Criticism of the end of the deportation ban to Iran – also from the CDU

The ban on deportations to Iran has expired. The regime executed hundreds in 2023. The Greens and SPD do not want to deport people. There are mixed signals from the CDU.

Berlin – Deportations to Iran were suspended until the beginning of the year. The deportation stop, which was decided by the conference of state interior ministers in December 2022, has now expired. Last year, the Union called for an agreement with the mullahs' regime to simplify deportations there. The Foreign Ministry recently criticized the human rights situation in the theocracy several times. Human rights organizations counted between 600 and 700 executions of dissidents in 2023. The inaction of the interior ministers is being criticized in the Bundestag and by NGOs.

Greens call “wrong decision” when the deportation ban expires

The expiry of the deportation ban on December 31, 2023 was a “wrong decision,” criticized Filiz Polat, parliamentary director of the Greens fr.de from IPPEN.MEDIA. Just a few days ago, the regime had a woman flogged who “refused to wear a headscarf,” Polat continued. The Green Party demanded that the deportation stop must be reinstated immediately because of the “ongoing human rights violations”. Dieter Karg, Iran expert at Amnesty International, also explained ongoing human rights violations, which means “clan imprisonment” and massive violence in order to “break the will of the protest movement” and the relatives of political prisoners fr.de-Conversation.

Hundreds of dissidents were executed in Iran in 2023

There was a wave of protests in Iran in the fall of 2022 under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Persian: “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi”) after the 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini dies in police custody was. The religious morality police had arrested her for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code. The protests against the The repressive government policy overthrew the political leadership into one of the worst crises in decades. Security forces sometimes used massive violence against the demonstrators; according to human rights activists, several hundred were killed. Thousands of protesters were arrested. At the end of 2023, according to a report by the human rights organization Hengaw four Kurdish political prisoners executed.

The Union faction named Iran, along with Turkey and Iraq, as a country with which a readmission agreement to facilitate the processing of deportations should be negotiated as a “priority”. Party and parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz, who recently spoke in an interview Munich Mercury Questions were answered, but did not want to comment on this matter when asked. At the beginning of 2023, Merz took over what he called “political sponsorship” for Jamshid Sharmahd – a German-Iranian who has been in an Iranian torture prison since 2020 and was sentenced to death in February 2023. Green Party co-leader Omid Nouripour called this “hypocrisy.”

Amnesty expert: Iranian regime is “absolutely unpredictable”

The violence of the theocratic regime in Iran is “absolutely unpredictable,” explained Karg. The regime “keeps making examples” of individuals. Since hardly anyone has been deported to Iran for years, people would be “guinea pigs” if they were deported to Iran.

Even before the deportation stop, Iran had hardly taken back people that Germany wanted to deport. According to Karg, the rule is that the Iranian embassy requires the consent of those affected in order to issue travel documents. Because of the willingness to use violence, the regime and the lack of experience, Karg said that “you cannot know what will happen to the people in Iran.” There is a constitutional sticking point here.

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) demanded an extension of the deportation stop in October. When asked, the human rights spokesman for the Social Democrats in the Bundestag, Klaus Schwabe, said he “supports this stance”. Although it is not always the reason for those affected to seek asylum that Iran is “problematic in terms of human rights”, the “foreign policy signal” that would be sent by deportations to the theocracy is “problematic”. According to Karg, a further deterioration in the human rights situation in Iran has not yet been observed due to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. There h
ave “always been” arrests and executions because of accusations of collaboration with Israel.

Norbert Röttgen wants a stop to deportations for Iranian women

CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen commented fr.de-Demand is also critical of deportations to Iran. “In any case, women should continue to be protected by a general ban on deportations to Iran,” he told the editorial team. They are threatened with “gender-specific repression” based on the religious fundamentalism of the regime. “Overall,” the human rights situation in Iran has “deteriorated enormously” since the protests began, said Röttgen. He emphasized that the executions of opposition figures had “increased enormously”. That is why an individual case assessment is “absolutely” necessary when it comes to deporting men into theocracy.