Russian-speaking communities gathered in Berlin on Sunday and took out a car rally denouncing Russophobia. The rally comes amid reports that Russian Germans – Germans who were born in the Soviet Republic but repatriated later – and Russians living in Germany were facing hostility for speaking Russian and their Russian roots.
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The car rally’s video was shared by Russian state-run news agency RT.com on Twitter. Cars were seen with Russian flags and placards denouncing hatred Russophone communities are facing in Germany. A car bore a placard which said in English – #STOP HATING RUSSIANS while another bore messages like – ‘Unsere kinder haben angst raus zu gehen’ and ‘Keine propaganda in der schule’ which roughly mean ‘our children are afraid to go outside’ and ‘no propaganda in school’, respectively.
The protesters have valid reasons to protest against discrimination as German news outlet Deutsche Welle published reports where it was found that Russophone people were being harassed for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A report from March says that a Russian school student in the city of Cologne was held down and beaten up by his classmates. The same report also highlighted an incident where a Russian child was asked to stand up before the entire class and clearly take a stand and distance herself from Putin’s policies.
Roman Friedrich, a social worker, who works in Cologne’s Chorweiler district is also a fluent Russian and Ukrainian speaker and is a German who was born in Omsk, Russia. He told DW that similar cases of hate crimes against Russians living in Germany and German Russians facing discrimination from a certain section of Germans.
At least 6 million Russian-speaking people live in Germany and most of them are descendants of Germans who moved to different nations which were part of the Soviet Union, including Russia.
These communities often cling to conservative values which has caused clashes of cultural nature with Germans who are more pro-western (a display of this cultural divide can be seen in the German movie Auf Einmal by writer-director Asli Özge where in a scene a ‘liberal’ upper middle-class German family takes a discriminatory stance against German woman of Russian descent after their son’s name came up with connection to her death in a provincial German town).
Meanwhile, Friedrich and the German government have urged people not to discriminate against German Russians or towards the Russophone population in Germany.
Similar attacks were reported against Russian speakers and Russophones in the UK and businesses also threatened to close operations due to their links to Russia.
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