LONDON: A Syrian refugee has been elected mayor of a village in southwest Germany.
Ryyan Alshebl, 29, arrived in the country in 2015 after fleeing the conflict in his homeland. He settled in the region of Baden-Wurttemberg, where he has worked for seven years in the town hall in Althengstett.
Standing as an independent candidate on a platform of improving access to digital services, he won an outright majority in the mayoral contest in the village of Ostelsheim on Sunday, securing 55.4 percent of the vote.
He described his win as “sensational,” and praised the village as having “set an example for broad-mindedness and cosmopolitanism for the whole of Germany.”
Originally from As-Suwayda in southwest Syria, Alshebl — a non-practicing member of the Druze religious minority and the son of a secondary school teacher and an agricultural engineer — was forced to abandon his studies in finance and banking because of the war.
He is the first Syrian refugee to have applied for asylum in Germany between 2015 and 2016 — of whom there are at least 430,000 — known to have been elected to office.
He is also among just 1.2 percent of Germany’s elected mayors to be from a migrant background, as opposed to 27 percent of the country’s total population, according to Mediendienst Integration.
The most high-profile German politician with Syrian roots, Frankfurt’s Mayor Mike Josef, was born in Qamishli in 1983 but moved to Germany with his family soon after as political refugees for their Christian faith.
