About me

I’m Omid Jamshidi – a lot of people know me as Omid57. I was born in Tehran in 1978, came to Germany at 17, and I’ve been politically active since 1998.

Growing up in a war

I was born on April 8, 1978, in Tehran – in the Iranian calendar that’s 1357, the year of the revolution.

My childhood was shaped by the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq: sirens, bombings, and war songs blaring from the radio, the TV and loudspeakers. Public mass executions in the street were so common that we kids skipped school to go watch. When I think about it today, it still makes me sick.

On my own at 17

At 17, I had to leave Iran. While I was fleeing, I was arrested in Tabriz and tortured.

After a huge struggle I made it to Turkey and got stuck there for six months – no language, no money. In early summer 1995, I finally joined my family in Germany.

Starting from scratch

Those first years were tough. I was a teenager, didn’t speak the language, had no friends – and as the oldest child, I had nobody to show me the way. The first three years were the hardest.

I started out washing dishes and doing manual labor, and step by step I worked my way up to bigger responsibilities. Computers and the internet had fascinated me since I was a teenager, and I taught myself web development.

Independent, but never alone

My first website was farhad200.com, from 1997 to 2000 – back then without my name on it. After that, I built free websites for activists and groups doing good work, whatever their politics. That’s how I got to know so many people.

Precisely because I worked for everyone, some people got suspicious. Some called me a monarchist, others a communist, others a regime spy. But I grew up in a family with very different political views, and I loved every one of them. That’s where I learned that what’s right deserves support, no matter who says it – and that nothing is a hundred percent. That’s why I’ve never joined any party or group.

Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of groups and political figures, inside Iran and abroad. Here I want to remember those who are no longer with us: Reza Fazeli, Saeed Ghaem-Maghami, Jamshid Sharmahd, Forood Fuladvand, Bahram Moshiri and Masoud Sadr. I worked most closely with Jamshid Sharmahd. Despite big political differences, we were real friends, and his absence is the one I feel most.

We often disagreed and still worked together. Nobody was to blame – we just saw the world from different angles.

Since 2015: husband and father

Since 2015, I’ve been a husband and a father. Since then I’ve cut way back on political activism – with one exception I couldn’t walk away from.

Standing up to discrimination

I experienced racial discrimination firsthand. Since August 14, 2022, I’ve been publicly standing up to the state government of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany – an opponent with the best lawyers and every resource you can imagine. That same day I posted the first video on my German channel, Omid57de, and I’ve been active in German ever since.

Everyone told me to let it go and not make trouble for myself. But I’m not doing this for me. I see it as my duty – for my children’s future, so they don’t have to go through the same thing when they grow up, and for everyone else facing structural racism in Germany.

When I was young, I punched walls to get stronger. These days I’m punching a different wall: injustice. And I’m not stopping until it comes down.

I’ve seen the world up close

I’ve traveled a lot – to the US, Canada and Mexico, the UAE and Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Greece.

And everywhere I saw the same thing: whatever language people speak and whatever they believe, they want freedom, security, peace and a decent life. That’s why I separate nations from their governments, and I never judge a people by what its government does.

What I believe

I don’t belong to any religion, but I’m a person of faith. That much order and design can’t have come about by chance. My religion is humanity and love for people.

Why this site comes in five languages

I’m a firm opponent of the Islamic Republic. But I see the main problem as ignorance and a lack of awareness – a lot of people still don’t know what freedom really means. Without that awareness, a change of government doesn’t fix anything; things just go from bad to worse.

The problems we Iranians have with our state, other nations have too, just in different forms. The only way forward I know is to build knowledge and awareness. That’s why I write – and why I write in five languages: mostly for Iranians and for people in Germany, but also for the many friends in the US, the UK and Canada who follow my work.

What I write about

Human rights – in Iran, in Germany, and everywhere else
Cases where government agencies and the courts let people down, and why we can’t look away
Persian poems and short stories, in plain translation
Straight facts and overviews, like the death penalty worldwide or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

This site and AI

I mostly write in Persian. Many of the German, Spanish and English versions are translated with the help of AI (Google Gemini) – when they are, it says so underneath. Parts of the text and design of this site were also made with AI’s help, but the thoughts and opinions are all mine.

My life at a glance

1978
Born in Tehran on April 8 (Iranian calendar: 1357)
1980–1988
Childhood during the Iran–Iraq War
1995
Left Iran at 17, six months in Turkey, arrived in Germany in early summer
1995–1998
Learning German, washing dishes and doing manual labor; taught myself web development
1997–2000
My first website: farhad200.com (still without my name)
1998
Started my political activism – independent, never a party member
2012
April 29: first video on my Omid57tv channel YouTube ↗
2015
Got married and started a family; stepped back from politics
around 2015
Launched my IT Tipps channel YouTube ↗
2022
August 14: public fight against discrimination in Rhineland-Palatinate, first video on Omid57de YouTube ↗
2026
New website omid57.net in five languages