A taxpayer-funded swimming pool in Berlin, originally pitched as a multicultural, open-to-all space, almost immediately announced segregated, black-only swim sessions.
The temporary “Volksbühne” (People’s Pool) project set up outside the famed Volksbühne theatre in Berlin has caused backlash just days after opening on August 7th.
The summer swimming facility was initially pitched as a welcoming space that would be “open to everyone who longs to cool off in the hotter Berlin summer”.
The organisers specifically contrasted their “people’s pool” with others in Germany, which have begun to require ID for entry following numerous instances of poor behaviour, including sexual assaults and physical attacks from people believed to be migrants. Supporters of the project claimed that people needed a place to go where anyone could swim without proving who they are first.
However, while the Berlin pool said that it would be free of charge and would not require ID, an announcement on its website this week caused a stir as the supposedly multicultural pool would be restricted this Friday “exclusively to black communities,” Die Welt reported.
“We ask that you respect this collective self-identification and the spaces associated with it,” the announcement added.
The organisers were quick to backtrack — albeit only slightly — apparently after recognising that restricting access to the pool to certain races would violate the General Equal Treatment Act in Germany, which bars discrimination based “on grounds of race or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual identity”.
Instead, the new entry on its website for the previously black-only day said that the pool would be reserved for members of the Each One Teach One (EOTO) NGO, which happens to describe itself as a “place of learning and meeting for people of African descent”.
According to the Bild newspaper, “white people are generally not welcome” at meetings of the NGO. Despite this, the EOTO group is financed in part by taxpayer funds from both the federal and local Berlin governments, the paper reported.
Similarly, the “people’s pool” is financed by Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre, which also receives public funding to the tune of over 20 million euros ($23m) per year.
Swimming pools across Europe have increasingly become flashpoints for the multicultural project, with multiple cultures colliding in real time. Germany has been particularly impacted by such conflicts, including last year when four Syrian nationals were arrested at a pool in the small town of Gelnhausen after allegedly sexually assaulting nine underage girls, including an 11-year-old.
Some swimming facilities have even taken to banning foreigners, including the Swiss municipality of Porrentruy last year after a group of North African migrants came over the border from France to use the pool but reportedly ignored rules, such as hygiene standards. Local media reported that local subscriptions to the pool soared after migrants were banned.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com
Read the full article here
