Re-vo-lu-tion

This Saturday I got a text from a friend of mine and he wanted me to join him for a protest. I asked him what sort of a protest it is to which he just replied with only the word“Refugees”. Perplexed, I decided I haven’t seen him for a while, and protest and refugees seems like the perfect excuse. Some hours later we met at Hermanplatz which was the starting point of the rally. Finally I got to ask him what this protest was all about and he told me that there is a school in Kreuzberg (a locality in Berlin) which has been occupied by refugees and the government wants to throw them out of Berlin and here we are protesting against that.

What I understood was that there is a bunch of people who think that the right of movement should not be restricted or confined to a specific group of people. That people should be allowed to live wherever they want to live. Slogans like “kein mench ist illegal, bleibe Recht ueberall” and “Nationalismus raus aus dem kopfen” and “Say no to deportation” perfumed the air.

So what started as a decently apolitical day had turned into a marvellously beautiful rally for people’s rights to live wherever they please. What surprised me the most was that that there are people in Germany or more specifically in Berlin who actually think that everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want to. That they don’t believe that only because one is white, or born in Germany, he or she deserves to be treated any differently than people who are born in a second or third world country.

And when I contrast it with how people think back home I find myself treading an unusually porous surface. Why would these people want this eludes me altogether. But I do know that back home, people even have reservations when it comes to treating people from parts of Pakistan let alone from outside Pakistan. Intriguing.