Iran's Exiled Shah's Son Reza Pahlavi Accepts Controversial 'Freedom Award' in Frankfurt

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's deposed Shah, has accepted a 'Freedom Award' presented on behalf of the Iranian people at a ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany. His acceptance of the award on Saturday drew widespread criticism, with critics condemning the event as entirely 'illegitimate'.

German police said about 18,000 enthusiastic supporters welcomed Reza Pahlavi in Frankfurt, waving flags from the old era of Iran and chanting various slogans. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an organisation close to Germany's liberal FDP party, organised the award.

Standing in St Paul's Church, the historic meeting place of Germany's first elected parliament (1848-1849), Pahlavi said Iran was not a country that needed to be taught democracy anew, but rather a country that had been forcibly kept away from practising democracy.

Amid applause from the audience, he said a people who were prepared to give their lives merely for the right to vote were fully capable of exercising that right.

Large protests began in Iran towards the end of last year and were brought to a halt in January this year by a harsh crackdown by the country's security forces. Domestic and international human rights organisations have said thousands of people lost their lives in that crackdown.

Some relatives of those killed in the violence were also present in the hall. Speaking about them, Pahlavi's voice trembled at one point. Addressing the organising foundation, he said it would find no other nation that understood the meaning of the word 'freedom' better.

Despite the large show of support on the streets of Frankfurt, many did not take kindly to Pahlavi's acceptance of the award. His father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was Iran's last Shah and a hardline authoritarian ruler. He lost power in the face of a popular uprising in 1979, fled the country, and Islamist rule then began in Iran.

Pahlavi has also become a target of critics for his open support for Israel and for the view that he has still not fully distanced himself from his father's authoritarian rule.

Sahar Sanaei, spokesperson for the Society for German-Iranians in the state of Hesse, said about 200 prisoners currently in Iranian jails had signed a letter protesting Pahlavi's receipt of the award. They regard him as a symbol of the tyranny of the past, she said.

The Frankfurt branches of Germany's centre-left SPD and the Greens party boycotted the event. The two parties said Pahlavi could in no way be called a legitimate representative of the Iranian people.

The Frankfurt branch of the far-left party Die Linke said no political event should have been held in the historic church, because city rules prohibit political programmes in the place of worship.

At Saturday's event, Pahlavi said he was not taking the award for himself, but was keeping it only as a 'custodian' until a democratic government came to Iran. He said he was keeping it temporarily, and that one day he would hand it over to its rightful owners not on foreign soil, but in the capital, Tehran.