For Some, Roots Of Cologne Attacks May Run Deeper Than We Think

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Another big story we're watching today is out of Germany. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Cologne today and clashed with police, triggered by a series of sexual assaults and robberies that happened on New Year's Eve.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTORS: (Chanting in foreign language).

MARTIN: Authorities and eyewitnesses differ on what motivated these attacks. Some believe they were part of an organized pickpocket ring using the attacks as a diversion. Others say the men were drunk. But most of those involved appeared to be North African or Arab. Thirty-one suspects have been taken in for questioning. More than half were asylum-seekers, and all of that has set off a debate over whether the influx of refugees and migrants is changing Germany in unacceptable ways. Some of that debate played out in the anti-immigrant protests today, but there are other opinions. We called writer and feminist activist Anne Wizorek to hear some of those views. She spoke with us from Berlin. And I started by asking her to describe what she knew about the attacks.

ANNE WIZOREK: Women have been touched and sometimes their clothes been torn apart, and they have been insulted. And they have been surrounded by this group of men and attacking them. So this is, of course, a very gruesome situation. We just feel powerless and just hope that it's all over basically very soon.

MARTIN: So how has Germany's political leadership responded to this?

WIZOREK: Well, Haiko Maas, the minister of justice, he was one of the first ones to respond to this and say that this is a kind of violence that will not be tolerated, of course. And now he's also pushed to get the law change that is addressing sexual violence and sexual assault. But I think the most important one was, of course, issued by Angela Merkel, our chancellor. She now wants to see if it's possible to send the people who came here as asylum-seekers and who commit crimes like this back to their home countries, which of course is something that causes another debate on whether or not we should take this incident and change a whole lot and a whole situation for so many more people

MARTIN: You wrote an article on Vice this week with Stefanie Louhaus saying that the German media have been reporting the violence in terms of a rape culture that was imported in Germany. And - editing a little bit - but you say, in fact, Germany's rape culture is deeply rooted in our collective psyche. What do you mean by that? What are you trying to say here?

WIZOREK: Well, the problem of sexism and sexual violence, especially against women has already been there and has nothing to do with any people who come here as refugees or are growing up as people of color in general. So we have to address this problem finally because right now we are only focusing on sexism and sexual assault when it is perpetrated by men of color. And that sets a wrong focus on the problem that we actually have to talk about.

MARTIN: To that end though, one of the reasons we called you is that you are the initiator of a hashtag which has gone viral in Germany called #aufschrei, which means outcry. And you started this well before this. What were some of the kinds of issues that you wanted to surface with #aufschrei?

WIZOREK: #Aufschrei was an ad hoc campaign, so it wasn't really planned. We were just in the situation on Twitter where one of my friends started sharing her own experience with sexual assault. And I just wanted to have some - something to make us all able to vent about this. So I suggested the hashtag. And then we started tweeting about everything from sexual remarks at the working place, from being stalked, from men following us home, touching us on public transport. People were also sharing their stories about how they have been raped by friends and family. So already under the hashtag, you saw the whole range of sexism and sexual violence happening.

MARTIN: Including in big public events. I mean, that's one of the things you wrote about...

WIZOREK: Yeah.

MARTIN: ...In your piece is that people at Oktoberfest events - women were routinely reporting being groped and having beer poured down their shirts and things of that sort - you know, this kind of similar behavior. Are you saying that you don't think this kind of public street harassment has gotten any attention until it was perpetrated by immigrants or by people perceived to be of color?

WIZOREK: Well, let's just say it's very astonishing to see the people who back then when #aufschrei was big in the media and people talked about it that a lot of people also tried to downplay the problems. They were saying, like, well, but we've gotten so far and we have - and gender equity in Germany right now - we have a female chancellor, so what do you want? All that kind of argument was going on. And those people are the ones who are now talking a lot about what has happened in Cologne. So they are using this - these stories and these experiences of the people who have been attacked in Cologne to only push forward with their racist agenda against migrants and refugees in Germany, and I think that's a huge problem.

MARTIN: That's writer and feminist activist Anne Wizorek. She's the initiator of the hashtag #aufschrei, which is meant to call attention to the problem of sexual violence and sexual assault in Germany. We reached her in Berlin. Anne, thank you so much for speaking with us.

WIZOREK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.