Gastbeitrag von Nida Banou
Rise Iran & Javid Shah | anti-postkoloniale Ideologie & anti-Islamismus | Eure Freiheit ist heilig. Beschützt sie.
The 2026 Freedom Award is going to the Iranian people! I can hardly put into words how much this means to us.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom is awarding its 2026 Freedom Award to the Iranian people – to people who have been fighting for freedom, dignity and democracy for decades and paying an unimaginably high price for it.
Shah Reza Pahlavi has been asked to accept this award in trust on behalf of the Iranian people.
Because we had to fight not only against the propaganda of the Islamic Republic. We also had to experience how, of all people, high-profile Iranian-born female activists and journalists in Germany downplayed the voices of millions of Iranians, ignored their sacrifices, disregarded or reinterpreted their will, simply because their political stance did not fit their own left-wing worldview.
Anyone who calls for “listening to Iranians” cannot simultaneously turn a deaf ear precisely when those Iranians call for Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Anyone who claims to want to give the people in Iran a voice while simultaneously selling books, building an audience and generating public appearances on the basis of their suffering becomes a morally degenerate caricature when they deliberately ignore the overwhelming majority of voices simply because they call for „Javid Shah.“
Many of us have been fighting against this for years alongside full-time jobs, families and our own worries – for our brothers and sisters in Iran, whose voices are censored there and who must not be overwritten here once again by self-appointed experts and spokespersons.
Today it is becoming clear whom the overwhelming majority of Iranians regard as their political voice and as the hope for a democratic transition – and what kind of future people in Iran are risking their lives for.
That is why this decision means far more to us than an award ceremony.
It means that our voice – the voice of Iranians in Iran – is being heard. That others may no longer decide which Iranian voices in Germany are considered legitimate and which ones they would rather make disappear.
And the fact that Shah Reza Pahlavi may accept the award in trust on behalf of this courageous people fills many of us with a joy and satisfaction that outsiders may find difficult to comprehend.
After so many years in which others have spoken about us, explained us and replaced our voices with their own political goals, this moment means:
