PErsian rap music is not often heard on Frankfurt’s Römerberg. A Persian role-playing game with dance is also rarely performed in front of the town hall. But music and dance have a special meaning for the mostly Iranian audience on Saturday afternoon: In their country of origin, they are frowned upon by the strict Islamic regime and forbidden for women. Above all, the many people who hold out for hours in the cold weather want to send a sign of solidarity with the demonstrators in Iran, who are there protesting for freedom rights at the risk of their lives.
When well-known Iranian-Canadian activist Hamed Esmaeilion took the stage in front of the Roman, many held up their cellphones to record his speech. He is a well-known face of the Iranian exile freedom movement. Since he lost his wife and daughter when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shot down the passenger plane PS752 in 2020, he has been fighting the unjust state on many podiums around the world.
“The brutality of the regime seems to know no bounds”
The latest headlines, according to which school children were poisoned, especially in girls’ schools, would have horrified him too, says Esmaeilion. “The regime’s brutality seems to know no bounds,” he says. It is not yet clear who is behind the poisoning, even if there are said to have been the first arrests.
Daniel Ilkhanipour (SPD) from the Hamburg parliament swears by the unity of the protest movement, which must not be divided by the rulers in Tehran. He suggests that different groups among opponents of the mullahs’ regime have started fighting each other on social media.
The opposition is also represented in Frankfurt with a broad spectrum: the red flags of the Iranian communists wave over the Römerberg as well as those of the Kurds and the flags from the Shah era before the mullahs seized power in 1979: green, white and red stripes in the center a lion with a sword and a rising sun. With the islamic revolution the lion had been replaced by an emblem.
Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg, who was born in Tehran, also invoked solidarity in her speech: “Let’s not fight for flags, let’s fight together for freedom”.
Udo Bullmann (SPD), Chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the European Parliament, also agreed with the demand heard the most this afternoon. He had an easy time of it, since the majority of MPs in Strasbourg have already spoken out in favor of putting the Revolutionary Guards on the EU’s terror list. However, in order to actually freeze the accounts of Iran’s elite armed forces or have their visas withdrawn, a unanimous decision by all EU member states must be taken. What is currently still in the stars.
Despite the prominent visit, the number of demonstrators fell far short of the registered 3,000 participants: in the end, the police only counted 600 people on the Römerberg.
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