BERLIN: The son of former tennis star Boris Becker has pressed charges against a German nationalist lawmaker who insulted him with a racist slur, his lawyer said Thursday.
Lawyer Christian-Oliver Moser told The Associated Press that charges were filed on behalf of Noah Becker following “unbearable and racist remarks” from the Twitter account of nationalist lawmaker Jens Maier.
The tweet emerged after an article in a German magazine in which Noah, 23, said Berlin was a “white city” compared with London or Paris, and that he’d been attacked there because of his skin color.
Noah Becker is the son of three-time Wimbledon champion and his ex-wife Barbara Becker, who has a German mother and an African-American father. He works as an artist and musician and lives in Berlin.
In the interview with emotion magazine, which first published excerpts on Tuesday, Noah Becker was asked if he has experienced racism in Berlin.
“Yes, I have also been attacked because of my brown skin color,” he said. “In comparison to London or Paris, Berlin is a white city.”
Maier, a member of the Alternative for Germany party, reacted Tuesday by posting a racist slur on Twitter that he later deleted.
The lawmaker later denied writing the controversial Tweet himself. He said one of his employees had written the tweet, the German news agency dpa reported.
Last year Maier, a judge from the eastern German state of Saxony, was reprimanded by a court in Dresden for using far-right slogans, according to dpa.
Maier is one of 92 members of the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party which was elected to Germany’s national parliament for the first time in September.
Earlier this week, another prominent member of the AfD ran into trouble with police and Twitter over her response to a Cologne police tweet offering New Year greetings in Arabic.
Lawmaker Beatrix von Storch tweeted her objections to the police tweet, saying: “Do they think they will calm the barbaric, Muslim, group-raping hordes of men this way?“
Von Storch’s Twitter account was blocked for several hours Monday over a suspected breach of rules on hate speech. Police said Tuesday they filed a criminal complaint to prosecutors over suspected incitement.
New Year celebrations in Cologne were overshadowed two years ago when hundreds of women complained of being groped and robbed, mostly by groups of migrants.
The AfD is known for its aggressive stance against Muslims and migrants.
Boris Becker’s son presses charges after racist German slur
Boris Becker’s son presses charges after racist German slur
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
