“Concrete danger”: The Federal Foreign Office warns in particular of dual nationals. In the recent past there have been a large number of arbitrary arrests of foreign nationals.
In view of the authorities’ violent response to protests in Iran, the German government has asked Germans there to leave the country. “For German nationals there is a concrete risk of being arrested arbitrarily, interrogated and sentenced to long prison terms,” the Foreign Office warned on its website on Thursday. Above all, so-called dual nationals – i.e. people who have both German and Iranian citizenship – are at risk.
Recently, many foreigners have been arbitrarily arrested in Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Anyone who is still there should behave very carefully and avoid demonstrations and other large crowds. The protests against the authoritarian leadership of the Islamic Republic have been going on since mid-September. They continued on Thursday as well.
It is unclear how many Germans are in Iran
It is unclear how many Germans are currently in Iran. The Foreign Office said that a “low three-digit number” of Germans and family members was registered in a “crisis prevention list” at the German embassy. Since inclusion in such a list is voluntary and there is no obligation to report, no more precise information on the estimated total number could be given.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) also justified the request with the fact that for weeks we have been experiencing “the brutal violence with which the Iranian regime acts against its own citizens”. “How it beats its youth, its society, people die,” said the Green politician shortly before the start of the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Münster.
Protests continue
The protests continued on Thursday. In Karaj in the west of the capital Tehran, numerous people took to the streets, as videos distributed on the Internet show. The occasion marked the end of the 40-day mourning period following the death of young Iranian woman Hadis Najafi, who was reportedly shot dead by security forces during protests in Karaj in September. The authorities deny this. Najafi is now one of the symbolic figures of the protests. A mourning period of 40 days is customary in Islam.
Iran’s supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei recently described the protests as a “hybrid war” and blamed “insidious and malicious European powers”.
The protests were triggered by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini. The vice squad arrested her for allegedly violating Islamic dress codes. The woman died in police custody in mid-September. For almost seven weeks, tens of thousands have been demonstrating against the repressive policies and the authoritarian course. According to human rights activists, more than 280 people were killed and more than 14,000 arrested.
Source: Stern
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