COLOGNE (Germany) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday (Jan 9) backed stricter laws to expel convicted refugees, as Cologne police recorded 379 cases of New Year violence with asylum seekers and illegal migrants making up the majority of suspects.

With anger growing at the apparent scale of the attacks — including sexual assaults — supporters of the xenophobic PEGIDA movement marched in protest in the western German city.

Police used tear gas and water cannon to clear the rally of far-right supporters after protesters flung firecrackers and bottles at officers they say failed to prevent the New Year’s Eve attacks on women.

Vowing tough action, Ms Merkel declared that any refugee handed a jail term — even if it was a suspended sentence — should be kicked out of the country.

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

Witnesses described terrifying scenes of hundreds of women running a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in the mob violence.

Of the cases reported so far, 40 per cent related to sexual violence, Cologne police said in a statement.

“Those in focus of criminal police investigations are mostly people from north African countries. The majority of them are asylum seekers and people who are in Germany illegally,” police added, confirming witness accounts.

The allegations have stoked criticism of Ms Merkel’s liberal open-door policy — which brought 1.1 million new asylum seekers to Germany last year.

‘COLOGNE CHANGED EVERYTHING’

Playing on popular fears, the mob violence threatens to cloud what had been a broadly welcoming mood in Germany where crowds cheered as Syrian refugees arrived by train in September.

Germany’s conservative Die Welt newspaper said on Wednesday, the day the level of violence became clear, “marks the beginning of a change in immigration policy” in an article outlining both “the benefits and the dangers of mass immigration from Muslim countries”.

“Cologne has changed everything, people now are doubting,” said Mr Volker Bouffier, vice president of Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.

In Cologne, hundreds of PEGIDA supporters waved German flags and signs saying “Rapefugees not welcome”, as they shouted “Merkel raus” (Merkel out), before the protest briefly turned violent.

“(Ms) Merkel has become a danger to our country. (Ms) Merkel must go,” one speaker told the crowd, which loudly echoed the call.

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”.

More than 300 Belgian supporters of the far-right movement also turned out in the northern city of Antwerp, holding posters with slogans like “Mohammed not welcome” complete with a caricature of the Prophet.

Ms Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, also weighed in, saying in a tweet that “the dignity and freedom of a woman is something precious that we have the duty to protect”.

The populist right-wing Alternative for Germany party, which polls show as having 10 per cent support ahead of state elections this year, claimed the violence gave a “taste of the looming collapse of culture and civilisation”.

ASYLUM SEEKERS AMONG SUSPECTS

Details remain hazy of what happened in the frenzied crush on what was supposed to be a night of celebration.

It was unclear how many of the suspects had been in Germany long-term or belonged to a scene of drug dealers and pickpockets known to lurk around the railway station, and how many were newly-arrived asylum seekers.

On Friday, the interior ministry said Germany’s federal police had identified 32 suspects, 22 of whom were asylum seekers, in connection with 76 offences, 12 of which had a sexual nature.

Ms Merkel has so far refused to abandon her welcoming stance towards war refugees but yesterday had tough words for law breakers.

“If a refugee flouts the rules, then there must be consequences, that means that they can lose their residence right here regardless of whether they have a suspended sentence or a prison sentence,” she said after a meeting with the top ranks of her party in the south-western city of Mainz.

Under current laws, asylum seekers are only deported if they have been sentenced to jail terms of at least three years, and if their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin.

“We must do this for us, and for the many refugees who were not part of the events in Cologne,” she said.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said talks were ongoing with the justice minister on this front.

“Foreigners convicted of serious offences or serial offences must leave Germany,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. AFP