENELL: Look, I think the United States is having a better conversation than Germans to be honest. This has largely been controlled by elites in Berlin, but normal, everyday people are beginning to say wait a minute, this policy is not working. This is not about being generous; we are very generous. They have a lot of open borders throughout Europe, but I would also argue that the mistakes of Germany, Tucker, rippled throughout all of Europe because we have seen in Austria with Sebastian Kurz who came in with a platform to say we need security and a set of rules. This is not about not being generous; this is not about not being open to immigrants, but this is about just having rules. Once he established that he wanted rules, Sebastian Kurz won in a very big way and is now becoming very popular throughout Germany.

So while some in the media in Germany will try to push this into saying you are a radical far right person, the reality is that normal everyday Germans and Europeans are clamoring for leaders who wants to have safe and secure borders and an orderly process.

CARLSON: If they want to create radicals, they should keep lying to the population because that’s what they are going to get.

Not every muslim immigrant is a jihadist of course, but some are. And remember that Islam is better understood to be an undemocratic political ideology that includes religion.

The Washington Post’s Sunday front page pictured a Frankfurt prison, where jihadists are not jailed separately, but are free to mix with the other prisoners and recruit for Islam.

The Washington Post story was reprinted in the military publication Stars & Stripes:

As Europe’s prisons fill with returning ISIS fighters, officials warn of future ‘human bombs’, Stripes.com, July 28, 2018

ISIS in Europe’s prisons

The Post’s Souad Mekhennet visited four prisons in Belgium and Germany to see how officials are trying to stop Islamic State fighters returned from Syria and Iraq from recruiting fellow inmates.

BRUSSELS — A few months before his killing rampage, convicted robber and prison inmate Benjamin Herman had a jailhouse conversion of a sort. A white suburban teen and a nominal Catholic when he was first incarcerated, he emerged in late May as an avowed Islamist who would murder three people within hours of gaining freedom on a work-release program.

Herman fatally stabbed two female police officers during his hour-long attack in the Belgian city of Liege, and then used one of their pistols to kill a passing motorist. Shouting “Allahu akbar,” he seized a hostage and wounded two more officers before being shot dead in a gun battle with police.

Afterward, as the facts about the killings came to light, one biographical detail stood out: Herman, a product of Belgium’s French-speaking middle class, had come under the sway of a group of radical Islamist inmates in prison.

In a country that has acted aggressively to put extremists behind bars as a means of preventing terrorism, the attack stoked fears that Belgium’s policy could be having the opposite effect, creating hotbeds of radicalism and sprouting new generations of would-be terrorists.

“Never have so many people been arrested on charges related to terrorism, and never have we seen so many of these guys in prison together,” said Thomas Renard, a Belgian terrorism expert and researcher at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels. “In bringing them together, we are facilitating their ability to recruit. And that is something that will stay with us for a long time.”

Across Europe, prisons are the latest battleground in the evolving fight against Islamist-inspired terrorism. Beginning five years ago, Western countries saw thousands of their citizens migrate to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State or other Islamist groups. Since 2016, hundreds have returned, but the mood at home has changed. Traumatized by terrorist attacks and a swelling refugee crisis, European countries since 2016 have taken a hard line on returnees, enacting tough laws that require criminal charges and incarceration for anyone who traveled to the Middle East or sought to support Islamists groups abroad. Until 2016, many returnees were simply allowed to go home if there was no proof they had been fighters or involved in terrorist acts.

(Continues)

Murray’s analysis is that Europe’s elite (but not its average citizens) feel a loss of confidence about the last century’s failures of history require the penance of surrendering to the diverse hordes of the Third World. From the outside, it does seem Euro-elites are throwing in the towel on the continent with its complicated history.

Murray has distilled important points from his book into a five-minute explainer for a PragerU video:

Here’s a transcript of the video:

DOUGLAS MURRAY: The civilization born of Judeo-Christian values, ancient Greek philosophy and the discoveries of the Enlightenment is staring at the abyss, brought there by its own hand. To put it starkly: Europe is committing suicide.

How did this happen?

It’s a complicated story, but there are two major causes.

The first is the mass movement of peoples into Europe. This has been going on steadily since the end of World War II but sped up massively in the migration crisis of 2015, when more than a million migrants poured into Europe from the Middle East, North Africa and East Asia.

The second, and equally significant, is that Europe lost faith in itself—its beliefs, its traditions and even its very legitimacy.

Let’s take a closer look at both causes.

For decades, Europe encouraged people—mostly from the Middle East and North Africa—to come as temporary workers. Nobody expected them to stay. Yet they did. And nobody asked them to leave, even those who came illegally. As one British immigration minister put it in 1999, “Removal takes too long, and it’s emotional.”

And, of course, why would they leave? The economic opportunities were far greater in Europe than from where they came. And if the work dried up, there were generous welfare benefits to be had.

For a time, immigrants were allowed—even encouraged, thanks to the European commitment to “multiculturalism”—to pursue whatever culture they wanted. But that didn’t work out well. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany admitted as much in 2011, when David Cameron, Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel dramatically announced that multiculturalism had failed.

So, the immigrants were then asked to assimilate and embrace Western values. If that happened, European governments reasoned, all the financial costs, even the occasional acts of terrorism, could be overlooked.

But it never happened. And immigration just increased.

During 2015, Germany and Sweden added 2% to their populations in a single year. By 2017, the most popular boys name in United Kingdom was Muhammad.

So, why did European leaders decide Europe could take in anyone in the world, whether fleeing war or simply seeking a better life, no matter how different—or even opposed—their values were to European values?

The one-word answer to this question is guilt. Aren’t these refugees, the thinking goes, fleeing the consequences of European imperialism? Didn’t we mercilessly exploit these unfortunate people in their home countries? Aren’t we the cause of their misery?

Accepting them into Europe is meant to be a wiping-away of this guilt. This is especially true of Germany. In allowing one and a half million people into her country in 2015, Angela Merkel was, in effect, proclaiming to the world that Germany, the great aggressor of the twentieth century, the architect of the Holocaust, would be the humanitarian superpower of the twenty-first. A noble sentiment, perhaps, but who pays the price? The ordinary citizens of Europe, who have seen crime and terrorism increase exponentially. Their fears and frustrations have been largely ignored—or worse.

In October 2015, the German government designated that 800 newly arrived immigrants were to be housed in the German town of Kassel. Concerned residents had a meeting to ask questions of their representatives. As a video recording shows, the citizens were calm and polite. Then, at a certain point, their district president informs them that the refugees are coming regardless of their objections and anyone who does not agree with the policy is “free to leave Germany.”

This official attitude—if there is a problem, it’s not with the refugees, but with the citizens—reflects the sense of what I call “tiredness”—a feeling among the elite class that the European story has played out: that we have tried religion and all imaginable forms of politics, and that each has, one after another, led us to disaster. We taint every idea we touch, so who’s to say that the world wouldn’t be better off without us?

Of course, only people who have no idea how lucky they are could take this view. Ironically, no one knows this better than those refugees who truly did assimilate and who defend Western values. Extraordinary people, like Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who left the Netherlands because she believed in the principles of the Enlightenment more than the Dutch did. Or Hamed Abdel-Samad in Germany, whose life is threatened by fellow immigrants because he defends European values.

This is the stuff of suicide, the self-annihilation of a culture.

It is possible that ordinary Europeans will join their leaders in this pact. But recent opinion polls suggest that they have no intention of doing so. How they act on that intention will be the great story of the years ahead.

Are we about to witness the end of Europe, or its re-birth?

I’m Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe, for Prager University.

Below, Chancellor Merkel thought it was appealing to pose for selfies with the muslim migrants she invited to Germany and beyond.

Merkel visited President Trump at the White House this week, but without the reported bromance displayed when France’s President Macron spent a few days earlier.

Still, the upbeat photos of handshakes and diplomacy on the big world stage were probably a welcome change for Germany’s leader compared to the political morass at home. As Robert Spencer pointed out in a video from a week ago, “running unopposed, Merkel barely squeaked by — 364 votes for Merkel, 315 votes for no one at all” as she ran for chancellor in the Bundestag. Funny how that open-borders thing is finally catching up with her.

Keep in mind that the German election took place on last September 24 and the nation’s mysterious parliamentary system has been struggling for seven months to form a governing coalition out of the gaggle of parties. Many are upset with what a mess Merkel has made with her misplaced generosity to unfriendly foreigners. Unlike their chancellor, when asked whether Islam belongs in Germany, three quarters of Germans responded “absolutely not” or “probably not” in a poll published in mid-March.

Here’s a written version of Spencer’s remarks:

Robert Spencer: Merkel Says “Islam Belongs to Germany”, Geller Report, By Robert Spencer, March 18, 2018

Politico reported Wednesday the sad news that “Angela Merkel received the final rubber stamp to lead her fourth government on Wednesday with Germany’s lower house of parliament officially electing her chancellor.” But Merkel is no FDR; as she begins her fourth term, she faces opposition from within her own governing coalition – which has so far only led her to double down on her disastrous and suicidal policies regarding Muslim migration.

According to Politico, “among the 692 MPs to vote in a secret ballot at the Bundestag, 364 voted in favor of another term for the 63-year-old Christian Democrats (CDU) leader and 315 voted against (nine abstained and four votes were invalid). With only nine votes above the needed majority — which lay at 355 votes — Merkel’s victory is her narrowest since she first took office in 2005.”

That’s right: running unopposed, Merkel barely squeaked by: 364 votes for Merkel, 315 votes for no one at all. That’s not exactly a ringing vote of confidence. “There were more opposition votes than I expected,” said German politician Andrea Nahles. No kidding. And the widespread discontent among Germans with Merkel’s policies has required her to bring into her government people who sharply disagree with her. Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats, which are not part of Merkel’s coalition, notes: “The high number of dissenters at Merkel’s chancellor election unmasks the enormous centrifugal forces within the grande coalition.”

One of those centrifugal forces is Horst Seehofer, Merkel’s new interior minister, who recently declared: “Islam does not belong to Germany. Germany is characterized by Christianity. Muslims who are living here of course belong to Germany. But of course that doesn’t mean because of that we would make false considerations and give up our country-specific traditions and customs.”

Merkel sharply disagreed, stating: “Islam belongs to Germany.”

No one would have been more pleased with Merkel’s statement than Adolf Hitler, who once said: “Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers — already, you see, the world had fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing was Christianity!-then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so.”

And now a German Chancellor has declared that Islam belongs to Germany. According to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, Merkel also paid lip service to religions that have actually played a role in German history. “‘Our country is largely shaped by Christianity, and it continues to be so,’ Merkel said, adding that Judaism had also been significant in the country’s history and culture.”

Yes, Judaism has indeed been “significant” in Germany’s history, although most famously now for Adolf Hitler’s attempt to destroy that significance. And now Merkel has brought large numbers of Muslims into Germany who share Hitler’s Jew-hatred and admire his genocide of the Jews.

How Hitler would have loved Merkel!

There are, obviously, many people in Germany who oppose how Merkel is destroying the country. But the forces of Anyone But Her didn’t have quite enough votes to deny her another four years as Chancellor, and that may have been a fateful vote. The forces of freedom didn’t have quite enough strength to save Germany. And so now Merkel will have her four more years, or more precisely three and a half, to complete her destruction of Germany and its demise as a free society. The Muslim migrant inundation will continue, and Germany will grow ever more wonderfully diverse.

Yes, “Islam belongs to Germany,” and given Islam’s political, authoritarian and supremacist character, before too long Germany will belong to Islam. “Islam must dominate, and not be dominated,” goes the old adage; Angela Merkel will soon find that this adage applies to Germany as well as to every other land to which Islam has come, and that some Muslims will be working there to make sure that Germany becomes part of the global umma.

An Islamized Germany will be Merkel’s legacy. Future generations of free people in that unhappy land, if there are any, will remember her name with the same revulsion that the name of Adolf Hitler inspires.

Back in her disastrous welcoming heyday, Angela Merkel racked up a lot of selfie pix with new arrivals.

The figure headlined in the item below is One Trillion Euros (!), a cost which Google calculated to be an even larger number — 1,232,780,000,000.00 US Dollars. German citizens are in for a world of financial hurt for decades to come, not to mention the crime and cultural battles from all those muslims.

The migrant crisis could cost the German taxpayer 1,000,000,000,000 euros, Voice of Europe, April 11, 2018

In his autobiography, “In search of the truth”, famous German economist Hans-Werner Sinn says the migrant crisis could cost the country almost one trillion euros, Focus reports. Sinn is a former advisor of Angela Merkel and retired president of the IFO Institute for Economic Research.

Germany accepted 1.5 million migrants since 2015 and Sinn says they are not dentists, lawyers and nuclear scientists, but mostly underqualified immigrants. According to him, these people can never repay what they have received from the German welfare state during their lifetimes.

While German states spent more than €20bn on refugees in 2016, it’s easy to see why Sinn’s one trillion euros estimate is a serious possibility, when looking at lifetime support for migrants. At the same time family reunifications and higher security costs are not (yet) part of the budget.

From an economic point of view, economic refugees can and must be refused, which does not mean that immigration is no longer possible, but that only those people who the EU wants to become citizens are welcome, Sinn writes in his book.

(Continues)

Malcolm Brabant, the journalist on the current report, has been broadcast on the NewHour before, telling the troubles of Europe struggling with the immigration onslaught loosed by elites on the citizens. He shows a proper liberal concern for the downtrodden of the world, but also reveals the genuine social chaos resulting when masses of people descend upon the continent. In 2015, he reported about Hungary’s border fence to keep out unfriendly muslims. A year later, Brabant reported Sweden’s reinstitution of borders after it became overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of foreigners.

The recent Newshour report from Brabant focused on crime, starting with a march of concerned German citizens in the town of Kandel after the brutal murder of a 15-year-old girl by an asylum seeker who is believed to be older.

Below, Kandel townspeople demanded that “Merkel must go” as they protested alien crime.

And Germans aren’t imagining the crime problem, Brabant reports. A government study has found that violent crime is up by 10 percent between 2014 and ’16 in Lower Saxony. Plus, over 90 percent of the crime increase is caused by young male migrants.

Crime spike in Germany puts pressure on immigration policy, PBS NewsHour, February 7, 2018

John Yang: As we reported earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a deal to form a new coalition government. In the last election, she lost seats in Parliament to the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, or AFD.

A big issue was her decision to open the borders to more than a million migrants and refugees in 2015. Now, with AFD, the main opposition party, Merkel is facing demands to step up deportations of young male migrants.

As special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports, that follows a finding that they are largely responsible for an increase of violent crime in Germany.

Malcolm Brabant: A brutal murder in Kandel, Southern Germany, has placed the country’s open-door immigration policy under intense scrutiny. These marchers demanded protection and security for women and children, after a 15-year-old local girl, Mia Valentin. was stabbed to death by a young Afghan asylum seeker.

Her alleged killer claimed to be 15, but there are suggestions that he was older, exploiting a system which forbids the deportation of minors.

Lawyer Martina Boeswald: I am mother of three children, and we are here together to protest against the aggressivity of people who are grabbing our children, and who are — who bring fear in our country. We want to live in peace. And this is the fault of Angela Merkel.

Malcolm Brabant: The demonstration in Kandel was nominally organized by a women’s alliance, but the anti-immigrant AFD, or Alternative for Germany party, was well-represented.
Myriam Kern is a former AFD councillor-

Myriam Kern (through interpreter): Since Germany has been pursuing the policy of open borders that is illegal, against our constitution, against our law and order, we have massive problems, as we do not know who comes into this country. We are not in control. We have lost control. We do not know what identity, what people are coming here.

Malcolm Brabant: This is a place that has traditionally been tolerant. It has welcomed refugees. But what they’re saying is that if murder can happen in a small town like Kandel, it can happen anywhere else in Germany.

The marchers chanted that “Merkel must go,” along with other slogans decrying Germany’s multiculturalism. In Kandel’s main square, they were confronted by anti-racism advocates who accused them of purveying Nazi propaganda.

Raymond Tremell: A girl has been killed, and that’s all. She isn’t killed because she’s German and someone is a foreigner. She’s just been killed, and you mustn’t make demonstration here against foreigners.

Doris Fuchs (through interpreter): Naturally, one has to do something against crime, yes. But, here, it is not about the crime anymore. Here, it is about simply vilifying people that come here seeking help. They want to get rid of them.

Malcolm Brabant: But a new government-sponsored crime study has generated more gloom for supporters of Germany’s liberal migration policy. It was conducted in Lower Saxony, the country’s fourth largest state, where violent crime rose by 10 percent between 2014 and ’16.

The impact can be seen at Hanover’s main station, where large squads of police are on duty. Rising crime has been added to the burden of anti-terrorist duties. According to the study’s author, Christian Pfeiffer, 92 percent of the violent crime increase is attributed to young male migrants, especially those from North Africa.

(Continues)

Although America has certainly been harmed by allah’s helpers, Europe is orders of magnitude worse off because of its enthusiastic pursuit of open borders, encouraged by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a complicit European Union.

France has been a popular jihad target, with its culturally significant buildings like Notre Dame Cathedral.

All the major capitals of Europe are taking extensive security measures for New Years to protect the people from the diversity the governments allowed:

The Berlin strategy of creating “safe spaces” for women (after the New Years mass sex assaults by muslims against women in Cologne) has become controversial after the criticism by Rainer Wendt. A former police officer, Wendt believes that all of Germany’s public space should be safe for German women, otherwise freedom and equality will have been lost.

Of course, muslim immigration is the cause of European women’s reduced freedom. The US should avoid the same mistake.

Security the top priority for New Year’s Eve in European cities, Euronews, December 30, 2017

A look at security preparations in some of Europe’s major cities, where thousands are expected in the streets to see in the New Year.

Cities across Europe are on alert in the run-up to New Year’s Eve, as the threat of terrorist attacks continues to hang over the continent. Here is a look at plans in some Western European nations.

[. . .]

Germany

Germany is on high alert a year after a deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

Barricades around the Brandenburg Gate will reassure revellers. And there will be a safe zone for women at the site after hundreds were molested and robbed in Cologne on New Year’s Eve two years ago.

Berlin police say the safety area in the capital’s “party mile” around the gate will feature tents, with German Red Cross staff including psychologists on hand for women feeling harassed.

The move has proved controversial. The head of Germany’s second-largest police officers’ union said a women’s zone planned for Berlin sent a “disastrous message”.

“With this message, you’re saying that there are safe and unsafe zones,” Rainer Wendt told the Neue Osnabrücher Zeitung newspaper. He said the move would amount to “the end of equality, freedom of movement and self-determination,” adding that women had a right to be safe everywhere.

In Cologne, police say 1,400 police officers are to be deployed on the central railway station plaza and around the adjacent cathedral. Fireworks are to be banned, while there have been plans for more video surveillance cameras and improved lighting.

The events in Cologne made worldwide headlines two years ago when groups of young men of North African appearance molested hundreds of women in the city centre.