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Support for the protests in Iran: solidarity rally in Berlin (on October 7)
Photo: IMAGO/Olaf Schuelke
The Iranian leadership's brutal crackdown on critics of the regime is evidently driving more and more of them to flee.
Since the beginning of the latest wave of protests in Iran, the number of Iranian asylum seekers in Germany has increased significantly.
According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), 613 Iranians had applied for asylum in September of this year, but in October there were already 892 and in November 1039. In the same month last year the number was only 381.
In the whole of 2021, the Bamf had counted 2,693 first-time asylum applications from Iranian nationals, this year by the end of November there were already 5,447.
The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag insists on quick help for critics of the regime.
"Refugees from Iran must be granted protection and asylum here in Germany," says domestic politician Julian Pahlke: "We have to react to the brutality of the regime with a willingness to help the people in Iran."
At the beginning of November, the Bundestag spoke out in favor of supporting the protest movement.
"This includes the fact that we still have the option of providing support in the country through the German embassy or of helping out in individual cases when leaving Iran," says Pahlke.
The deportation stop must continue to apply.
On Thursday in the Bundestag, however, the Union accused the federal government of not living up to its claim of a feminist foreign policy.
In a motion put to the vote by the CDU and CSU, it was said that the protests in the Islamic Republic offered the "unique opportunity" to achieve systematic improvements in the situation of women and a social change towards more freedom rights.
The MPs called on the federal government to call for a special EU council on the situation in Iran and to provide more support for the protest movement – for example by providing access to encrypted telephony, the Internet and satellite communication.
The motion did not find a majority.
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