First African-born member of German parliament will not seek re-election
Germany’s first African-born member of parliament said this week that he would not run again in next year’s general election. While he played down racism as a factor, he made the announcement shortly after his staff released the contents of a series of hate mail and death threats his office had received.
The lawmaker, Karamba Diaby, a 62-year-old Senegalese native who was first elected in 2013, said in a letter to his colleagues that he wanted to make way for a new generation of politicians and that racism was “not the main reason” for his decision. But he has spoken out about the abuse he has experienced, which has increased significantly in volume and tone in recent years.
Bullets were shot through the window from his district office in 2020, and the office was a target of arson last year.
“I can’t sweep all this away,” Mr. Diaby reportedly said in an interview, according to the Funke Media Group, a major German newspaper and magazine publisher. “These are not small things.”
The election of Mr. Diaby, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry and emigrated to East Germany in 1985, more than a decade ago, was hailed at the time as a major victory for equality. Mr. Diaby, who belongs to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, cited a desire to spend more time with his family as a major reason for his departure.
However, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, better known as AfD, is polling much better than his centre-left party in his constituency.
Diaby blames the rising AfD, which won second place in Germany in the recent European elections with its populist party programme, for the increase in racism and threats.
“I have received several assassination threats over the past few years,” he said in a podcast interview with Politico.eu this week. “This has now crossed the line.”
“The hatred that the AfD sows every day with its misanthropic stories is reflected in concrete psychological and physical violence,” he added. “This endangers the cohesion of our society. We cannot simply accept this.”
The city of Halle, which Mr Diaby represents, is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, one of the eastern states dominated by the nationalist and anti-immigration AfD party.
Just last year, Mr Diaby struck a very different tone against those who threatened him.
“More than 42,000 people in Halle voted for me,” he said in a interview with news magazine Der Spiegel“Resigning would mean that their voices would carry less weight than those of a hateful minority.”
“I would never let that happen,” he added.
Christopher F.Schütze contributed to the reporting.
