No matter how the death toll develops, the January massacre in Iran – in which around 33,000 people are said to have been killed in just a few days – is historically comparable only to that of the Nazis in Babyn Yar, in the forests outside Kyiv, which set standards of horror in September 1941.
That’s how it wrote it Time Magazine recently in a well-received article, it repeats the political scientist Ali Fathollah-Nejad on the podium at the Cologne Theater: “We have to talk about our responsibility to protect.” But what does that actually mean: a UN-certified military strike? A US-controlled regime change? He didn’t commit to that. And spoke of the “long-term revolution” that Iranian society has been in for years. With every wave of protest, the regime’s base diminishes and the zombie continues to die.
And he is an undead after all: it is quite obvious that he cannot be dealt with through street protests. Chancellor Merz was also wrong when he publicly gave the regime only “days or weeks,” admits Serap Güler, CDU State Minister in the Foreign Office. Nevertheless, the current Federal Republic pursues a smarter Iran policy than its predecessors, emphasized the film director Ali Samadi Ahadi and the artist Parastou Forouhar, whose parents were murdered by the Iranian secret service in their home in Tehran in 1998: The failed appeasement policy towards Iran has now been abandoned. The fact that the Revolutionary Guards have finally landed on the terrorist list is a milestone. And it’s not enough – Wadephul’s condemnation of the massacre also came far too late.
Sold out event
“After the massacre in Iran – how should the world act”? was the title of the sold-out solidarity event at the Schauspiel Köln to explicitly ask for possible solutions, moderated cleverly and clearly by WDR journalist Isabel Schayani. And yet he couldn’t simply leave out the blatant dimension of violence. And so the evening began with tears, a minute of silence and film testimonials.
The screams of the desperate father, who was searching for his daughter between body bags, echoed for a long time. Long words from Forouhar, who reported how a bazaar was set on fire and those escaping from it were shot: “This massacre followed a protocol that had been planned long beforehand. Far too little attention was paid to, in addition to the number of deaths, the mutilations and shotgun blasts at close range on faces, which from then on mark activists for life, according to doctor Shabnam Fahimi-Weber, who carries out remote treatments day and night from Essen – because the protesters no longer dare to go to clinics. Yours Organisation PersiMed The evening’s fundraising proceeds were dedicated.
Bring the opposition to the table
But how can the Iranian population be concretely helped from Europe and Germany in their desperate fight for freedom? The panel agreed on immediate measures: an independent internet and a Starlink system are needed for Iran. Sanctions should finally affect the highest authorities more effectively – and recently known real estate deals involving Khamenei’s son, for example make impossible.
The infiltration of science and the think tank scene by the Iranian secret service is still far from being effectively combated. Fahimi-Weber demanded that there must be protective corridors and humanitarian visas for the export of injured people – while Serap Güler admitted that this was currently being prevented primarily by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. And what is finally needed is effective protection for Iranian political activists and journalists in German exile who are constantly under threat.
But the most important thing that Germany can do, according to Ahadi, is to bring Iran’s fragmented democratic opposition to one table and to create discussion spaces and forums in which the divided diaspora can come closer together. This could be a kind of “school of democracy” in which not only the Shah’s son appears like an alternative. And in the end, he took the most far-sighted view of the emotional evening: the more concrete a vision for the time afterwards, the more likely the collapse of the regime is.