Church asylum in Saxony-Anhalt: For now, they remain protected

In a room in Burg, Saxony-Anhalt, light-blue curtains look onto a green courtyard, donated furniture fills the space, and a Farsi translation of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” lies on a round glass table. In one corner, Zholia Parsi keeps a small carpet that she uses not for prayer, but for daily exercises.

The Afghan activist trains with YouTube videos in her room and on the carpet. She says the exercises help her cope with the pain of everything she has endured.

Parsi lives in church asylum, a practice that congregations in Saxony-Anhalt continue to use to shelter refugees. But its position in Germany is becoming increasingly precarious. The article says the pressure is not linked only to the prospect of an AfD-led government.

Speaking with the help of a translation app, Parsi offers an emphatic account of the people who took her in: “The day I came here, nobody asked me about my religion or my origins. None of that mattered. What I found here was humanity.”

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The day I came here, nobody asked me about my religion or my origins. None of that mattered. What I found here was humanity.