After the resignation of footballer Mesut Oezil from
the German national team, thousands of Germans have taken to Twitter
to share their experiences of everyday racism with a hashtag, #MeTwo,
which caught the attention of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Friday.
"For anyone who believes that racism is no longer a problem
in Germany, I recommend you read through the #MeTwo tweets," Maas
wrote. "We need to realize that flippant comments at work or
disparaging gestures on the train can sometimes be worse than the
banal words of skin-headed yobs," he added.
More than 60,000 tweets have been published under #MeTwo since
Wednesday, with Twitter users imparting their experiences of racial
and xenophobic discrimination.
"When I'm the only non-white person on an overcrowded train, the
police get in, and I'm the only person who has to show their ID,"
wrote Hasnain Kazim, a German journalist from Spiegel news magazine
with Indian and Pakistani heritage.
"When neo-Nazis threaten my mother and prosecutors tell her, 'Well
perhaps your son shouldn't express himself so prominently in
public,'" tweeted Shahak Shapira, a German comedian with an Israeli
background.
Based on the #MeToo hashtag, which saw millions of women share their
experiences of sexual harassment or violence on Twitter, #MeTwo aims
to encourage a similar movement among Germans with a migration
background, says its initiator, Ali Can, a German activist with
Turkish roots.
Oezil quit the national German football team on Sunday amid fallout
over controversial pictures he took with Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan before the World Cup, claiming he had experienced
racism because of his Turkish heritage.