2023-10-19 18:16:47
The Oyoun cultural center based in Berlin-Neukölln, which has been funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion since 2020, has spoken out on social media with a questionable statement in English, entitled “Israel, Palestine and freedom of expression”. Although Oyoun dutifully condemns Hamas’ terror, what is most important is the portrayal of Israel as a violent colonial power. It reads: “We strongly condemn the Israeli government’s violent siege and ongoing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in the tragic loss of thousands of lives, including the heartbreaking deaths of hundreds of children, extreme trauma, serious human rights violations and untold tragedies that continue every day, as well as Israel’s intensifying annexation policies in the Palestinian West Bank. And we unequivocally condemn Hamas’s brutal violence.”
And the original blame lies with Israel; Oyoun mentions “decades of settler colonialism” and the “occupation”. There is talk of Israeli phosphorus bombs, whose use in Gaza and Lebanon has been proven by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, while Israel denies it. On Wednesday evening, Oyoun linked a post by Emilia Zenzile Roig in his Instagram story: The sentence: “It’s genocide” appears five times. Emilia Roig is a French-born political scientist and non-fiction author who lives in Berlin.
The Senate Department for Culture, from which the money comes, accuses Oyoun of having been practicing censorship for a long time. “We were warned by the Berlin Senate that artistic freedom would no longer be granted for topics that were too politically charged. In the absence of an objective definition of ‘too politically charged’, we are dependent on the Senate’s subjective and arbitrary judgment in shaping our activities, events and partnerships,” it says. The Senate administration is expected to comment on this on Thursday.
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In the past, they had canceled several events under pressure, said Oyoun, most recently an event by the “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East.” V.”, a group of Jewish and Israeli members and winners of the Göttingen Peace Prize 2019 for their outstanding work to promote peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. “Given the grief and suffering they are currently experiencing after losing loved ones to the widely condemned brutal murders of the terrorist organization Hamas and the right-wing Israeli government, we will not bow to pressure from the Senate.” The event is scheduled to take place on April 4 Oyoun announces that it will take place in November.
What Oyoun doesn’t write: The awarding of the Göttingen Peace Prize to “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East e. V.” was controversial. For example, the Central Council of Jews in Germany criticized this because the association is a supporter of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).
The Oyoun cultural center on Lucy-Lameck-Straße in Berlin-Neukölln.Oyoun cultural center
At the end of 2022, there was apparently an anti-Semitic incident at Oyoun
In the statement, Oyoun committed to condemning all forms of anti-Semitism, “but also to fighting all other forms of racism and discrimination, including anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination.” However, an anti-Semitic incident is said to have occurred in October 2022 in the cultural center, which is housed in the brick building at Lucy-Lameck-Straße 32 not far from Hermannplatz, where the Workshop of World Cultures was previously located. The BZ reported about it at the time, referring to information from MP Susanna Kahlefeld (Greens): The musician Tayfun Guttstadt, accompanied by his ten-year-old daughter, was asked to leave the building by Oyoun employees at an event organized by the satirical group Dattelschläger. According to the BZ, the reason for this was that people in the audience felt unsafe due to Guttstadt’s presence. Anti-Israel slogans such as “Free Palestine” were also shouted after him. In May 2022, according to the BZ, the cultural center is said to have made its rooms available to the controversial organization Palestine Speaks.
On his Website Oyoun describes his work as follows: “Oyoun thinks up, develops and implements artistic-cultural projects through decolonial, queer*feminist and migrant perspectives.” On Saturday, for example, a ballroom session for the queer BiPoC community will take place here. BIPoC is the abbreviation of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and means black, indigenous and people of color in German.
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