Meet Your Neighbours Disinvites Palestinian-Syrian Poet Ramy Al-Asheq due to his pro-Palestinian Social Media Posts

On December 21, 2023, Palestinian-Syrian poet, journalist and curator Ramy Al-Asheq was disinvited from an evening of the Meet Your Neighbours series due to his pro-Palestinian social media posts.

Organized by a group of Munich-based cultural workers, Meet Your Neighbours’ self-proclaimed aim is to facilitate encounters and introduce artists who have come to Germany from war or crisis zones.

The organizers had initially invited Al-Asheq on December 13 to an evening of reading and discussion "in the view of the war in the Middle East." The other invitees were authors Lena Gorelik, Joana Osman and Dana von Suffrin. The event was to take place on February 9, 2024, in Munich.

Eight days later, the organizers sent Al-Asheq a follow-up email stating, "Unfortunately we have to withdraw our invitation to you. Only now have we become aware of what you have been posting on social media since October 7th. Some of it is disturbing to us and hard to accept, especially as we are not at all pursuing such a confrontational approach with our literature series. That's why we currently see no basis for a public joint event." They added, “We hope that perhaps in the future, under less difficult circumstances, it will again be possible to have as constructive and open discussions with you as we had some years ago when we first met.”

On December 22, following the cancellation, Al-Asheq wrote in a social media post: "Day after day, we have been denied our basic right to express our opinions, to tell the stories of our beloved ones who are facing one of the most horrific crimes in our time."