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Activist Alinejad (photo from 2022)

Photo: Bing Guan / REUTERS

Does the Federal Foreign Office not take feminist foreign policy as seriously as Green Party Minister Annalena Baerbock often emphasizes? At least that was the impression given by a post by Iranian-American human rights activist Masih Alinejad on X (formerly Twitter). In it, Alinejad stated that he had left a meeting with German government officials because they had tried to "censor" her. The exchange was apparently supposed to focus on the situation of women in Iran.

According to Alinejad, she was asked to keep the meeting "secret." The activist should not have reported on the exchange on social media either, she criticized. "How ironic is it that the German government, with its feminist foreign policy, wants to meet with other feminists, but only in secret?" asked Alinejad. "The German government practices perpetrator-victim reversal." In this way, Germany is helping to silence dissidents. "I refuse to play her game," Alinejad wrote.

The Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights, Luise Amtsberg, on the other hand, takes a different view of the incident. The confidentiality of the conversation had already been agreed in advance, Amtsberg later announced on X. Alinejad also agreed to this. "In my experience, conversations that take place confidentially are more substantial in substance – especially when it comes to individual fates," Amtsberg wrote.

She very much regretted that Alinejad "linked a conversation to the publication of the content of the conversation". However, she will continue to "name the serious human rights violations of the Iranian regime and support Iranian civil society," said the Human Rights Commissioner.

"That's not feminist, that's cowardly"

Meanwhile, Alinejad received encouragement from the CDU. "A foreign policy that does not dare to meet these women for fear of the mullahs' consequences has failed. That's not feminist, that's cowardly," wrote CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen on X alongside a photo with Alinejad and activist Sima Moradbeigi. The least we have to do is listen to them and make life as difficult as possible for the mullahs."

CDU MP Annette Widmann-Mauz also thanked the activist on X for a meeting. "Genuine feminist foreign policy must cut the lines with the terrorist regime," Widmann-Mauz wrote, referring to Iran.

Alinejad was accompanied by Iranian activist Sina Moradbeigi. Moradbeigi was shot during protests against the mullahs' regime last year, according to Alinejad. The mass demonstrations followed the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini after being arrested by the notorious morality guards.

Alinejad grew up in Iran and now lives in the United States. She is one of the best-known international representatives of the protests against the Iranian regime. In 2014, she initiated the "My Stealthy Freedom" campaign, in which women in Iran shared photos of themselves without headscarves.

FEK