Mesut Zeyrek
01 July 2019•Update: 02 July 2019
COLOGNE, Germany
A Muslim group in Germany has announced to award, two racial attack victims -- Mevlude Genc and Farid Ahmed, in order to highlight growing racism and Islamophobia.
The international courage award has been named after Marwa el- Sherbini -- who was killed in a racist attack during a court hearing in 2009. While Genc, lost five of her relatives in a racial attack in Germany’s Solingen 26 years ago, Ahmed, lost his wife at the recent Christchurch attack in New Zealand.
The organizers of the award, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said the prize was aimed at to highlight the sacrifices and pain of the victims of racism. President of the Council, Aiman Mazyek, said there was need to fight racism and Islamophobia, in a stronger way.
“We will never forget those who were killed in Islamophobic attacks,” he said.
The Council said that the awards will be given to commemorate the 10th death anniversary of Sherbini.
An Egyptian born German resident, Sherbini, 31, was killed in 2009 during an appeal hearing at a court in the German city of Dresden, in front of her three-year-old son and husband.
She was stabbed by Alex Wiensan an ethnic German immigrant from Russia against whom she had testified in a criminal case for verbal abuse. It appeared that the initial confrontation between the victim and perpetrator had happened because she wore a headscarf.
On May 29, 1993, four people aged 16-23 set ablaze the house of a Turkish family in the German city of Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, killing five people and injuring 14 others.
Three of the assailants were sentenced to 10 years in jail, while the others got 15 years.
In New Zealand's Christchurch, at least 51 Muslim worshippers were massacred, with as many injured, in an Islamophobic terror attack by Australian-born Brenton Harrison Tarrant, on two mosques in March this year.
* Writing by Fatih Hafiz Mehmet
