By Rahim Hamid

Hundreds of supporters of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz participated in a mass demonstration in front of the Iranian Embassy in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, on Friday, to express their solidarity with the Ahwazi Arab people and condemn the Iranian regime’s aggression against Ahwaz.

Participants in the peaceful protest, the fourth such ASMLA demonstration to take place in a European capital in recent months, praised the recent decision by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to place Hezbollah on the GCC’s list of terrorist organizations, and their efforts to combat the Iranian regime’s hostile regional policies and terrorist affiliates in the Arab world, particularly in the Gulf countries.

The protesters at Friday’s demonstration carried Ahwazi flags and photographs of Ahwazi martyrs and political prisoners, many showing the wounds left by torture by Iranian regime personnel.  They also carried placards raising awareness of some of the other crimes committed by the theocratic regime against Ahwazis, ranging from random executions of activists to forced displacement and arbitrary arrests, as well as highlighting the endemic unemployment and illiteracy in the region due to the regime’s apartheid policies against Arabs.

Participants in the demonstration included a large number of Syrians and Turks expressing their solidarity with the Ahwazi people, as well as representatives from other ethnic groups in Iran, who suffer similar brutal oppression and injustice at the regime’s hands.

Ahwazi representatives at the event highlighted the fact that the convergence of regional interests between Western countries and Iran means that the world needs to understand the human rights atrocities committed by the Iranian regime which all too often receive little or no attention, with Iran’s crimes against its Ahwazi Arab citizens hidden, rarely reported and never addressed.

At the conclusion of the event, the ASMLA issued a final statement on behalf of the Ahwazi people, saying:

The Iranian state is a sponsor of terrorism which has adopted repressive measures against ethnic groups who have been subjected to oppression and occupation by the Iranian state for several decades:  these occupied and oppressed peoples should be accorded the right to self-determination.

We demand the international community to intervene immediately and not to ignore the crimes against   Ahwazi Arabs and other peoples in Iran under the pretext of the nuclear program agreement, which completely fails to take into account the interests of the oppressed peoples of the country.

We reject those values that legitimize the executioner and criminalize their victims. Those under Iranian occupation understand Iran’s recent post-nuclear deal rapprochement with the West as offering a green light to the regime to kill more Ahwazis and members of other ethnic groups.  We firmly reject the random executions of Ahwazi citizens, especially the recent death sentences issued against Ahwazi prisoners in the cities of Susa and Hamidieh. We emphasize our solidarity with the Ahwazi prisoners languishing in Iranian occupation jails, who suffer horrific conditions of torture and abuse, and we renew our pledge to the martyrs of Ahwaz, who were executed or died under torture, and shall continue to stand at their families’ side.

The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation Ahwaz will not stand as an idle witness to the crimes against Ahwazi people, and calls for the world to intervene to stop the crimes of the Iranian occupation state.