30 years ago, after the xenophobic pogroms in Hoyerswerda and Rostock-Lichtenhagen and the racist murders in Mölln, 400,000 people took to the streets in Munich on December 6, 1992 and set an internationally recognized signal against racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism with a chain of lights . The “Lichterkette” association, which was founded shortly thereafter, is still committed to numerous projects to combat racism and promote peaceful coexistence. He is supported in this by the city of Munich, among others.
But the club does not want to talk about an anniversary. Racism, discrimination and hatred against people with refugee and migration backgrounds and against minorities have by no means disappeared from the world. Especially in the so-called social networks, but also on the street, people are insulted and threatened in the worst possible way. And they are not only verbally attacked, as the murders of the “National Socialist Underground” or the assassination attempt in Hanau have shown in the recent past.
Now the association wants to send a clear signal again: on Thursday it launched the campaign “Mensch. Deutschland. 30 Jahre Lichterkette e. V.” presented. This calls for no one to be excluded and for differences not to be understood as a threat, but as an advantage.
To this end, the association, in cooperation with the production company Lupa Film, creates more than 100 interviews with people of all ages from different social, religious and cultural milieus and with the most diverse biographies. What unites these people is the everyday experience of exclusion and discrimination, including violence. All report on their individual strategies for dealing with it. From December 6th, the videos will be gradually played out as a “digital chain of lights” on all standard online channels.
Two Munich women reported everyday discrimination at the presentation on Thursday. Lise-Christine Kobla Mendama, who appears as a rapper and model under the stage name Queen Lizzy and is active in the Afro youth Munich, because of her skin color; the student Feriha Ipek Akti because of her headscarf. They hear insults, for example on public transport, from people who otherwise appear friendly and are considered “quite normal” according to the widespread perception here. It is such worthy people who find their political home in the AfD, for example. Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD), who also came to present the campaign, does not even want to name this party. He also stood in the chain of lights at the time, he says. At the time, he didn’t believe that 30 years later we still had to talk about these topics.