Written by Rahim Hamid, Ahwazi freelance journalist 

Iran first occupied the Arab nation of Al-Ahwaz in 1925, and has attempted ever since to forcibly exterminate its Arab identity while looting its plentiful mineral resources.  Iran’s rulers even went so far as renaming the annexed nation ‘Khuzestan’ in 1936, as well as giving all its towns, villages and cities new Farsi names, in an attempt to wholly eradicate all traces of Ahwazis’ Arab heritage.

Ninety years on, despite the current brutal theocratic regime accelerating these efforts to wipe a people and their history from the map, the long-suffering Ahwazi peoples maintain their determination to attain freedom, dignity and justice. Ahwazis stand in solidarity with other oppressed peoples across the region and the world subjected to similar monstrous injustices, with the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) representing their voice – silenced and outlawed within Iran – to the world.

The conference consisted of three sections: Security and Policy; Media; and Law, each exposing and analysing the regime’s human rights violations from different angles, and supporting Ahwazi Arabs’ right to freedom and  self-determination.

The third annual ASMLA Conference, which took place in Copenhagen last week, was attended by distinguished activists, intellectuals and political figures from Ahwaz and across the Middle East, who declared their solidarity with the people of Ahwaz in their struggle for liberation.   With the Tehran regime currently expanding its savage and bloodthirsty occupation across the region, other speakers could identify even more strongly than previously with the struggle of Ahwazis.

One of the speakers, George Sabra, the former president of the Syrian National Council, told the conference, “What unites our two nations is our joint path and destiny in the struggle to gain our freedom and human dignity.”

In the conference’s opening speech, ASMLA chairman Habib Jabor outlined just some of the institutionalised persecution and oppression to which Ahwazis and other  ethnic  nationalities in Iran are collectively systematically subjected, which has intensified massively in the past 36 years under the theocratic regime.

“Since the Iranian Islamic Republic Regime’s rise to power, the mullah’s savage regime has enforced ethnocide policies against the Ahwazi Arab people and other non-Persian peoples,” he began. “In fact, the threat of forced displacement, deportation, expulsion and execution against Ahwazi Arab, Kurds, Turks, Baluchs and Turkmen is permanent.”

Jabor condemned the international community’s silence on this systemic murderous oppression, saying, “Several million Ahwazi Arabs are denied equal rights by the Iranian regime under a system of apartheid, defined as a deliberate policy of racial or ethnic segregation. For years and to this day, the international community’s lack of reaction concerning the state of human rights in the Ahwaz region and other non-Persian regions which, in its entirety should be called a prison consisting of occupied nations built on fire, blood, international conspiracy, has given the Iranian regime and its élite a right of life and death over entire communities. Ahwazi Arabs, in the same way as peoples of other non-Persian nationalities, are victimized, robbed and plundered because of their ethnicity.”

Describing the wretched destitution that is the norm in Al-Ahwaz, despite the fact that the region contains over 90% of Iran’s oil and gas resources, he said, “Under the Iranian regime, millions of Ahwazi Arabs have been left to live in deplorable poverty-stricken conditions which are worse than those under the apartheid system imposed on South African people. In an effort to change the demography of Ahwaz region, Iran has been waging a silent war against Ahwazi Arab people by constructing ethnically-exclusive [Persian-only] settlements, as part of a systematic policy of clandestine ethnic cleansing. Subjected to these ongoing national atrocities, Ahwazi Arabs have given up hope for having their equal rights along with other four non-Persian nations, Turks, Kurds, Baluchs and Turkmens. There is a consensus-rooted ideology among Iranian nationalists that those of non-Persian nations must be oppressed under the pretext of preserving Iranian sovereignty and national integrity.”

Habib pointed out that the savage reactionary and institutionally racist supremacism of the theocratic regime denies Ahwazi and other non-Persian peoples within Iran the most basic of human rights, even the right to expressing pride in their ethnic or national identity, culture and heritage or to advocate publicly or support human rights.  Any such effort, as he said is met with criminal charges of “inciting separatism”, a ‘crime’ punishable by imprisonment, torture and – all too often – death.  Execution and Poverty are the shares of Ahwazis under Iranian occupation. 10 million Ahwazis reside in Al-Ahwaz. Despite residing amid tremendous oil wealth, Ahwazi Arabs suffer from grinding poverty, underdevelopment, and environmental degradation, as well as social, political and cultural subjugation due to their Arab identity. Many Ahwazis believe that their plight is the outcome of a premeditated bid of Iranian regime to impose the Islamic Republic’s Persian character at their expense.

Habib Jabor recalled that following the 1979 revolution, Ahwazis initially had high hopes that after the previous decades of persecution they suffered under the Pahlavi dynasty they would finally be free of oppression and injustice.   Unfortunately, these hopes were quickly dashed, with the new regime unleashing a new era of even worse oppression, with Ahwazis being subjected to the assassination, banishment, forced displacement and execution.

Amongst the monstrously unjust policies implemented against Ahwazis and other non-Persian minorities in Iran in 1979, and still in place today are:

• No right of free speech, assembly or movement
• Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial
• Systematic liquidation of intellectuals (genocide of intellectuals)
• Torture, forced confession, solitary confinement
• House searches without warrant, assassination, stoning, and extra-judicial murder
• No right to education in mother language (another form of ethnic cleansing, along with high illiteracy among non-Persian speakers)
• Land confiscation for “Constructing settlement” for Persian settlers (population transfer, demographic change)
• Diverting rivers (Karoon River) or drying out the marshlands of Ahwaz, massive unchecked pollution from oil and gas fields leading to severe health problems
• Unemployment, abject poverty, prevalent substance addiction among young generation

By these barbaric policies and more, the non-Persian nations in Iran, including Ahwazi Arab people, have been trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison, that of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime.  No matter how hard the regime tries to rob the peoples of all hope, however, the struggle for freedom and dignity will continue until they are attained.  Poverty is the yoke of oppression exacted upon Ahwazi Arab people. Equality is dead under Iranian fascist regime. It has been dead for quite some time. Poverty is a negation of free will of Ahwazis who sit on the sea of oil and gas, a horrendous robbery of human rights and an appalling abuse of opportunities accomplished by the Iranian racialist governments. Politicians and human rights activists at the conference of the Arab struggle movement for the liberation of Ahwaz, condemn efforts by Tehran regime to obliterate the Arab identity of Al-Ahwaz

The Secretary-General of the World Association of Rights and Freedoms Fawaz Anzi called on the international community to uphold its responsibilities towards the Arab Ahwaz as the cause of people under occupation have the right to self-determination.

Anzi also stressed the importance of exposing the abuses and crimes of Iran committed against Ahwazi Human Rights of extra-judicial killings, disappearances, forced displacement and suffering of the whole people of Ahwaz, who subject to cruel and degrading treatment by the Iranian regime.

Fawaz added that Ahwazi Arabs in Iran afflicted by large-scale oppression and domination. Lack of empathy with the Ahwazis’ plight continues to flow because all the occupying Iranian authorities appointed in Al-Ahwaz have the same racist genetic make-up of the regime that sees Ahwazi people as just cannon- fodder. Iran’s mullah’s regime has been pursuing a punitive and vindictive way for punishing Ahwazi Arabs through the destruction of the environment, the land, and water resources of Al-Ahwaz.

It has resulted in the deliberate abuses by the Iranian regime in Ahwaz to turn Ahwaz to one of the most polluted regions of the world, according to the WHO report, which caused severe suffering to the Arab population of the region as the incidences of respiratory disease and skin cancer diseases have risen markedly among the people.

The Jordanian MP Mohamed Al-Betatsheh in his speech at the conference of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz said that we must seriously enter the Ahwazi issue in the mind of the Arab conscience, also demanded that the case of Ahwaz become part of school curricula in Arab countries. This conference is the door to open new horizons for both Ahwazis and Arabs generally as useful political and media opportunities can be awarded mutually and used it for the benefit of the whole Arab nation and its citizens, in particular, Ahwazi people who suffered the most at the hands of Iranian State.

He added that the Arabic region on the verge of mass domestic unrest and instability. He reminded the audiences of the Arab national security and increasing threat of Iran influence and its led-terrorism campaign in Arab countries- Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Bahrain and the necessity of Arab countries in building strong alliance in tackling with the aggressive Iran foreign policy which radiating serious repercussions outwards as external expansionist ambitions to achieve more influence politically and economically in the Arab world countries particularly Arab Gulf countries where Iraq Shia government is already allied with Iran, and in Arabic Gulf, Bahrain has significant Shia majority and Yemen, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (in its oil-rich eastern province) in which could be a base for Iran regime in developing its expansionist agenda across these Arab countries by deploying those dormant elements whose brains have been washed by the Iran’s Shiite sectarian agenda.

Dr. Dabbagh Dhargam, the head of the Political Council of the rebels in Iraq during his word at the conference, said we are a specialist in defeating Iran and we will wipe out Iranian invaders of the Arab countries.

The Prof Mishari Burgess of the Euro-Arab Center for Human Rights presented a detailed report on the size of the violations committed by the Iranian state in Ahwaz and demanded all international institutions to suspend the membership of the Iranian state and freeze in these institutions.

Anwar Malek, the Algerian human rights advocate, in his speech at the conference of the Arab struggle movement for the liberation of Ahwaz, said: “the Arab countries should support the struggle of the Arab people of Ahwaz and their fair cause in the face of tyranny and oppression of Iranian regime.

He added “indeed what we are witnessing regarding the grievous oppression, the looting of natural resources, systematic ethnic cleansing and continues of killing and prosecution of Ahwazi Arab is not less than the suffering of our people in Syria and other parts of Arab world and in this framework, there is must for implementing an effective political and media strategy to highlight the Ahwazi Arab issue not only amid Arab world but also on the international level”.

“From this platform, we appeal to local and international institutions, human rights organisations and democratic forces for prompt and decisive action regarding the ongoing crimes committed by the Iranian occupation forces in Ahwaz. Many of Ahwazi people have been killed and executed in cold blood by the Iranian regime. Dozens of Ahwazi people have been injured, arrested and brutally interrogated by the regime forces.”

“These practices carried out by the Iranian occupation forces that rise to the level of war crimes and require confrontation and response to halt this murder of Ahwazis.”

“We, therefore, call for human rights and humanitarian groups, as well as social movements, trade unions, democratic parties and concerned individuals throughout the world to stand by the side of the Ahwazi Arab people, and to take responsibility and work to halt these crimes perpetrated against these people, which represent an outrageous breach of international conventions and treaties.”

By Rahim Hamid