The German government had implemented a blanket deportation ban that prohibited removals to Iran following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in Iranian police custody, which sparked a wave of months-long protests that shook Iran’s political leadership.

However that ban expired on December 31, 2023, leaving each federal state now to decide its own direction on the matter of deportations to Iran.

German Green Party leader Omid Nouripour was among those who slammed the expiry of the deportation ban for Iranian nationals, the news agency dpa reported on January 4.

"The fact that the ministers of the interior of the federal and state governments' deportation ban to Iran has not been extended shows a lack of lack of knowledge of the precarious human rights situation in the country," Nouripour told dpa. 

Nouripour, who was born in Iran and migrated to Germany with his family as a teenager, said that the political opposition in Germany, in particular the Christian Democrats, "publicly laments the victims of the Iranian regime, and wants to deport people there at the same time," referring to this stance a "hypocrisy."

Sharp rise in arrivals from Iran

In Germany, the number of Iranian asylum seekers rose significantly after the 2022 protests. 

Data from the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) indicates that 613 Iranians applied for asylum in Germany in September 2022 alone. That number continued to rise and by November that year, there were more than 1,000 asylum applications lodged. 

In total, BAMF recorded around 17,000 people from Iran seeking protection in Germany in 2022 and 2023 following the popular uprising.

The deportation ban to Iran came amid reports of police brutality, arbitrary arrests and summary executions in Iran as part of the Islamist regime's reaction to protests across the country.

Sustained political unrest in Iran 

In September 2022, Amini had been arrested in Tehran by Iran's Gasht-e Ershad (also called the "morality police") for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code for women by refusing to wear a hijab.

Amini's arrest and death in police custody drew national outrage in Iran and ignited solidarity movements worldwide.  

According to a report by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, security forces in the country allegedly used excessive force to end rallies, including the unlawful firing of "live ammunition and metal pellets to crush protests, killing hundreds of men, women and children and injuring thousands."

In addition, Amnesty International said that thousands were arbitrarily detained and/or unfairly prosecuted, with women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and ethnic and religious minorities experiencing the sharper edge of discrimination and violence. 

Addressing an increasingly repressive regime

Before the first anniversary of Amini’s death, rights organization Human Rights Watch reported that Iranian authorities had increased their crackdown on peaceful dissent through various acts of intimidation of activists and family members of those who had been killed during the 2022 protests. 

"[The Iranian government] have also responded to the widespread defiance of the compulsory hijab by ramping up their efforts to impose the dress code on women, using a range of tactics, including legal summonses, new legislative initiatives, and increasing pressure on private businesses to impose hijab rules," according to the HRW report. 

Despite such growing hostility towards dissident voices in Iran, Germany's end to a ban on deportations means that each of the country's 16 federal states can now decide how to deal with existing and future asylum cases from Iran.

The only state so far to confirm that it would extend the ban on deportations on its own accord is North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), which is also the most populous federal state.