The Iranian community in South Africa has called on the South African government to publicly acknowledge “the executions, the killing of protesters, the use of child soldiers, and the systemic repression taking place in Iran”.
In a press statement released on Monday the community also calls on the SA government to acknowledge Iranians in SA “and the very real grief and fear we are carrying every day”.
“We are calling for engagement with integrity. Meet with our community before extending platforms to representatives of the regime responsible for these abuses. Apply South Africa’s human rights principles consistently, because they cannot be selective. They either matter everywhere, or they mean nothing. And ensure that South Africans who speak out against these violations can do so without intimidation.
“We are not asking for geopolitics. We are asking for moral clarity. Because right now, while people are being executed, while children are being drawn into violence, and while the internet goes dark to hide it all, South Africa is being tested. And silence, in moments like this, is not neutral,” says the statement released by Shervin Ghorbani on behalf of the Iranian community in SA.
Asked by Gateway News whether they have reached out to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, Ghorbani said: “We have sent our statements directly to many members of Parliament and within DIRCO but we have never received a response or acknowledgement.” Gateway News has asked DIRCO for comment.
Ghorbani’s press statement also criticises the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) for inviting Dr Mansour Shakib Mehr, the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to address a SA audience on “International Law Under Siege” at an event scheduled to take place in Cape Town today.
The Iranian community press statement says: “This is not a neutral act. It is the granting of legitimacy, a platform, and moral cover to a regime that is actively executing its own people, suppressing basic freedoms, and weaponising the law against its citizens. This is not theoretical. The ambassador himself oversees the Iranian embassy’s X account, which routinely amplifies hostility, inflammatory rhetoric, and messaging aligned with a regime that thrives on intimidation. At the same time, the embassy forms part of a broader pattern of pressure and fear directed at diaspora communities who dare to speak out.
“Across the world, Iranian activists in exile report threats, surveillance, and retaliation against their families back home — a tactic widely documented as part of the regime’s effort to silence dissent beyond its borders. Families are harassed, relatives detained, and voices abroad are targeted precisely because they refuse to stay silent. We know this reality firsthand. The event is being officiated by Judge Siraj Desai, who has himself drawn controversy for stepping into highly charged political terrain. He was widely criticised for reportedly comparing Ayatollah Khomeini to Nelson Mandela, and in 2023 the Judicial Conduct Committee cautioned him to avoid political controversies. His continued defiance in the face of that warning only deepens concerns about the judgment and credibility of this platform. For those of us in the Iranian-South African community, speaking out is not without consequence. There is a real and growing fear that criticism here can carry a price for loved ones in Iran – that even from thousands of kilometres away, the regime’s reach does not end.
“And yet, in that context, a representative of that same system is being handed a microphone in South Africa — not to answer for these abuses, but to speak about law. At a moment when Iranians are being denied even the right to speak, this is not just tone deaf. It is a betrayal of the very principles that the platform claims to defend. For those of us who have buried family members, who live with the fear of a phone that will never ring again, this is not just offensive. It is indefensible.”
The statement, which can be read in full here, describes how the deadly repression of citizens in Iran is “immediate and personal” to the Iranian community in SA. “We are not reading headlines, we are trying to reach loved ones who may already be gone. And yet, here in South Africa, the response has been silence — and beyond that, a deeply troubling willingness to look the other way.”
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