German town bans asylum seekers from swimming pool after harassment complaints
Town near Cologne bans male asylum seekers from public swimming pool after complaints that some women were sexually harassed there
A western German town has barred adult male asylum seekers from its public indoor swimming pool after receiving complaints that some women were sexually harassed there.
Markus Schnapka, head of the social affairs department in Bornheim, a town 20 miles south of Cologne, said pool users had complained of sexual harassment by men living in a nearby asylum-seeker shelter.
He said none of the complaints were criminal and the pool had agreed the ban would end once social workers confirmed the men "got the message".
It was the latest sign of social tensions related to the arrival last year of 1.1 million migrants in Germany, followed by sex assaults on women by young male asylum seekers and migrants during New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne.
"There have been complaints of sexual harassment and chatting-up going on in this swimming pool ... by groups of young men, and this has prompted some women to leave (the premises)," Mr Schnapka told Reuters.
This led to my decision that adult males from our asylum shelters may not enter the swimming pool until further notice."
A national poll Friday showed that Germans are becoming increasingly concerned about the country's ability to integrate the huge numbers of asylum-seekers who arrived last year.
Sixty-six per cent of the 1,203 respondents said Germany cannot handle the migrant influx, up from 46 per cent in December.
A German town, 50 miles north of Cologne, has cancelled one of its carnival parades over fears of a repeat of the sexual assaults that took place in Cologne.
The town of Rheinsberg said refugees might visit the parade taking place in its Orsoy suburb in a drunken state, potentially causing conflict.
There are currently 300 refugees living in the Orsoy neighbourhood, where the parade was due to be held on February 8, with a further 200 expected to arrive at the start of February.
The town emphasised that there were other concerns which contributed to the decision to cancel the street party.
The parade was traditionally held on a Sunday, with a turnout of around 2,500 visitors. But the decision to hold it on Monday this year could have led to double that number turning up.
The town was also concerned that a “problematic audience” would turn up “who had chosen their parade because they think it will not be so closely controlled by police and security personnel”.
Traffic jams caused by increased traffic entering and leaving the town was cited as a further reason for the cancellation.
Cologne's preparations for its own carnival, with the festival’s highlight of Rose Monday typically attracting more than 10,000 visitors alone, are going ahead as usual.
Figures released on Friday showed that the number of applications from asylum seekers from Algeria and Morocco has risen sharply.
Almost 2,300 Algerians and 3,000 Moroccans applied for asylum in Germany in December alone, reported the Frankfurter Rundschau citing figures from the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees.
By contrast, August saw less than 1,500 applications from the two countries put together, while there were less than 4,000 asylum seekers from both lands in the whole of 2014.
Morocco and Algeria are currently not on the list of countries deemed safe – lands designated as such mean people from those countries have a much lower chance of being granted asylum.
But there are growing calls within German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party to add Algeria and Morocco to the list following the Cologne attacks. In the past year, just 3.74 per cent of Moroccan asylum seekers and 1.6 per cent of those from Algeria were deemed in need of protection in Germany.
German town bans asylum seekers from swimming pool after harassment complaints - Telegraph
