'Safety zone' for women in Berlin during New Year festivities

Rainer Wendt, the head of Germany's second-largest police officers' union, said a women's zone planned for the area around Berlin's Brandenburg Gate sent a "disastrous message.”

"With this message, you're saying that there are safe and unsafe zones,” Wendt told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper's Saturday edition. He said that this, if true, would amount to "the end of equality, freedom of movement and self-determination.”

"Whoever came up with that idea has not understood the political dimension,” said Wendt of the German DPoIG police trade union.

Women had a right to be safe everywhere, he said.

Berlin police said the safety area in the capital's "party mile" around the Brandenburg Gate would be staffed by the German Red Cross for women feeling harassed.

The Red Cross said the safety area would be tented and psychologists would be present.

Consequences after Cologne

New Year's Eve, when Germany expends more than 130 million euros ($155 million) detonating pyrotechnics at or around midnight, became global news two years ago when young men of North African appearance in groups molested women by Cologne's main train station and cathedral.

Of 1,200 complaints filed in early 2016, Cologne prosecutors said some 500 cases turned out to involve sexual offences.

Assaults on women were also reported in other cities, especially Hamburg, where 245 investigations took place.

More lighting, video cameras

For Sunday nigh, Cologne's police chief Uwe Jacob said 1,400 policemen and women would be deployed on the central railway station plaza and around the adjacent cathedral.

Fireworks would be banned in the combined zone. More video surveillance cameras and improved lighting would be installed, he said.

Hamburg authorities plan to station extra mobile police stations near its Reeperbahn red-light district, also combined with more cameras and lighting.

Frankfurt police said officers in uniform and in plain clothes would concentrate on public safety on both banks of the city's Main river, a popular hangout for revelers.

Concrete bollards

Police in Berlin, still grieving after last year's terrorist attack using a truck that killed 12 people at a Christmas market, said concrete bollards and other barricades would be placed around its Brandenburg Gate, the annual venue of televised festivities.

Delivery vehicles would be checked or even searched, and large bags and suitcases will be banned.

Munich's police force said that a "high abstract risk situation remained” and security precautions would be very prevalent, including special mobile units.

Munich police also warned persons in groups intending to direct fireworks at other people would be closely monitored and prosecuted.

"That is not entertainment, that is a serious crime, which could cause grave injury,” said a police spokesman, referring to past injuries, including eye damage.

Eye injuries another hot button

The German Ophthalamological Association in a survey after last year's festivities found that 41 eye clinics treated 350 people with New Year's injuries. Three-quarters of them were treated as outpatients and a tenth ended up losing their eyesight, according to the association.

A third were children and teenagers aged under 18 of whom only half had ignited the injury-causing device. Facial and hand injuries are also common during Germany's temporary amnesty on setting off fireworks.

Hansjürgen Agostini of Freiburg's University Clinic encouraged people intent on watching fireworks to wear protective glasses or googles.

"It would however be better," he said, "to leave fireworks in the hands of trained professionals."

"These figures show how erratic and dangerous rockets and firecrackers are, and that we need more protective measures," he concluded.

ipj/msh (dpa, Reuters)