It was a balmy summer night in 2020, shortly after Germany lifted the first corona lockdown. Omar Diallo and two friends from his native Guinea wanted to celebrate id al-adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice.
– We enjoyed life, played music, walked through the city at night – we just wanted to be together again and have a good time, says 22-year-old Diallo to the AP news agency.
The city he is talking about is Erfurt in Thuringia, in eastern Germany. Diallo was not prepared for how the evening would end. Suddenly, he and his friends were stopped and confronted by three men dressed in black.
– They shouted: “What do you want here, j—- foreigners, come out!”, says Diallo.
Surrounded
– First there were three of them, then five, seven – they surrounded us from all sides. We couldn’t get away and they started chasing us.
At one point, Diallo managed to call the police, and when the officers finally arrived, the men ran off. One of his friends was beaten up so badly that he had to be hospitalized.
– I was just trying to survive. I hadn’t done anything wrong. It all happened only because of my skin color, says Diallo.
Barely any contact
Being black in Germany has always meant being exposed to racism, from everyday humiliations to deadly attacks. In East Germany, the risk may be even greater.
After World War II, West Germany became a democratic, diverse society, but in East Germany, which was run by a communist dictatorship until the end of 1989, citizens had little contact with people of different ethnic backgrounds and were not allowed to travel abroad freely .
Experts believe that especially in Thuringia, an environment has been created by radical right-wing forces that are hostile to minorities, including blacks.
Now, with the rise of the far-right party AfD, black Germans and African migrants are increasingly worried.
85 attacks
Thuringia, which has a population of 2.1 million, will hold state elections on September 1. The AfD, which is strongly against immigration, leads the opinion polls with a support of around 30 percent.
In 2023, the voluntary organization Ezra documented 85 racially motivated attacks in Thuringia. That was a slight decrease from 88 attacks in 2022, which Ezra describes as a peak level of far-right and racist violence in the state.
The organization works to help victims of right-wing extremism, racist and anti-Semitic violence.
– In recent years, a far-right movement has formed in Thuringia, which has contributed to a noticeable ideological radicalization of its followers. Politically, it is the party AfD that wins in this, Ezra and several other organizations that work against racism wrote in their annual report.
– Great danger
The AfD in Thuringia is considered particularly radical and four years ago was put under surveillance by the domestic intelligence service as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.
– Authoritarian and populist forces, which are becoming very strong here, are a great danger in Thuringia, says Doreen Denstaedt, the state’s minister for migration, justice and consumer protection.
Denstaedt was born and raised in Thuringia, with a father from Tanzania and a mother from Germany.
The 46-year-old, who represents the Green party, says that growing up in communist East Germany, she was always the only child with dark skin. As a teenager, she was never allowed to walk home on her own because of the risk of racist attacks, and she sometimes had racist remarks hurled at her at school.
– Several times I experienced people calling me a foreigner, which confused me at first, because I was born in Saalfeld, says Denstaedt.
1.27 million
She fears that the current political climate will lead to racist views becoming more accepted.
– My biggest concern is that people do not question these prejudices, especially if they are not influenced by them themselves, says Denstaedt.
It is not known how many black people live in Germany now, as different ethnicities are not documented in official statistics. But estimates put the number of people of African descent at 1.27 million. Over 70 percent of them were born in Germany, according to Mediendienst Integration, which looks at migration in the country.
Said sorry
Germany’s history of discrimination based on ethnicity began long before the Nazis excluded, deported and eventually killed black people in the 1930s and 1940s.
The German Empire had a number of colonies in Africa from 1884 until the end of the First World War. These included areas in present-day Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Namibia, Cameroon, Togo and Ghana.
The German government has only recently come to terms with the wrongdoings that were committed during this period. In 2021, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that Germans should face their cruel colonial past. In 2023, he apologized for murders committed during the colonial era in Tanzania.
– Many people know little
58-year-old Daniel Egbe moved from Cameroon to Thuringia in 1994 to study. He says he is shocked by how little the Germans know about their colonial history. This ignorance can also have an impact on how black people are treated, the chemist believes.
– I have taught school classes. I tell them a little about myself, especially the fact that Cameroon was a German colony. Many of the students do not know anything about Africa or Germany’s past there, and that needs to be brought to light, Egbe believes.
He is the founder of AMAH, an organization that helps university students and migrants from Africa when they are subjected to discrimination in the city of Jena, in eastern Thuringia.
Want change
He is worried about the rise of the AfD, but has no plans to leave his hometown.
– We don’t want to leave, we want to do our part to change this society. People are mostly afraid of it and those they don’t know. We must bring about a change through education.
For Diallo, who was attacked in Erfurt four years ago, the desire to improve the lives of black people in Germany is also strong.
Although the attack traumatized him, it also enabled him to fight for justice, he says. A year ago he joined the University of Munich to study law, but still visits Erfurt often. He is also involved in Youth Without Borders, a network of young migrants.
– I don’t quite know how to change Germany yet, but I know that I will, says Diallo.
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2024-08-29 23:26:55