Taharrush Gamea, حرش جماعي – The Arab “rape game”

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the main investigative authority in Germany, said in a response to Welt newspaper it knows sexual harassment of women in public is widespread in Arab countries, and that this is exactly what happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. Collective harassment is translated as “taharrush gamea” (حرش جماعي).

“Such crimes are committed by groups of young men… mostly when there are large gatherings of people, such as demonstrations. They range from sexual harassment to rape,” the BKA told Welt.

Earlier, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas urged authorities to investigate if the Cologne assaults were directly related to those in the other German cities of Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Bielefeld during New Year’s celebrations.

“If such a horde gathers in order to commit crimes, it appears in some form to be planned,” the minister told Bild on Sunday. “Nobody can tell me that this was not coordinated or prepared.”

The BKA said the assaults “ranging from sexual harassment to physical abuse” were unknown in Germany until recently.

A hashtag similar to “taharrush gamea” has already begun popping up in social media – being used for angry posts decrying either the massive influx of refugees or profane attitudes towards women, with some saying the Cologne assaults “weren’t done by frustrated or drunken people, but by those who planned and elaborated it.”

In addition to the events in Cologne, police in Berlin, Hamburg, Bielefeld, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart have reported of similar incidents. In addition, police in Vienna and Salzburg in Austria and Zurich in Switzerland have raised the alarm about similar mass assaults against women by newly arrived Arab migrants. Also Sweden and Finland experienced the same on New Year’s Eve.

– The attacks range from sexual molestation to rape, says head of BKA, Holger Münch.

The “rape game” Taharrush is about a large group of Arab men surrounding their victim, usually a Western woman or a woman wearing Western-style clothing, and then the women are subjected to sexual abuse.

They surround the victim in circles. The men in the inner circle are the ones who physically abuse the woman, the next circle are the spectators, while the mission of the third circle is to distract and divert attention to what’s going on.

If there is enough men, the woman is dragged along by the mob, while the men take turns ripping her clothes off, grope her, and inserting fingers in her various body orifices.