Source: BBC

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has proposed changes to make it easier to deport asylum-seekers who commit crimes, after the New Year’s Eve sex attacks on women in Cologne.

The attacks, which victims say were carried out by men of North African and Arab appearance, have called into question her open-door migrant policy.

The police’s handling of the events has also been sharply criticised.

The anti-immigrant Pegida movement is holding a protest in Cologne.

As Pegida members filed out of the main station, a police cordon separated them from a left-wing counter-demonstration. There have also been protests about violence against women.

‘Consequences’

Mrs Merkel, speaking after a meeting of her Christian Democrat party leadership in Mainz, proposed tightening the law on denying the right of asylum for those who have committed crimes.

Under the new plans, those on probation could be deported too.

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“When crimes are committed, and people place themselves outside the law… there must be consequences,” she told reporters after the meeting.

Under current German laws, asylum seekers are only forcibly sent back if they have been sentenced to at least three years’ imprisonment, and providing their lives are not at risk in their countries of origin.

The move, which will still need parliamentary approval, follows the New Year’s Eve attacks, which sparked outrage in Germany.

Victims described chaos as dozens of sexual assaults and robberies were carried out with little apparent response from the authorities around Cologne station.

Twenty-one people are being investigated for sexual assault.

Merkel under pressure – BBC’s Anna Holligan in Cologne

Angela Merkel’s challenge is to reassure an increasingly pessimistic public that she has a long-term plan. The chancellor showed compassion when she welcomed more than a million refugees and migrants into Germany in 2015. Now she is under pressure to make clear there are limits to German tolerance.

Anti-immigration campaigners have seized on the Cologne incident as an example of what they see as the failure of the country’s asylum policy. The prominence of the far-right Pegida movement was fading. It is now using the attacks as a propaganda tool.

On the other side of what is a widening chasm, established Islamic groups here have expressed fears that the actions of a few may jeopardise the future of many.

With tension rising and tolerance waning, Germany’s doors remain open, but many here are increasingly asking: For how long and at what cost?

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