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.

    • nifty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      6 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·
        6 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·
      6 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.