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A debate of Berlin, by a eyes of refugees

  • May 02, 2017

A debate by executive Berlin on a recent, stormy Saturday afternoon guided a participants by some of Berlin’s many standard attractions: Checkpoint Charlie, Gendarmenmarkt, a selling district around Friedrichstrasse.

But a stories told via were utterly opposite than other traveller excursions. Along with Berlin’s Cold War story and Nazi past, a debate guides spoke of Syria’s possess tip police, supervision repression, and locals journey for safer destinations – sketch parallels between a dual nations.

The Refugee Voices Tours were launched reduction than a year ago by British transplant Lorna Cannon in a German capital, and have given stretched into Copenhagen and shortly Paris. Herself a debate guide, Cannon told The Local that she had beheld that a lot of tourists in a city were seeking about a conditions with refugees in a nation since of all a media coverage.

“I suspicion ‘this isn’t my story to tell. People should hear these stories’,” Cannon explains.

So she began to classify a tours with Syrian friends she already knew from operative with refugees, and together they motionless to couple a similarities between German story and Syria’s ongoing polite war.

For example, a debate connects a comrade East German government’s hang-up of a Jun 17th 1953 overthrow during a Cold War to a 1982 Hama massacre. Both events concerned a particular governments regulating troops force to stifle municipal revolts.

Like in Hama, a accurate series of people killed in East Berlin that Jun day is not known, some calculating several hundred deaths. Estimates for a series of people killed in Hama during a anti-government overthrow duration operation in a thousands.

And in both cases, a governments downplayed or twisted what indeed happened, East Germany blaming it on Western army seeking to interrupt inhabitant stability, and a Syrian supervision mostly job a electrocute a “accidents of Hama”, debate beam Eyas Adi says.

“I consider story is like a loop: what happened in Germany is function in other countries,” observes Berliner Andreas along a debate route.

Another stop on a debate reveals a maybe small famous tie between Nazi Germany and Syria. An review by a French repository progressing this year began to uncover a predestine of Nazi fight rapist Alois Brunner, who finished adult in Syria after a Second World War. He is believed to have turn an confidant to Syrian tip police, reportedly flitting on Nazi inquire methods.

“He helped learn Syrians about torture,” Adi says.

The debate also uses Checkpoint Charlie to paint a German capital’s possess inner multiplication during a Cold War, until a nation was eventually reunified amid thousands of East Germans journey to a West.

“People evading from East to West were identical to Syrian refugees now,” Adi says. “They wanted to have some-more opportunities for their children in a some-more giveaway and fast country.”

The final stop on a debate is Gendarmenmarkt, a block featuring twin churches dating behind to a early 1700s. One was built for a French Huguenot refugees who staid in a city due to harm in France, and a other is a German Lutheran church.

“The summary is that people can live together and integrate, even if they come from opposite religions or cultures,” Adi explains.

For some holding a tour, it’s a initial time to truly put genuine faces to a news they see so mostly – and to know how they finished adult in Berlin.

“I wanted to hear from a Syrian chairman their indicate of view, besides only what a media says,” Brazilian Beatriz Oberlaender, who recently changed to Berlin herself, tells The Local.

Adi came to Germany about a year ago after he pronounced he attempted to stay in Damascus for as prolonged as possible. A medical tyro there, he had worked in amicable and psychological services with victims of a conflict. But when he could no longer equivocate portion his legally thankful troops use for a regime he criticizes, Adi motionless to leave, and was postulated haven final November.

“If a conditions were better, we consider we would go back,” he says.

For a guides, a tours are also a approach to say a tie to their homeland, over 3,000 kilometres away.

“The best partial is saying that there are still some people who caring adequate to listen and know what’s function in Syria, and wish to uncover their support,” says debate beam Mohamad.

“It means to me a lot since it’s giving me a clarity that I’m doing something for my country, even if it’s only to move recognition to what’s function there so people can know it.”

Article source: https://www.thelocal.de/20170502/a-tour-of-berlin-through-the-eyes-of-refugees

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