Over 200,000 people gathered in Munich to protest against the regime in Iran, NOVA reported. The rally was planned to coincide with the gathering of nearly 70 state leaders at the security conference being held in the city.
Local media described the rally as one of the largest in Munich's recent history. The son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, also spoke at the event. He actively campaigned for the overthrow of the ayatollahs during the mass protests in January. Pahlavi announced his intention to lead the “transition“ in Iran and guide the country towards a “secular, democratic future” and stated that after such a transition, democratic elections could be held.
At another Iranian protest, there were Iranians who protested not only against the regime, but also against Reza Pahlavi.
"We don't need another dictator like his father. We have one dictator in Iran right now, and we have one who has already been overthrown, so we don't need a third", says Hamid Amiri.
The man has been in Germany for 40 years. He lives in Cologne and arrived in Munich for the protest, where he wants to talk about his two cousins, whom he lost forever in the protests since the beginning of the year. Both in one day. "One of them was a family man named Ramin Asadi Fakhri, forty-two years old. He was just on the street helping the wounded, and he was shot in the hand. And while he was waiting for paramedics, the Revolutionary Guards came and smashed his head with a baton. My other cousin was also killed with a direct shot to the head. He was thirty years old. His name was Amin Heydar Goodarzi, he says.
Hamid says that the people in Iran are helpless, and the world is just watching.
Ali Zolvaghari spent 12 years in various prisons in Iran for his opposition to the regime. "This is a regime that tortures, puts people in solitary confinement and kills. Right now, about seventeen of my friends are in prison, and two of them have been killed. The only thing that kept me alive was the hope of a free Iran. That's how I managed to survive," he says. After serving his sentence, Ali left Iran and settled with his family in Switzerland. He only came to Munich for the protest. "I am here to be the voice of our people in Iran, the living and those who are already dead," the man said.
The participants chanted for justice after the bloody suppression of the protests. The dead are certainly in the thousands, but the authorities in Iran are hiding the exact figures. Along with the protest in Munich, there were thousands of rallies against the regime in other cities around the world, such as Toronto and Los Angeles.
"We came here from all over the world. We have one message - to make Iran great again. We want our Pahlavi, our Shah, our King back. We want a change in the damned regime. Enough is enough. The situation is terrible. More than 40,000 have been killed during the protests. And the whole world knows it. We are here to say that the Iranian regime is terrorist. We do not want it. "We don't want these people anymore," protesters said.