With the sexual assault and terrorism associated with migrant flows, European values are in a clash with no solution in sight. How does one weigh hundreds of thousands of illiberal, disaffected young men against starvation in Syria, Taliban firing squads, Eritrean indefinite conscription that amounts to slavery and a Mediterranean of floating corpses?
Open-border advocates are unfazed by the molestation of more than 500 women on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, mostly by asylum-seekers. Sure, there were unprecedented New Year’s attacks on women in Helsinki, Stuttgart and Hamburg. Sure, unaccompanied Afghan refugees molested girls as young as 11 years old at a Stockholm rock festival two summers in a row. Sure, a Paris attacker entered Europe on a counterfeit Syrian passport. Sure, a man who had stayed in a German refugee shelter attacked a Paris police station while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” No matter. Musa Okwonga cited the United Nations’ figure — which says 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced sexual violence — to argue the Cologne assaults were “a particularly severe eruption of a situation which, in global terms, has always been volcanic.” This is ludicrous.
German feminists Stefanie Lohaus and Anne Wizorek argued “Germany’s rape culture is deeply rooted in our collective psyche” and was “not imported.” They compare the assaults to Oktoberfest rapes, which police records proved to be false. Large-scale, coordinated, multi-city assaults are unprecedented, and almost all attackers were Moroccan migrants, not sexist Germans. Yes, the nativist right cares about rape only when men of color rape white women. But it is audacious to say German women have it as bad as women in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Almost 90 percent of Afghan women face physical, sexual or psychological violence, or are forced into marriage.
From 2009 to 2011, a Norwegian oil industry town reported 20 rapes, only three of which were committed by native Norwegians. In response, Norway offers to migrants classes in gender norms. An asylum-seeker from Eritrea said, “Men have weaknesses and when they see someone smiling it is difficult to control,” and that back home, “if someone wants a lady he can just take her and he will not be punished.”
The fact is, most migrants are men. There are now 123 16- and 17-year-old boys in Sweden for every 100 girls. Numerous studies show a link between such gender skew and terrorism, property crime and violent gangs. Is this still, as the government claims, a feminist foreign policy?
The situation is messy and murky. Neither open-borders idealism nor xenophobic nativism is up to the task. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights enshrine the principle of asylum. The EU Directive on Reception Conditions bestows the right to state provision, including housing.
First, Germany must be honest. Jochen Bittner suggests thorough identity checks to separate free-riding criminals from legitimate asylum-seekers; semi-custody for new arrivals without passports; and swift, visible deportation of about 8,000 identified moochers. That’s the stick; we also need carrots. Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch outlines a recipe for integration: Cut out the xenophobic talk of “swarms” of “terrorists,” nix the discriminatory headscarf bans, quit detaining asylum-seekers, implement mixed housing and integrate children into local school systems.
Today’s fascists-lite might appeal to Western values, but they violate them with bigotry, provincialism and vitriol. The consequences: Minorities on the margins of society can turn against it. In 1995, Khaled Kelkal, a son of Algerian immigrants, shook France with a wave of assassinations and bombings. He was the first homegrown jihadist. His complaint? “I didn’t study just to end up loading trucks.” Culture mustn’t serve as a codeword for more concrete issues like poverty, geographic isolation and xenophobia. Refugees are a reality. If we want them to love the West, we must love them back.
Ann Manov is a UF French, English and Spanish senior. Her column appears on Mondays.
