German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and head of the Bavarian CSU, Horst Seehofer, have agreed to cap the annual number of refugees at 200,000. As the Guardian comments, the “refugee cap deal is widely being interpreted as mainstream conservatives yielding to the demands of voters it has lost to the AfD [Germany’s right-wing, anti-migrant party which managed to get a considerable number of seats in parliament], largely over Merkel’s open door policy which saw Germany receive almost 1 million refugees and migrants in 2015.” According to the leader of the Green party, Simone Peters, with who Merkel seeks a coalition, “[t]he figure is completely arbitrary, fixed purely ideologically. As far as we’re concerned the fundamental right to asylum applies.”

Right now 65 million people worldwide are fleeing the various war zones, hunger and climate change; the largest number since WWII.

The above documentary by Ai WeiWei, who is presently guest professor at Berlin’s University of Arts, Human Flow, opens in a limited number of theaters on 13 October in the US and next month in Germany.

9 October 2017 @ 4:23 pm.

Last modified October 9, 2017.