Just two weeks after hundreds of women were sexually assaulted by men who were reportedly asylum seekers, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been announced as the recipient of an award based on her management of the refugee crisis.
Merkel, who was also Time Magazine’s 2015 person of the year, will receive the Roosevelt Foundation’s Four Freedoms award on April 21. The organization cited her work on the refugee crisis as part of the reason she was chosen for this prestigious award.
“In the current migrant and refugee crisis Merkel is committed to Europe’s humanitarian duty to protect those fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Asia and to tackle the causes of the crisis by working for peace in Syria and the region,” the organization said in an announcement about the award.
Perhaps the foundation selected Merkel for the award prior to New Year’s Eve, when the assaults took place in Germany, because it’s difficult to justify rewarding someone for actions that led to hundreds of women being sexually assaulted. Of course, this is a liberal tradition – ignoring the way women are treated in favor of protecting other pet constituencies, in this case, asylum seekers.
In the wake of the attacks, which included robberies, fireworks being thrown into crowds and women being stripped, groped, sexually assaulted and even raped, Merkel and European officials tried to ignore or downplay the migrant connection. The BBC waited days to report the attacks, and they and other media outlets initially excluded information that the attackers were reportedly migrants.
To be fair, the vast majority of migrants were not responsible for these attacks, and what happened on New Year’s Eve is no excuse to attack migrants. In fact, a new report from Germany’s Spiegel found that most crimes being committed by immigrants are being committed by immigrants from the Maghreb, or North African region. The report found that just 0.5 percent of crimes committed by migrants in their first year after fleeing were by Syrians.
It was clear from the beginning that German officials (and Finnish officials, as assaults happened in Helsinki as well) didn’t want to report the nationality of the suspects because it would disrupt the narrative that those fleeing to Europe were victims who would only help the economy. Instead of protecting citizens, officials in the countries where the attacks happened rushed to ostracize and crack down on anyone who criticized the mass migration of people from countries where women are treated as chattel.
A week after the attacks, Merkel announced that she would change Germany’s immigration policies, not to ensure that dangerous people don’t come into the country, but to make it easier to deport them after they commit a crime.
The Four Freedoms Medals are given out each year (past winners include Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai) to those “whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to the principles which President Roosevelt proclaimed in his historic speech to Congress on 6 January 1941.” Those commitments include freedom of speech, worship, freedom from want and from fear.
Merkel’s award must not stand for that final freedom – from fear, because Merkel’s actions have no doubt made many German women more fearful that they’ll be assaulted or raped.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
