Posted on 10/10/2006 9:45:46 PM PDT by freedom44
The persecution of Ahwazi Arabs and the takeover of their land has led to accusations of 'ethnic cleansing'
“NEVER AGAIN” is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon — but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of “ethnic cleansing” by Iran’s Persian majority. Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others — Hamza Sawa- eri, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari — say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.
The death sentences seem designed to silence protests by Iran’s persecuted ethnic Arabs. They comprise 70 per cent of the population of the south-west province of Khuzestan, known locally as Ahwaz. Many Ahwazis believe that the 16 were framed and that their real “crime” was campaigning against Tehran’s repression and exploitation of their oil-rich homeland.
Further show trials are planned — 50 Ahwazi Arab activists have been charged with insurgency since last year. They are accused of being mohareb or enemies of God, which is a capital crime. Other allegations include sabotage and possession of home-made bombs. No material evidence has been offered to support the charges. All face possible execution.
Securing information about the impending hangings has been difficult. The authorities are notoriously secretive, often withholding information about charges, evidence and sentences. Foreign journalists are severely restricted and local reporters are intimidated with threats of imprisonment. Despite this official obfuscation, human rights groups confirm a new wave of repression against Ahwazi Arabs who accuse Tehran of “ethnic cleansing” and racism. Ali Afrawi, 17, and Mehdi Nawaseri, 20, were publicly hanged in March for allegedly participating in insurgency. Amnesty International condemned their trial as “unfair”. They were denied access to lawyers. The Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) says that seven other Arab political prisoners were secretly executed at around the same time.
Tehran’s latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies.
Nearly 250,000 Arabs have been displaced from their villages after the Iranian Government’s confiscation of more than 200,000 hectares of farmland for a huge sugar-cane project. Dozens more towns and villages will be erased, making a possible further 400,000 Ahwazis homeless, by the creation of a military-industrial security zone, covering more than 3,000 sq km, along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iraq.
Ironically, the Hezbollah in Lebanon — the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East — is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hezbollah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.
Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through “ethnic restructuring”. Financial incentives, such as zero- interest loans, are given to ethnic Persians to settle in Ahwaz. New townships are planned, which will house 500,000 non-Arabs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced Ahwazis eke out a subsistence existence in shanty towns on the outskirts of Ahwaz city. Others have been forcibly relocated to poverty-stricken, far-flung northern regions of Iran.
Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran’s oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues. An attempt by Ahwaz MPs to secure the repatriation of 1.5 per cent of these earnings back to the region for welfare projects was rejected this year. Yet it is the third poorest region of Iran: 80 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and the unemployment rate of Arabs is more than five times that of Persians.
Arab language newspapers and textbooks have been banned to crush Arab identity further. In Ahwaz schools, all instruction is in Farsi (Persian), resulting in a 30 per cent drop-out rate at primary level and 50 per cent at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
Contrary to Tehran’s nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran’s hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle — the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity — is so silent in the face of Iran’s persecution of Arabs.
Dispicable, in any case.
Arab Muslims. Arabs are 2% of Irans population.
/Dispicable --- DESPICABLE -- my spelling is terrible when I'm tired.
Don't read too much into it. The Iranian dictatorship is considered by the vast majority of the Iranian populace as fundamentality Arab in culture even though they're ethnic Persians.
Thanks.
Ping. Interesting that the article doesn't bring up the fact that the regime 'themselves' are 'Arabic' in culture, even though they're Persians they embrace an Arabic ideology, culture, mentality instead of a Persian one.
I must disagree with your conclusion that the Iranian leadership is Arabic in culture. The official language of Iran is Persian and they do not consider themselves to be Arabs. Islam is obviously an Arabic influence, but the Persians distinguish themselves from Arabs just like the Turks and other non-Muslim Arabs. Iran has strained relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments in the region. The Iranians are certainly Islamic fanatics, but they are Persian Islamic fanatics.
The average Iranian in the streets considers the dictatorship to be too 'Arabic' in culture, they may speak Persian/Farsi but they aren't Persians in culture. The regime does not embrace Iran's history or culture, they embrace an Arabized version which is post-Arab Invasion. Most Persians admire the pre-600 A.D. era when there was the Persian Empire - Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Xerxes, etc. Something shunned by the current regime.
Aren't they the same ones that forcibly converted the Persians, then followers of Rastafarianism (sp), to Islam, in the seventh century? I say so much the better, let the ROP continue killing each other, they won't have time to kill us.. Isn't that the Roach Motel theory?
"they embrace an Arabic ideology, culture, mentality instead of a Persian one."
Islam is not an "Arabic ideology." At least not any more than Christianity is a "Hebrew ideology" or Buddhism is an "Indian ideology".
Arab is an ethnic group like Persian is... both are mostly Muslims and have the same culture(religion more than history or race defines culture...even in a more secular west). And didn't Mohammad begin his campaign by killing and terrorizing Arabs themselves? And a lot of so called Arabs aren't Arabs by ethnicity, but Arab by language and culture.
I don't think the ancient Persians were Rastafarians :D No Rastas back in those days, mon. :))
They were Zoroastrian.
That is interesting. I have spoken to Iranian Persians who admire ancient Persian culture as you described. I have never met any of the mullahs though, so what you posted makes sense.
No Rastas in Persia mon, that be Jamacia mon'.
You must be very young.
No, you have it wrong. The Persian muslims in Iran are Shiite, and have always had a dislike for the Arab Wahhbi's who they consider "lovers of the anus" from the time of Ali.
They shun it because its superior in every way the to house of crap they built.
Wow .. that's just too bad. I'm fresh out of pity for arabs or muslims.
"Aren't they the same ones that forcibly converted the Persians, then followers of Rastafarianism (sp), to Islam, in the seventh century?"
LOL. That's hysterical! I'm trying to picture it. LOL.
Rastafarianism was started in Jamaica in like the 1930's and reveres Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
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