An open letter from the Ahwazi-Human Rights Organization (AHRO)        

to the European Union Human Rights Commission in Brussels

CC; Mr. Kofi Annan, General Secretary of The United Nations; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; other organizations that value human rights                                                                                                   

August 23, 2003

Dear Sir/Madam:               

We write to you because despite the visit of EU Human Rights Committees on 14-15 March and the meeting of EU Foreign ministers in Brussels on 21 July, no actions were taken against the recent flagrant abuse of human rights and the repression of Iranian national and ethnic minorities.

For example, last month during a vicious wave of repression against political parties and political activists of the Arab minority population in the southwestern province of Khuzestan in Iran, tens of individuals were arrested, jailed and some are subject to severe torture.

Individuals, political activists and members of the “Islamic Vafagh Party” in the provincial city of Ahwaz, and members of the “Arab House” in Tehran, were arrested and imprisoned.  “Islamic Vafagh” is a legal grassroots party officially registered in Iran. “Arab House” is also a legal social-cultural club and a gathering place for Ahwazi and Khuzestani Arabs living in Tehran. It is also registered by the government and is supposed to be allowed to function with the full knowledge of the Iranian Government.  Among those arrested was Mr. Ali Al-Jaldawi, an Ahwazi political and cultural activist, charged with participating in a recent peaceful demonstration in Ahwaz. 

The only two bilingual, Arabic/Farsi newspapers, Soute-el-Shaasb and Al-Shoura, which were published and distributed in Ahwaz, were shut down last month by Iranian security forces.

This last wave of arrests and overt political repression is a continuation of cultural and political oppression that Arab people of Arabistan (Khuzestan) have been subjected to by the Iranian regime. Last year, this repression, according to Amnesty International, resulted in public hangings of five Arab political activists by the names of Fadhil Muqaddam, Rahim Sawari, Amir Sa’idi, Hashem Bawi and Abbas Sherhani.

Also according to the same sources, 17 Arab human rights activists have been sentenced to death and may be executed any day now.

According to news filtered from inside Iran, in the past few weeks, more than 50 Arab political prisoners from Khuzestan, who were sentenced to long jail terms many years ago and were serving time in Ahwaz, have been moved in a suspicious manner to military prisons.  The lives of these prisoners are in serious danger.

We, Ahwazi Arabs of Iran, are an oppressed national minority who have been deprived of all basic human rights, including the rights to study and speak our native language, Arabic. We lack the cultural freedom to practice our customs and tradition. We demand our cultural and linguistic freedom in accordance with the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our demands for basic human rights, including education in our mother tongue, have often been labeled as "separatist” and “secessionist”.  We have been called “stooges of foreign countries” and a “danger to territorial integrity” by the Iranian regime.  At best, our demands were totally ignored.

Our struggle for democracy and social justice is part of a larger democratic struggle that is happening throughout Iran.  We demand peaceful coexistence with other national, ethnic and religious minorities in a democratic Iran, governed as a federal republic system of semi-autonomous regions. We seek autonomy and self-rule for the Ahwazi (Arabistani) Arab people in the Khuzestan province (Al-Ahwaz region).

National and ethnic distinctions are strong in Iran among the non-Persian peoples that comprise over 60% of the total population, and this is an irrefutable reality. The Ahwazi Arab population of Iran, according to official and un-official data, is estimated to be between 4-6 million (U.S. State Department 2002 Human Rights report estimates their population to be over 4 million).

In recent years (prior to the latest wave of repression) a number of Azeri and Kurdish radio, TV and newspapers have emerged and were tolerated by the regime. However, these minor freedoms have not been afforded to Iranian Arabs. Since 1995, there have been over 30 official requests to the Iranian Ministry of Education and Guidance to obtain licenses for establishment of Arabic newspapers in Ahwazi Territory (Khuzestan). All have been denied. 

This treatment from the Iranian clerics, claimants of “real” and “true” Islam, is an anomaly. The Holy Quran, is written in Arabic language and Islam is heavily influenced by Arab culture, and yet, the Iranian “Islamic” government does not allow its Arab citizens to employ Arabic as the official language of the region.

The demands of the Ahwazi Arabs of Iran are within the Iranian constitution, and primarily are as follows:

             ·        Study and use of mother tongue.

 ·        Participation and sharing of economic wealth and resources.

·        Participation and inclusion in the socio-political process (Now, as in the previous regime, state governor, state leaders, mayors and all high and mid-level state government officials of Khuzestan have consistently been appointed from non-Arabs outside of the native Arab population).

·        Allocation of some of oil revenues toward the development and progress in Khuzestan (according to official data, currently all oil revenues from Khuzestan flows to Tehran).

·        Expeditious de-mining of Arab inhabited border areas remaining from the eight year Iran-Iraq war. These mines still threaten the lives of Arab inhabitants, especially children.

·        Allow formation of labor unions for the oil, gas and petrochemical workers and permit creation of political, cultural and trade organizations in the Khuzestan. After the fall of the Shah and the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Iranian Arab people of Khuzestan, especially the petroleum workers who went on strike to hasten the downfall of the Shah, played a prominent role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Although the Islamic Republic is marginally more tolerant of the national minorities than the previous monarchist regime of Pahlavi in allowing some public forums, seminars and conferences of writers, poets and artists, in Azeri and Kurdish areas, it has resisted and consistently denied our requests for the same in the Khuzistan province with the majority Arab population. 

Prior to 1925, Khuzestan (which for 500 years was called Arabistan), enjoyed full autonomy and Arabic was taught as the official language.  After the emergence of Reza Shah and by enforcing centralization, the state adopted Farsi (Persian) as the official language, which is spoken by less than 40% of the total population. The government banned Arabic education in the province where about 90% of the people were native Arabic speakers. The Iranian government changed the name of the province from Arabistan to Khuzestan in 1936.

 The policies of the current Iranian government, like its predecessor, is based on the elimination of the national identity of Arabs, and to a lesser extent, other nationalities such as the Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkomen and Lor.  The nature of this undemocratic and anti-ethnic policy is based on an agenda of "Persianization” or “Farsization “, where everything must be Persian. An invented supremacist, pre-Islamic Persian chauvinist ideology aimed at the elimination of non-Persian groups and cultures, inspires this policy.

 The result of these hegemonic policies was the economic, social and cultural retardation of the non-Persians who make up 2/3 of Iran’s total population, which led to a pervasive national identity crisis among Iran’s ethnic groups. This bred resentment and severe feelings of oppression, distrust and vulnerability among the country’s minority populations, especially the Arabs.

The Islamic Republic continues the policy of “Persianization”, however this time in the guise of Islamic brotherhood and national unity. The current situations are becoming alarmingly explosive by exacerbating existing ethnic and religious crises and contributing to already dire social, economic, and political conditions.

·        The Iranian government authorities in the Khuzestan province refuse to register and issue birth identity cards to Arab newborn babies who do not assume Persian names - names that sometimes contradict their cultural and religious beliefs.

·        The regime refuses to consent to the Ahwazi (Khuzestani) Arabs’ request to change the names of landmarks back to their historical Arabic names. Names of cities, towns, villages, rivers and other geographical landmarks were changed from Arabic to Persian names during the previous Pahalavi regimes. These historical Arabic names existed for centuries.

·        We demand that the government cease the silence and lifts news blockades in the national and international media against the Arabs in Iran. This silence has contributed to the quelling of the Arab-Iranian voice and the voices of other human rights activists who attempted to raise these issues among the Iranian populace, and western media.  This regime, like the previous one in Iran, prevents any public mention of the Iranian Arab population and minority. However, this is despite the fact that since modern Iran was established in 1925, the question of Arabistan and Arab Iranians was one of the most important foreign policy issues faced by the government because of its direct effect on the national security and economy of Iran. The importance of Khuzestan in domestic and foreign transactions is very clear to the authorities in Iran. It plays an important role in shaping Iranian policies and attitudes towards the Arab World, especially the border countries. 

·        Arabistan is recognized for its unique economic and strategic importance. It links Iranian territories with the Arab countries and is located on the Gulf and “Shat El-Arab” (waterway).  Arabistan has huge petroleum wealth, which constitutes the main source of income for the Iranian economy or about 90% of the total Iranian income from oil. Despite being at the heart of economic prosperity in the country, the Iranian Arab population is kept severely backwards, with extremely high illiteracy rates, unemployment, abject poverty, and drug usage among the youth.

·        We demand equitable compensation to landowners whose property was forcefully expropriated by the Iranian government. In recent years the central government in Tehran has confiscated Arab lands in Khuzestan for the use of the failed “Sugar Cane” plantation, while settling other non-Arabs, in particular Persians, in the area.

·        We demand accelerating the process of rebuilding cities and towns that were destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war, safeguarding of the area ecology, and cleaning the drinking water poisoned by run-offs from the “Sugar Cane” project. We demand that the government must stop the proliferation of drugs among Arab youth and combating corruption.

·        We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Iran.

We hope that the above information enables you to take concrete action in supporting the voice of oppressed Arab people of Iran.

This is an urgent matter.  As you read this document, political prisoners are in grave danger of execution.  We respectfully urge you to take immediate action on their behalf.

We stand ready to provide you with further information and evidence to substantiate the above and assist in preventing a human catastrophe in the making.

Respectfully yours,

Ahwaz Human Rights Organization (AHRO)        

AHRO-USA

Columbia University Station

P.O. Box 250572

New York City, New York 10025

E-mail: ahrousa@yahoo.com

AHRO-UK

P.O. Box  17725 London N5  2WP

ahro_uk@yahoo.com