“Europe is Europe, Iran is us, not them”
Many European cities have been the scene of Iranians living abroad expressing solidarity with the domestic protests in recent days. On Wednesday, November 20, hundreds of people in Frankfurt and Berlin repeated the protesters' slogans in front of the Iranian embassy and consulate.
The area in front of the Iranian embassy in Berlin was the site of dozens of Iranians living in Germany expressing solidarity with the protests inside the country on Wednesday, November 20. The event, which was attended by 100 to 150 people, according to attendees, included slogans such as “Expensiveness is an excuse, the entire system is a sign,” and “We don’t want a king, we don’t want a mullah.”
The gathering was organized at the initiative of the Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Iran and the Center for Iranian Political Refugees in Berlin. “The composition of the crowd was different from before. There were Kurds, students and political activists from different groups in the crowd. The left-wing party supported it and the presence of young people was impressive,” Mila Mosafer, an official at the Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Iran-Berlin, told DW.
Ms. Mosafer added that more officers were present in front of the embassy than before: "Perhaps the reason is pressure from the Islamic Republic, and perhaps they thought the situation was so serious that the crowd might want to rush to the embassy..."
Journalist Mehran Behrouz Faghani told DW: "The most important goal of today's rally was solidarity with the protesting people, and the crowd emphasized that the future of Iran is determined in the streets and alleys, and that the world must support the ongoing decisive protests and that the salvation of the Iranian people depends on the streets and urban barricades."
At the Berlin rally, the slogans “Death to the dictator” and “Death to the Islamic Republic” were repeated more than any other. The crowd held pictures of political prisoners, labor activists, and civil society activists.
Witnesses to the event told DW that slogans were also chanted in German. The embassy's windows were blacked out and police were guarding the premises behind closed doors.
At the same time as in Berlin, a large gathering in front of the Iranian consulate in Frankfurt began with a minute of silence in honor of those killed in the recent protests. Shahnaz Marbat, one of the organizers of the Frankfurt gathering, announced the formation of the “Campaign to Defend the Struggles of the People in Iran” in an interview with Deutsche Welle, and said that the participation of more than six hundred people in the ceremony was encouraging. Ms. Marbat added that a number of Iraqi and Syrian citizens were also at the gathering, in addition to expressing solidarity with the Iranian protesters, to express their opposition to the Islamic Republic’s interference in their countries.
Bahram Bigdali, a participant in the rally, said the crowd was diverse in size, composition and interaction. He told DW that supporters of Reza Pahlavi, Kurds and leftists took turns chanting slogans and sang the Iranian anthem together: “The slogans in solidarity with the protesters were the same as those inside Iran… Such an atmosphere had not been seen in all these years, and this tolerance of others was interesting and unique.”
Similar rallies have been held in Cologne, Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam, and Vienna. One of the most innovative slogans was chanted by Iranians living in Vienna at their support rally, addressing politicians: “Europe, Europe, Iran, it’s us, not them…”
Source: DW
