حزب مردم بلوچستان  Balochistan People’s Party  بلوچستانءِ اُستمانءِ گــَل

  

 

UNPO VIII GA Adopts Resolution on Situation in Ahwaz

2006-11-01

A central component of the VIII UNPO General Assembly, held this year in Taipei, Taiwan, from 27 – 29 October, was to facilitate the discussion of specific problems facing UNPO Members, as well as potential strategies for resolving these with the help of UNPO, its Members, and its supporters.

As part of this process, a Session on the final day of proceedings, Sunday 29 October, was dedicated entirely to the presentation and discussion of resolutions submitted by UNPO Members, detailing specific problems faced by their communities, and detailing the steps that might be taken towards a peaceful and equitable solution.

The following resolution was submitted by the delegation from Ahwazi and adopted by the UNPO VIII General Assembly:

Member Resolution

Repression and Persecution of Indigenous Ahwazi Arabs in Iran

The UNPO General Assembly;

Notes that Iran is, multinational, a multi-ethnic and multilingual country, composed of Turks, Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Baloch, Turkmen, and other ethnicities, yet ruled by the 1/3 Persian minority since 1925, creating a cultural and linguistic apartheid;

Alarmed by the continuous mass arrests, torture and execution of indigenous Ahwazi Arabs in the southwestern province of al-Ahwaz (Khuzestan);

Emphasizes that the 5 million indigenous Ahwazis have lived in their ancestral land of al-Ahwaz for thousands of years, independently and autonomously, invaded and forcefully occupied by the Persian-dominated central government of Tehran only in 1925 and renamed to the Persian Khuzestan;

Observes that successive Persian-dominated regimes followed a policy of forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, confiscation of indigenous Ahwazi farmer land, diversion of rivers of Karoon and Karkhe to central Persian provinces of Isfahan, Kerman and Yazd, along with total exclusion of the Ahwazis from the Iranian landscape, politically, economically and socially;

Notes that the state adopted Farsi (Persian) as the sole official language, though it is spoken by less than 30% of the population;

Concerned that the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran appear based on the elimination of the national identity of Ahwazi-Arabs, as well as other nationalities, such as the Turks, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmen and others;

Concerned that these policies have kept indigenous Ahwazis as backward, leaving half of its population in absolute poverty, and 80% of Ahwazi children suffering from mal-nutrition;

Notes that whilst our land produces over 4.5 million barrels of oil a day, funding 90% of the Iranian economy, indigenous Arabs live in abject poverty, as no part of the oil revenue of nearly $ 70 billion yearly is distributed to Ahwazi-Arabs or to their region;

Recalls that Ahwazi demands for basic human rights, including education in our mother tongue, have often been labeled as "separatist”, “secessionist,” or called “stooges of foreign countries,” and so constituting a “danger to security and territorial integrity”;

Concerned that illiteracy is 4 times, and unemployment is 5 times, that of the non-indigenous population;

Recalls that Ahwazis in Iran cannot wear their national and ethnic dress and costume in official centres, and that government authorities in Khuzestan refuse to register and issue birth identity cards to indigenous Ahwazi newborn-babies who do not assume Persian or Shiite names;

Recalls that the governor general of Khuzestan, as well as all other provincial political, military and security commanders, officers, mayors and high and mid-level government and Industry official, have been appointed from non-Arabs outside of the native Arab population;

Concerned that since the Intifada (general uprising) of April 2005, nearly 25,000 have been arrested, and their whereabouts are in most cases still unknown, and that at least 131 have been executed;

Concerned that families and children as young as 2 and 4 are being detained and taken hostage, forcing parents who work underground into surrender;

Recalls that whilst Ahwazis ancestral land produces 90% of Iran’s oil wealth, no portion of it is allocated to the people of the land, and that legislation to allocate 1.5% of the revenue to al-Ahwaz areas was recently defeated in Iranian Parliament for a third time;

Notes that the Ahwazis are caught in global and regional geopolitics, where even Arab countries of the Middle-East keep silent of the Ahwazi repression, and that some liberal forces of the Europe also a prone to ignore the plight of the Ahwazis due to political differences with the United States;

Expresses the belief that the prevailing status quo is untenable;

Notes that, as Iran represents about 40% of the OPEC production, an unstable al-Ahawazi territory would be catastrophic to international business;

Concerned that due to the strategic importance of and oil installations, the province is becoming fully militarized, and that efforts are being made to exclude journalists and observers, leaving major crimes unnoticed;

 
 Therefore, we urge The UNPO General Assembly to:

1. Call upon countries and multi-national corporations, such as China’s government owned Oil Company investing $90 billion in oil exploration and production in Ahwazi, to consider the rights of indigenous population, and to adhere to the principle of Informed, Free and Prior consent, as adopted by the United Nations;

2. Condemn the repression and persecution of Ahwazi-Arabs, as well as other ethnic and religious minorities in Iran;

3. Request that the UN Human Rights Council and the EU Parliament establish an investigation or a fact finding mission to al-Ahwaz, as well as the other ethnic areas of Kurdistan, including Baluchistan and Torkoman Sahra.
 

http://www.unpo.org/

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Join Demonstration against Khatami in London

2006-11-03

Bellow is an Article published by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society on the demonstration against Khatami’s visit in London:

Ahwazis were among the hundreds demonstrating outside Chatham House in London where former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami was lecturing on Iran domestic and foreign policies.

Chatham House is one of the world's leading think tanks for the analysis of international issues. At the meeting, Khatami discussed the use of torture and the recent British debate about the Muslim veil.

Mohammed Khatami presided over an administration that executed hundreds of its opponents, oppressed women and ethnic and religious minorities and crushed student and trade union activism.

Yet, the British establishment is praising this human rights abuser as a "reformist" and awarding him with an honorary doctorate at one of the UK's leading universities. Khatami is neither a reformer nor a democrat, but a murderous tyrant. Numbering five million people, Iran's Ahwazis are just one of many groups that faced violent persecution under Khatami and continue to face state terrorism under his successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Khatami's stated plan, revealed in letters leaked to Al-Jazeera TV last year, was to reduce the Arab population from 70 per cent of the total population of Khuzestan - known to its Ahwazi Arab inhabitants as Al-Ahwaz or Arabistan - to 30 per cent by forcing Ahwazi Arabs out of their homes and enticing people from outside the province with jobs and interest-free loans denied to the indigenous population. Under Khatami, Ahwazi Arabs faced an official policy of discrimination and repression that has led to African levels of poverty - yet their homeland is one of the world's most oil-rich areas and the backbone of the Iranian economy!

Last year while Khatami was still in power, UN Special Rapporteur Miloon Kothari visited the areas devastated by Khatami's violent campaign which made hundreds of thousands of Ahwazi Arabs homeless in their own land. This is what he had to say: "[I]n Khuzestan [...] large development projects, like petrochemical plants, are being built leading to the displacement of entire villages - with thousands of people not consulted on the projects, informed of the impending displacement, nor offered adequate resettlement and compensation [...] the compensation being offered to the Arab villagers who were being displaced is sometimes one fortieth of the market value - and there is nothing they can do about it. It's a fait accompli. And all of these phenomena are continuing. It's something that is happening almost every day."

In April 2005, Ahwazi Arabs staged an unarmed uprising against Khatami's ethnic cleansing programme. The 'reformist' president moved swiftly to crush the intifada, with 25,000 Ahwazis arrested and hundreds more executed, killed unlawfully or 'disappeared'. Entire families have been imprisoned, including children as young as two and four years old.

Source British Ahwazi Friendship Society

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Iran steps up hangings in restive province

Thu. 02 Nov 2006
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 02 - More than half a dozen people have been hanged in Iran’s south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchestan, were anti-government sentiment is high, since the start of the week.

The semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami reported on Thursday that two “troublemakers” accused of being Mofsed-o-fel-Arz (meaning corruptors of society, whose blood can be spilled) were hanged in the provincial capital Zahedan.

The two men, identified as Hadi Daryakesh Naroui and Azizollah Najjarian, were hanged in public on Wednesday.

Daryakesh was accused of kidnapping, shooting, and spreading fear in society, while Najjarian was accused of drug trafficking.

On Wednesday, the hard-line daily reported that six men were hanged in public in Zahedan for “instigating trouble”.

The report stated that three “trouble-makers” were hanged in front of a crowd of several thousand people Monday morning. The men, identified as Mohsen Sargolzaee, Nader Kaharzehi, and Maijd Kaharzehi, were charged with kidnapping, shooting, and spreading fear in society and declared to be Mofsed-o-fel-Arz.

The same report said that another three men, identified as Behzad Naroui, Mohammad Amin Hormozi, and Abdollah Sheikh Hassani, were hanged in public in Zahedan Monday afternoon.

They were accused of being “mohareb”, a religious term that describes someone who wages war on God. An Islamic court found them guilty of killing three agents of Iran’s State Security Forces (SSF), the paramilitary police, attacking security outposts, and carrying out a bombing in Zahedan.

The three men were also accused of membership in an armed Baluchi group calling itself Jondollah.

In March, the group claimed responsibility for an armed attack on a convoy of government officials in Sistan-va-Baluchestan, which left twenty-two government and provincial officials dead and at least seven, including the governor of Zahedan, critically wounded.

In April, Iran’s state-run media reported that security forces had killed the group’s leader Abdolmalek Reigi along with 11 of its members on the border with Afghanistan.

The claim proved to be false after Reigi subsequently appeared on an Arabic-language satellite channel denying such rumours.

The group claims that it does not target civilians.

Sistan-va-Baluchestan has been a hotbed of anti-government activities since 2005.

In recent months, Iranian authorities have stepped up executions in the restive province in what many Baluchis believe is a response to a spate of attacks by dissidents on government and security officials.

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Al Jazeera sets English launch date

Wednesday 01 November 2006,

Al Jazeera is to launch its English-language news and current affairs channel on November 15.

The Al Jazeera Network announced on Tuesday that the channel, part of the network and the sister channel to Al Jazeera, will begin broadcasting from its Doha headquarters at 1200 GMT on that day.

The Al Jazeera English-language website is being relaunched at the same time.

The announcement of the channel's forthcoming launch coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Al Jazeera, the network's Arabic-language channel.

Wadah Khanfar, director-general of Al Jazeera Network, said: "We are extremely proud of what Al Jazeera has achieved over the past ten years.

"Al Jazeera today is an international media organisation. Al Jazeera English will build on the pioneering spirit of Al Jazeera and will carry our media model ... to the entire world.

"The launching of the English channel offers the chance to reach out to a new audience that is used to hearing the name of Al Jazeera without being able to watch it or to understand its language.

"The new channel will provide the same ground-breaking news and impartial and balanced journalism to the English-speaking world."

Agenda-setting

The English channel will have broadcast centres in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC.

The website aljazeera.net/english will showcase the English channel's agenda-setting editorial mission and provide constantly updated coverage of news events from around the world, along with in-depth analysis and background.

It will provide RSS feeds, live streams and downloadable clips from the channel, as well as interactive discussions and polling.

Programme and presenter information as well as weather reports, live business data and sport will also be available.

http://english.aljazeera.net/

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Political prisoner hanged in public in Iran

 
Mon. 06 Nov 2006

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 06 – Iranian authorities hanged a political prisoner in public on Sunday in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchestan for his alleged role in the killing of two of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards.

Mohammad Askani was hanged in public in the town of Iran-Shahr, the official news agency IRNA reported. He was charged with taking part in the killing of the two presidential guards.

On December 15, 2005, rebels attacked the presidential motorcade near the city of Zabol during a visit by Ahmadinejad to the impoverished province.

Separately, another man called Najibollah Qayoumi was hanged in public on Sunday, IRNA reported, bringing the total number of officially-announced executions in the province to 11 during the past week.

Qayoumi was accused of drug trafficking.

Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on the bogus charge of drug smuggling.

A man identified as Mohebali Gholamian Moqaddam was hanged in Zabol, IRNA reported on Thursday.

The semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami reported on Thursday that two “troublemakers” accused of being Mofsed-o-fel-Arz (meaning corruptors of society, whose blood can be spilled) were hanged in the provincial capital Zahedan.

The two men, identified as Hadi Daryakesh Naroui and Azizollah Najjarian, were hanged in public on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the hard-line daily reported that six men were hanged in public in Zahedan for “instigating trouble”.

The report stated that three “trouble-makers” were hanged in front of a crowd of several thousand people Monday morning. The men, identified as Mohsen Sargolzaee, Nader Kaharzehi, and Maijd Kaharzehi, were charged with kidnapping, shooting, and spreading fear in society and declared to be Mofsed-o-fel-Arz.

The same report said that another three men, identified as Behzad Naroui, Mohammad Amin Hormozi, and Abdollah Sheikh Hassani, were hanged in public in Zahedan Monday afternoon.

Sistan-va-Baluchestan has been a hotbed of anti-government activities since 2005.

In recent months, Iranian authorities have stepped up executions in the restive province in what many Baluchis believe is a response to a spate of attacks by dissidents on government and security officials.

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Rebels kill three agents of Iran paramilitary force

 
Tue. 07 Nov 2006

Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 07 – Rebels in south-eastern Iran have killed three agents of the paramilitary Bassij force, affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a report on Tuesday on a government-owned Persian-language website.

The report said that the Bassij agents were killed on Sunday during clashes at a security checkpoint.

It described the individuals that took part in the shootout as “drug traffickers” and said that they were eventually arrested by police.

Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on the bogus charge of drug smuggling.

The Bassij are Islamist vigilantes loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In 2005, following hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to the presidency, they were given powers to act as the country’s back-up police force.