A young left-wing German politician has admitted she lied to police about the racial background of three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country.

Selin Gören, the national spokeswoman of the left-wing youth movement Solid, was attacked by three men in January in the city of Mannheim where she works as a refugee activist.

The 24-year-old was ambushed late at night in a playground where she said she was forced to perform a sex act on her attackers.

After the assault she went straight to the police – but she did not tell them the ethnic make-up of the men, that they were speaking Arabic or Farsi.

Selin, aware of the backlash that migrants suffered after the events in Cologne on New Year’s Eve – when hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed by marauding gangs of immigrant youths – instead said she was robbed and said her attackers spoke German.

Now she has told Germany’s Spiegel magazine why she lied. After her initial interview at the end of January she returned to the police 12 hours later to tell them the real story.