BERLIN (AP) – Five years ago, Tareq Alaows crossed the Mediterranean in a fragile rubber dinghy and walked north across the Balkans towards Germany, fleeing the civil war in his homeland, Syria, in search of a safe haven. .
Since then, the 31-year-old has learned German fluently, found a steady job – and has just launched a campaign to run for parliament in September.
“I’m running for national parliament as Syria’s first refugee,” Alaows, softly-spoken, told the Associated Press in a demonstration in support of asylum seekers in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin, where Parliament is located. “I want to give a voice to refugees and migrants in Germany and to fight for a diverse and fair society for all.”
Alaows joined the Green Party last year and is running as his candidate in the parliamentary constituency of Oberhausen-Dinslaken, in western Germany.
With his beard and long black hair tied in a bun, he has the informal appearance of a green politician and also shares the party’s focus on human rights and social justice.
In Syria, he participated in peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government while studying law at the University of Aleppo. He also volunteered for the Red Crescent aid group during the civil war and helped register internally displaced refugees.
In 2015, as the war in Syria became increasingly brutal and he faced military enlistment after graduation, Alaows decided to flee to “a place where he can live safely and with dignity,” he said.
After his arrival in Dortmund, in western Germany, on September 3, 2015, he soon became active again after being faced with a system overloaded by the more than 1 million migrants who arrived that year.
After being squeezed into a gym with 60 other people, “where no one could sleep at night if only one child cried,” he helped organize protests against the conditions.
Alaows now works as a legal advisor for asylum seekers at a non-governmental organization in Berlin and divides his time between the capital and the city of Oberhausen, in his constituency.
“I really want to help improve the living conditions of refugees in Germany,” said Alaows. “It is not certain that they remain at the European Union’s external borders in precarious conditions, drown in the Mediterranean and have to live in huge fields in Germany, while European interior ministers come together to find ways to keep them out or deport them. them. “
At the end of 2020, 818,460 Syrians lived in Germany. Most of them have not yet applied for German citizenship. Alaows is one of the first to have fulfilled the prerequisites to apply for citizenship, which he is confident will be passed before election day on September 26.
Overall, about 21.2 million of the 83 million Germans have migrant roots, mainly from Turkey, as well as from the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and Poland. Recent arrivals from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and other refugees who came long before, account for about 1.8 million of them.
But people of non-German origin continue to be severely underrepresented in many sectors of society, including Parliament.
Of the 709 lawmakers who took office in the last federal election in 2017, only 58, or 8.2%, had migrant roots, according to the Mediendienst Integration group that tracks the issues of migrants in Germany.
This is the biggest reason why Alaows found a home with the Greens, a party that lobbies for better integration of migrants, in addition to environmental issues, and is proud that almost 15% of its legislators are of migrant origin.
“Tareq is a candidate who advocates social justice and equality for all human beings, as well as inclusive politics,” said Beate Stock-Schroer, spokeswoman for the Greens in the Oberhausen-Dinslaken district of Alaows, when launching her campaign last week .
Germany has a complex electoral system that gives its citizens two votes each – one for a directly elected representative and one for a list of parties. Alaows faces a difficult struggle to win the initial race to become a directly elected legislator – Germany’s big traditional parties win over most of them – but he can still enter Parliament if he gets a prominent place on the party’s regional list.
This means that he needs the party to vote to put him high enough on his list of delegates from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where his constituency is located, when deciding on candidates for the national parliament in the spring.
Your current campaign team is working hard to help you get there.
A handful of volunteers, mostly young and engaged like him, answer questions from the media, keep their accounts on active social networks and post videos and photos regularly.
On Saturday, Alaows joined a protest in front of the Reichstag against the deportation of rejected asylum seekers to their countries of origin.
Reggae music played over loudspeakers on the snow-covered lawn while about 200 people held banners with slogans saying “No one is illegal” and the loudspeakers demanded the opening of borders for refugees.
“I want to bring political change to parliament,” said Alaows, looking beyond the protesters in the Reichstag building, whose facade bears the slogan “To the German people” carved into the stone under its iconic glass dome.
“I want to bring to Parliament the perspective of people who are not represented there,” he said.