A German government report which serves as a basis for asylum policy decisions by the Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has given a harsh assessment of human rights in Iran. The internal report, seen by the news agency dpa, says critics of the Iranian government and activists continue to be relentlessly targeted.

It also points to an increasing number of executions and "unexplained" deaths occuring in prison.

The report says that particularly in response to protests that have been ongoing in Iran since mid-September, there has been a further increase in death sentences in political cases. It adds that even people who were minors at the time of committing an offence are being executed.

No national ban

Since September 2022, more than 18,000 protesters have been arrested and more than 450 killed in Iran, according to the non-government organization PEN.

The NGO has urged the German government to admit Iranian dissidents to Germany under a special program similar to schemes for refugees from Ukraine and Afghan local forces fleeing Taliban rule.

However the foreign ministry report stops short of proposing a national ban on deportations or ordering that all Iranian applications for protection be accepted, according to dpa.

"The impact of the current protests and their bloody suppression on possible returnees cannot be assessed conclusively at the moment," it says, while conceding that returnees may be subject to increased scrutiny.

Few Iranians expelled

The last deportation from Germany to Iran took place on October 13, 2022, according to the German interior ministry, but no official ban has been issued.

Last October Germany's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called deportations "irresponsible in the current disastrous human rights situation in Iran."

The following month the interior ministers of Germany's 16 states agreed "that in view of the current catastrophic human rights situation in Iran, no deportations to Iran will be carried out until further notice."

The ministers said they "continue to regard the repatriation of dangerous persons ... as necessary after careful examination of each individual case."

There are more than 11,000 Iranians in Germany who have no legal right of residence, but few are actually deported. At the same time, the number of Iranians applying for asylum in Germany has been rising since the protests began in September.

The rights group Pro Asyl last week repeated a demand that in view of the current risks in Iran, as well as a large number of errors made by BAMF regarding Iranian asylum applications, German authorities should issue a complete ban on deportations to the country.

With dpa