Karamba Diaby’s announcement he wants to spend time with family comes after bullet and arson attacks on his office

The first African-born MP to enter the German parliament has announced he will not be standing in next year’s federal election, weeks after he revealed the hate mail, including racist slurs and death threats, he and his staff had received.

Karamba Diaby, 62, who entered the Bundestag in 2013 in a moment hailed as historic by equality campaigners, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and to make room for younger politicians.

Diaby said the racist slurs and death threats were “not the main reasons” for his decision, having frequently emphasised he would not be cowed by threats. But they are widely believed they have played a part.

He has increasingly faced racist abuse in recent years. His constituency office in Halle, Saxony Anhalt, has been an arson target, and has had bullets fired through the window. Some staff have faced blackmail attempts to stop them working for him and have been subjected to and threats, Diaby said.

  • niftyEnglish
    17•5 months ago

    Germany needs more black politicians

      • niftyEnglish
        19•5 months ago

        If there are white people living in Nigeria who experience socioeconomic disparities based on their race, then yes. That’s whats meant by “representative” in political bodies, in some sense

        • Match!!English
          6•5 months ago

          Or even just if there’s a substantial population of those people, like how there’s a million people in Germany with African heritage

      • @TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•5 months ago

        There have been couple of non-Western countries with politicians who are not part of local majority group. There is a white Australian who is like a governor or mayor in Papua New Guinea. Peru infamously had a dictator of Japanese-ancestry. So you get these kinds of things. If a white person wants to become an MP in India, go for it.

      • niftyEnglish
        29•5 months ago

        Because their one black representative got bullied out. Meanwhile a white woman was PM for a long time (Merkel)

        • @barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          4•5 months ago

          There’s three more currently in parliament, including a Nazi (Harald Weyel, AfD).

          • @deadbeef79000@lemmy.nzEnglish
            16•5 months ago

            “Perfect” would be to have complete/proportional diverse representation.

            “Good” is having any diversity.

              • EnkrodEnglish
                9•5 months ago

                just to show you how absurd and off of what was actually said your argument is, let’s do to your argument what you did to theirs:

                “So you think our representatives should not be representative of the population? Only rich, white, people should be politicians? You think there are no people of colour with political skills equal or better than those already in power? You think there isn’t a single second or third generation immigrant who could do a better job than Andi Scheuer or Armin Laschet?”

              • @techMayhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
                6•5 months ago

                They did not say that though? You want politicians that are both good at doing politics as well as be able to properly represent the people they govern.

                  • @discount_door_garlic@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    5•5 months ago

                    dude what are you even talking about - corporate meddling and billionaires aren’t the topic of discussion here - you seem to want competency in leadership and that’s absolutely a good quality, but its genuinely confusing how competent leadership which also better reflects the demographics of the population isn’t in the interests of a better democracy? more representative politicians aren’t mutually exclusive from competent ones