After the execution of two other demonstrators in Iran, more than 2,000 people took to the streets in Hamburg to protest against the Iranian government’s repressive course. According to the police, around 2,700 people gathered in the city center by Sunday afternoon to show their solidarity with the Iranian people.
Iranian music was played, and an old fire engine with a poster reading “Down with the Mullahs – Freedom for Iran” led the march. At first everything remained peaceful, said a police spokeswoman. Among the demonstrators were Hamburg’s second mayor, Katharina Fegebank (Greens), Green Party leader Maryam Blumenthal, and MPs Anke Frieling (CDU) and Daniel Ilkhanipour (SPD).
For months people in Iran have been protesting against the government’s course and the Islamic system of rule. The Iranian judiciary announced that the two demonstrators Mohammed-Mehdi K. and Sejed-Mohammed H. were hanged on Saturday morning. They were blamed for the death of a security guard during protests in November. In December, two men were sentenced to death in connection with the demonstrations critical of the system.
The Iranian-born and Hamburg Green Party leader Blumenthal had already sharply criticized the recent executions of demonstrators in Iran the day before the demonstration. “Today is a dark day. This darkness shall fall upon them all,” the MP tweeted on Saturday, citing the Islamic Republic, all mullahs and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
This terror regime must be completely isolated. “Its members are terrorists! They must be officially recognized as such,” Blumenthal tweeted. Regime members, Revolutionary Guards, clerics and all profiteers must feel the full harshness of the world community, she demanded. “They need to be suffocated.”
