Angela Merkel under pressure as Cologne violence cases rise to 516

Cologne police on Sunday said they had now recorded over 500 cases of New Year's Eve violence blamed on migrants, piling fresh pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her liberal stance towards refugees.

Marking a sharp jump from the caseload of 379 given on Saturday, police said some 516 complaints had now been lodged, including 40 per cent that are related to sexual assault. Witnesses described terrifying scenes of hundreds of women running a gauntlet of groping hands, lewd insults and robberies in the mob violence.

Even though no formal charges have been laid, Cologne police have said those suspected over the New Year's rampage near the city's railway station were mostly asylum seekers and illegal migrants from North Africa. The scale of the Cologne assaults has shocked Germany and put a spotlight on the 1.1 million asylum seekers who arrived in the country last year.

It has also fuelled fear, with a poll published by Bild am Sonntag newspaper saying that 39 per cent of those surveyed felt police did not provide sufficient protection, while 57 per cent did. And just under half (49 per cent) believed the same sort of mob violence could hit their hometown, reported the newspaper which headlined its article with the question: "Is the New Year Eve scandal the result of wrong policies?"

Turning away from her mantra of "we will manage this" over the record migrant influx, Merkel has been forced to change tack. She took a tough line on Saturday, saying she backed changes to the law to make it easier to expel asylum seekers convicted of a crime.

"If the law does not suffice, then the law must be changed," she said. "Cologne has changed everything, people now are doubting," said Volker Bouffier, vice-president of Merkel's CDU party.

Justice minister Heiko Maas said he believed the violence in the western city of Cologne was organised.

"For such a horde of people to meet and commit such crimes, it has to have been planned somehow," he told Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "No one can tell me that this was not coordinated or planned. The suspicion is that a specific date and an expected crowd was picked," he said.

Quoting confidential police reports, Bild am Sonntag said some North Africans had sent out calls using social networks for people to gather in Cologne on New Year's Eve. Separately in Hamburg, police said they had received 133 criminal complaints for similar violence during the northern city's own New Year's Eve celebrations.

With thousands of asylum seekers streaming into Germany every day since last year, Merkel has already come under fire from critics, even within her own conservative alliance, who want her to reverse her open-door policy to war refugees.

Critics have questioned Germany's ability to integrate the massive numbers of newcomers, many of whom hail from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Merkel had until now not wavered from her stance, even using her New Year's address to tell Germans that the record influx was "an opportunity for tomorrow". But after Cologne, she has adopted a harsher tone, saying also that "we must speak again about the cultural fundamentals of our co-existence".

"It's not premature to speak of a turning point, or at least the reinforcing of a trend that had already started to take shape lately," Andreas Roedder, contemporary history professor at Mainz University told AFP.

Bit by bit, the government has begun to tighten up checks, including reinstating individual interviews in asylum applications for Syrians since January 1, which had earlier been waived. And in Afghanistan, an advertising campaign is running to dissuade middle-class Afghans from coming, telling them that they should stay and rebuild their home country.

Balkan states have already been designated safe countries of origin — a category which meant that citizens would not usually be granted asylum — and Algeria and Morocco could soon join that list.

"After a period of open-arms policy, the time has perhaps come to change the tone. Right now the question is on expulsions, toughening the law, as what happened in Cologne really has a political dimension to it," said Tilman Mayer, a political analyst at Bonn University, speaking to Phoenix television station.

Merkel is caught in a bind as asylum seekers are still arriving at the rate of between 3,000 and 4,000 a day, despite the harsh winter conditions.

"The situation could degenerate very quickly for Merkel within the CDU because resistance and nervousness is growing," said Roedder.