Exberliner, refugees in Germany

Exberliner is a really inspiring publication (it already prompted this post last year). The base idea (an in English lifestyle magazine for expats in Berlin) should not be particularly appealing to a scarcely social, not cool in the slightest individual like me... but it's crystal clear that Berlin is a different place, and what in other cities would be a hipsters oriented magazine, in Berlin involves articles about social issues, historical background and so on. For example, the April number contained great articles about the urban (gentrification) plans for the city and the wipe out of part of the socialist architectural heritage.

November's issue made a non stop reading session in my flight back, and helped me understand things I'd seen the previous days both in Berlin and Hamburg. Already in October 2012 I had come across a refugees support camp in OranienPlatz (O-Platz), and information about demonstrations and a march in solidarity with refugees. The same landscape has been present in my ensuing visits to the world capital (it's very funny to see how to me Berlin has turned into the Welthaupstadt that the nazi scum dreamt about, but just for all the contrary reasons: freedom, art, dynamism, convergence of ideas, alternative thinking...) This November, apart from the camp, I found many stickers, posters, flags hanging from autonomous centers and alternative book shops... reading: Refugees Welcome and Lampedusa in Berlin/Hamburg.

Also, when paying a visit to one of my favorite Berlin spots, the desolated site between the Spree and Kopenickerstrasse with its abandoned factory covered in graffiti and murals, I found a middle east family trying to build a shanty under the shelter of the factory.

Exberliner's november issue is called "Looking for Asylum in Berlin" and nicely explains the current situation through different interviews and articles. In the last years Germany has become one of the top destinations for people seeking asylum in Europe. The reasons for this are not completely clear, but one of them is the false belief that achieving asylum in Germany is easy. Reading the experiences of some refugees it's pretty clear that it's not. Years of stagnation in a Heim (emergency refugee centre), without any idea of whether your request will be accepted or not, whether you'll be moved to another Heim in another city, the inability to work as you lack the permissions needed for that... As more refugees have been arriving into Germany (and primarily Berlin) and no move has been done by the government to speed up the asylum request procedures or to improve the conditions in which they are kept until the final decision is done different support initiatives has emerged, one of them being the protest camp in OranienPlatz. The "Lampedusa in Berlin" phrase comes from the fact that many of those refugees enter Europe through Lampedusa.

It's shocking to see that lately there's been an increase of Russian gays seeking asylum in Germany on the basis of the wave of homophobia that Putin's government and the Orthodox Church have unleashed. It seems like in the last months Russian neonazis and other pieces of human debris have been moving their focus from dark skinned people to gays.

Apart from these sad refugees stories, there's also an interesting column about Die Linke, their last electoral results (unfortunately, not too impressive), their difficulties to get rid of the past and the permanent boycott they're subjected to.