The Chancellor’s statement was brief: “Our condolences go out to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the families of those killed in the crash.” This sentence by Olaf Scholz was shocking for many people in the Iranian opposition. For those who are directly affected by the policy of murder and fear, for family members and survivors of the massacres of political prisoners in Iran in the 1980s. For activists of the freedom movement in Iran. For feminists and Kurds. For members of the Baha’i community in Iran.
While people in Iran are taking a big risk by celebrating the death of Raisi and his foreign minister Amir Abdollahian in a helicopter crash, a German chancellor is expressing his condolences on the death of a “president” of the Islamic Republic. And a minute’s silence is being held at the UN.
But who was Ebrahim Raisi, and why are Iranians who are against the Iranian regime outraged by this statement? Raisi was not just a “hardliner” and “conservative”, as is often said in German-speaking countries. He was a mass murderer and one of the most famous judges of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was founded in 1979 and is called the “Judge of Death”.
In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Republic, ordered a mass murder of political prisoners, many of them leftists. The logic behind the massacre was to eliminate the rest of the political opponents shortly before the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
A political purge to maintain the political power of the Islamists in Iran. A death commission was quickly formed following Khomeini’s orders. The most important member of the commission was Ebrahim Raisi, then deputy prosecutor of Tehran. People were executed every minute, 4,000 in the summer of the same year alone.
The commission passed the death sentences after a simple questioning of the prisoners: “Are you a Muslim? Are you ready to pray? Are you ready to read the Koran? Are you ready to betray the leadership of your political organization? Are you ready to collaborate with the Islamic Republic to arrest your former comrades?” A clear yes or no answer to these questions was expected. If one gave a “wrong” answer, this led to the death sentence, and the execution followed promptly.
Raisi became Iran’s Attorney General, then the country’s chief judge. During his term in office, he was responsible for further mass executions and – then as president – for the suppression of the “Woman Life Freedom” protest movement after the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in the fall of 2022.
The fact that Chancellor Scholz nevertheless feels obliged to maintain diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic and to offer condolences to a regime on the death of a mass murderer is explained in Germany as realpolitik.
The Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw counted at least 829 executions in Iran last year alone. I seriously ask myself: what realpolitik? What exactly is the interest of the German government and German society that clearly conflicts with the interests of the Iranian freedom movement? Is it about the nuclear agreement that the USA withdrew from under Donald Trump and which Iran is not adhering to anyway?
Or about economic relations with the mullahs’ regime? The fact is that Iran feels safe in the proxy wars in the region and can maintain its “axis of resistance” in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, which further destabilizes the fragile region and causes death and displacement of people. Is this in the interest of the German government?
In recent years, Olaf Scholz has never met with the daughters of the German hostages in Iran, Jamshid Shahrmad and Nahid Taghavi. He has hardly met with the activists of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, nor with Kosar Eftekhari, Mersedeh Shahin Kar or Zanyar Tondro, who were shot in the eye during the protests and who are in Germany.
He has barely commented on the fact that Tehran banned the family of Jina Mahsa Amini from travelling to Europe to accept the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for their murdered daughter. And it is supposed to be in Germany’s interest to remain silent in the cases mentioned, but to express its condolences on the death of a mass murderer and his foreign minister?
As an Iranian feminist, as a member of the human rights organization Hengaw and of Hawar Help, a sponsorship program for political prisoners in Iran, I doubt this very much. No realpolitik in the world can explain that it is to the advantage of democracy and freedom in Germany to abandon Iranian civil society in the fight for human rights and democracy. Members of the Bundestag such as Jürgen Hardt (CDU), Ye-One Rhie, Caroline Wagner (both SPD), Clara Bünger (The Left), Max Lux (Greens) and many others who have taken on sponsorships for prisoners in Iran see things differently.
