Annalena Baerbock is receiving more and more criticism for her Iran policy.Image: dpa / Bernd von Jutrczenka
Iran
01/09/2023, 16:5301/09/2023, 16:55
Protests have been raging in the city for four months now Iran. People who fight for more rights are arrested, abducted and killed. For weeks, German politicians have also been standing by the side of the imprisoned Iranians, who are taking to the streets for their freedom and are therefore supposed to die.
Mohammed-Mehdi K., a convicted and executed protester, during his trial at the Revolutionary Court.Image: Mizan News Agency/AP / Amir Abbas Ghasemi
The politicians take on political sponsorships in order to make the unlawful execution sentences of the Iranian mullah regime public – in this way they put pressure on the government. Some judgments have actually been withdrawn since then. But that is only a partial success.
Still, the mullahs’ regime keeps finding ways to keep the public ignorant of what’s happening on the ground. Among other things, journalists and writers are silenced.
And by judgment.
The writers’ association PEN-Zentrum denounces this Germany and is addressing the Greens’ Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has repeatedly publicly criticized the arrests and human rights violations.
in one open letter the association is now making demands:
- “Give a face to the ‘incredible crimes’: Call the victims by their names and demand their release.”
- “Facilitate legal and expeditious entry options to Germany/ to the EU for opposition authors who face high penalties in Iran and for those who fled from prison and torture, are stranded on the road, are threatened again in Turkey and ask in vain for help and an appointment at the German consulate .”
- “Enable a special one for Iranian opposition figures quota programlike for Ukrainians or for local workers from Afghanistan, without lengthy bureaucracy.”
- “Support voices of civil society in Iran – too financially.”
- “Help those who stand up for free speech in Iran.”
- “You can do it escape routes and habitats that ultimately save lives.”
The writers underline their demands with several individual fates of different authors from Iran.
For example, the fate of the poet and activist Atefeh Chaharmahalian, who was arrested as chairwoman of the Iranian Writers’ Union. She spent 71 days in Evin prison – and that “without urgently needed medical care”.
In October, Tehran’s Evin prison caught fire. Several political prisoners died.Image: Mizan News Agency / Koosha Mahshid Falahi
After several weeks, she was released on high bail. But now the verdict has been served on her: two years and eight months in prison, suspended for five years, during which she is not allowed to speak publicly. PEN Center Germany writes: “For the author and activist, this is a social death, she is made invisible, silent and disappears.”
This and other examples are representative of the fight for freedom of expression, language and identity.
The wave of protests that swept Iran after the death of the young Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini is not abating. People are still taking to the streets for freedom and self-determination – and the mullahs’ regime is deploying the Revolutionary Guards to crack down on them as severely as possible. A number of people are also threatened with execution.
