It’s the heart of summer, and millions of people are looking to cool off in swimming pools across the world.
But for one family in Dusseldorf, Germany, their weekend outing to escape the ongoing heatwave turned into a real-life nightmare when they were harassed by “hundreds” of migrants, prompting a massive police response, closing the public swimming facility.
The chaos erupted Saturday at the Rheinbad public pool, as some 400 men of North African origin became rowdy.
RT called it an “explosive situation,” noting:
“The young men were harassing [other] visitors, shouting and splashing into the pool. Two of them ultimately got into fight with one another, running over towels of other pool-goers. The two were confronted by a man, who attended the pool alongside his wife and children. The father – reportedly of Turkish origins – scolded the rowdy bathers, while referring to them as ‘Nafris.’
“The controversial term is a police abbreviation, meaning ‘North African Intensive Offenders,’ and became public knowledge after the 2016 New Year Eve mass sexual assaults in Cologne. It has been condemned by critics as a racial slur.”
Once police responded, officers were “met with angry remarks from the crowd, pelted with empty bottles and other objects,” RT reports. “Reinforcements were dispatched to the scene and the police was ultimately able to get the situation under control, escorting the family out of the pool.”
On Sunday, a “similar” incident prompted another closure of the same pool.
Germany has been dealing with similar problems involving the behavior migrants at public pools.
In January, migrant men were banned from a water park in Bornheim, a suburb of Bonn, for sexually harassing female visitors.
The male asylum seekers were banned “after the number of complaints of sexual harassment from female bathers became alarmingly high,” RT reported.
And at another swimming pool in the town of Netphen in North Rhine-Westphalia near Cologne, staff took disciplinary measures on some refugees who sexually harassing female swimmers.
The staff of another pool in the town of Netphen in North Rhine-Westphalia near Cologne also had to impose disciplinary measures on some refugees.
According to Berliner Kurier, pool manager Bernd Wieczorek indicated a group of 20- to 25-year-old refugees watched the females during their aqua-cycling class and followed them afterward.
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