No country for minorities: The agony of Iran’s ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Baloch and Azeris

An Iranian woman walks past a mural painting illustrating ancient Persian poetry in the Iranian capital Tehran on June 25, 2019. (AFP/File)
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Updated 09 March 2021
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No country for minorities: The agony of Iran’s ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Baloch and Azeris

  • Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Sunnis in remote provinces have repeatedly faced harsh crackdowns
  • Recent unrest in Sistan and Balochistan highlighted the extreme marginalization of non-Persian ethnic groups

WASHINGTON D.C.: Iran’s persecution of political dissidents has been well documented. But the popular conception of the “Iranian people” tends to privilege the grievances of Shiite Muslims and Persian speakers over those of ethnic minorities. Prominence is invariably given to events in Tehran and other urban areas at the expense of happenings in remote provinces.

Overall, non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran make up around 50 percent of the population, yet they are overwhelmingly marginalized.

In recent years, the regime in Tehran and its enablers in the West have assiduously pushed the narrative that the US is the oppressor and the “Iranian people” are the victim. But frequently the narrative is punctured when protests by Iran’s oppressed ethnic minorities spin out of control, such as the violent clashes that recently rocked the country’s impoverished southeast.

Several rights groups reported in a joint statement that authorities shut down the mobile data network in Sistan and Balochistan province, calling the disruptions an apparent “tool to conceal” the government’s harsh crackdown on protests convulsing the area.

Outraged over the shootings of fuel smugglers trying to cross back into Iran from Pakistan, local people had attacked the district governor’s office and stormed two police stations in the city of Saravan.

A low-level insurgency in Sistan and Balochistan involves several militant groups, including those demanding more autonomy for the region. The relationship between its predominantly Sunni Baloch residents and Iran’s Shiite theocracy has long been tense.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Balochis have faced particularly harsh crackdowns by regime security forces. Consequently, more than 40 years on, provinces such as Khuzestan, Kurdistan and Sistan and Balochistan remain some of the most unstable and least developed parts of Iran.




Provinces such as Khuzestan, Kurdistan and Sistan and Balochistan remain some of the most unstable and least developed parts of Iran. (AFP)

Authorities typically claim they are fighting “terrorism” and “extremism” when justifying executions, arbitrary detentions and the use of live ammunition against protesting minorities. Even the most benign of dissident activities — like running a social media page critical of the regime — can carry the death penalty.

“It is a well-known fact that discrimination in Iran is institutionalized through the constitution,” Abdul Sattar Doshouki, director of the London-based Center for Balochistan Studies, said in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council Forum on Minority Issues.

“The Iranian regime’s policy in Sistan and Balochistan, and for that matter in other provinces too, is based on racial discrimination, assimilation, linguistic discrimination, religious prejudice and inequality, brutal oppression, deprivation and exclusion of the people who are the majority in their own respective provinces and regions.”

Baloch activists have repeatedly called on the international community and regional powers to press the Iranian government to end its systemic policy of harassment and imprisonment of their local leaders.




Iranian soldiers carrying away an injured comrade at the scene of an attack on a military parade that was marking the anniversary of the outbreak of its devastating 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on September 22, 2018. (AFP)

Ahwazi Arabs, the largest Arab community in Iran, face similar repression. Natives of Khuzestan, they live in extreme poverty, despite the region holding almost 80 percent of Iran’s hydrocarbon resources.

The province has never had an Arab governor and the majority of its top officials are Persians with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The official language is Persian; Arabic is not taught in schools.

On Tuesday, the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization reported the execution of four additional political prisoners in the infamous Sepidar prison. Among the few who avoided such a fate is Saleh Hamid, an Ahwazi Arab cultural and political activist who was detained by Iranian authorities in the early 2000s for allegedly distributing anti-regime propaganda.

According to the account he gave to the US-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), Hamid traveled to Syria to enroll at the University of Damascus, where he joined the university’s Ahwazi Arab Students’ Association.

Hamid said the student group primarily promoted Ahwazi Arab culture, but he believes he was identified as a subversive by Syrian intelligence because he was detained at Imam Khomeini airport upon his return from vacation.

He was released after four days but rearrested by plainclothes officers at his father’s home in Ahvaz. Hamid spent two months in the IRGC’s detention center in Chaharshir before being released on bail. He fled the country before his trial date.

Hamid believes Tehran’s policy of persecution is designed to wipe out any ethnic identities that cannot be subsumed under the Islamic Republic’s hegemonic ideology. He says the international community, particularly European powers keen to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, should make the protection of minorities a precondition of any trade agreements with the regime.

“Human rights in Iran are a victim of negotiations on the nuclear file and trade between the EU and Iran,” Hamid told Arab News. “When they negotiate, they forget human rights, about the suppression and crackdown. We want human rights cases to be one of the main negotiating points with the regime. There is discrimination in all fields. If you ask an Arab citizen in Iran if he’s benefited from the oil, they’ll tell you ‘nothing but smoke’.”

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Iranian Azerbaijanis, who make up at least 16 percent of the country’s population, are another minority group with a long list of grievances. Although Shiites, many Azeris are viewed by the IRGC with suspicion because of their cultural and linguistic affinities with Turks, in addition to the sense of ethnic kinship they feel with the people of neighboring Azerbaijan.

Proof of the political alienation of Iranian Azerbaijanis came most recently in the form of protests in the northern city of Tabriz during the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that ended in November. They were angry at Tehran for reportedly sending weapons through its overland border to Armenia for use against Azerbaijan.

Iranian Azeris who speak of their home region as “Guney Azerbaijan,” or south Azerbaijan, are also not allowed to use their mother tongue in educational institutions. Many of them have come to view “reunification” of their historical region with Azerbaijan as the only solution.

The IRGC recently detained and savagely beat an Iranian Azerbaijani activist, Yashar Piri, for writing graffiti demanding greater language rights. The courage shown by Piri was remarkable given that detention, torture or arbitrary execution is the fate that awaits minority-rights activists.

“Persecution of religious minorities is one of the main pillars of this regime,” Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist, told Arab News.




Overseas Ahwazis have lobbied governments to take action. (AP)

“For the past 42 years now, the regime has not refrained from resorting to arresting, persecuting, executing and confiscating the properties of these minorities. These minorities have been barred from realizing their full potential and have had limited employment opportunities.

“Sunni Muslim minorities like the Kurds and the Balochis have not fared any better. The regions inhabited by these minorities are some of the poorest and most under-invested by the regime, and these minorities are overrepresented in the execution statistics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These regions are so poor that many people have to resort to cross-border smuggling of goods in order to eke out a living and feed their families.”

This is certainly the case for Iran’s northwestern Kurds, who make up around 10 percent of the overall population. Concentrated predominantly in the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Ilam, many young Kurdish men make a living carrying goods on their backs across the perilous mountain passes of the Zagros into Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Known as kolbars, those who survive the bitter cold and sheer drops must also navigate vast minefields and trigger-happy IRGC border guards.

Like other minorities in Iran, Kurds are not permitted to learn their native tongue on the national curriculum. Suspected membership of one of the many Kurdish opposition groups operating along the border also carries the death penalty.

Activists say the terror of executions and the threat of demographic displacement that Iran’s minorities face should be recognized for what they are: crimes against humanity.

They note with dismay that the economic, social and political exclusion of Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities never figures in the diplomatic discourse surrounding the nuclear issue and the IRGC’s regional meddling.

In the final analysis, the activists point out, the defiance of Iran’s minority communities, who are determined to hold on to their identity and traditions, constitutes a much needed check on the absolutism of the Shiite theocracy.

Twitter: @OS26


Fearful of Iranian missiles, many sleep in Israel’s underground train stations

Updated 4 sec ago
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Fearful of Iranian missiles, many sleep in Israel’s underground train stations

“We’re not sleeping because of the anxiety and because of the sirens that are happening during the nights,” said Shraibmen
Melech said the scene, with hundreds of people in their pajamas in the train station, reminded her of her grandfather’s stories from World War II

RAMAT GAN, Israel: Aziza Melech felt her body relax for the first time in days when she settled onto her inflatable mattress in an underground station of Israel’s light rail system on a recent evening.

For the next few hours, at least, the 34-year-old event planner wouldn’t need to run every time a siren warning of Iranian missiles sounded.

Since the war began a week ago with Israel’s airstrikes on Iran, families with young kids, foreign workers, and young professionals have brought mattresses and sleeping bags, snacks and pets into the stations each evening.

Repeatedly running for shelter
On Wednesday night, in a station that straddles Tel Aviv and neighboring Ramat Gan, parents settled in their kids with stuffed animals, while young people fired up tablets loaded with movies.

Many walked in carrying boxes of pizza. Workers set out snacks and coffee.

It was Melech’s first night sleeping in the brightly lit train station, and she was joined by her friend Sonia Shraibmen.

“We’re not sleeping because of the anxiety and because of the sirens that are happening during the nights,” said Shraibmen. “It’s very scary to run every time to the shelter.”

That morning, Shraibmen fell on the street while rushing to a nearby shelter, and decided to move somewhere where she wouldn’t have to get up and run each time her phone blared.

Melech said the scene, with hundreds of people in their pajamas in the train station, reminded her of her grandfather’s stories from World War II. “Now, we’ll be able to tell our grandkids about this,” she said.

The war between Israel and Iran began on June 13, when Israel launched airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites as well as top generals and nuclear scientists.

More than 600 people, including over 200 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. People in Tehran have also packed into metro stations as strikes boomed overhead.

Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and more than 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. Those strikes have killed have killed 24 people and injured hundreds in Israel. Missiles have struck 40 different sites, including apartment buildings, offices and a hospital, according to authorities.

Footage of pancaked buildings or apartment towers with faces sheared off has forced some people to reconsider what they do when a siren blares.

The Tel Aviv light rail, which is not running because of the war, has several underground stations. In addition to the hundreds who sleep in them each night, thousands of others come only when there’s a siren, crowding into every part of the station not taken up by mattresses.

Those living older apartments lack shelter
Around half of the nighttime residents at the train station are foreign workers, who often live in older apartment buildings that are often not equipped with adequate shelters.

While new buildings in Israel are required to have reinforced safe rooms meant to withstand rockets, Iran is firing much stronger ballistic missiles. And shelter access is severely lacking in poorer neighborhoods and towns, especially in Arab areas.

Babu Chinabery, a home health aide from India, said he went to the station ”because we are very scared about the missiles because they’re so strong.”

Chinabery, 48, has been in Israel for 10 years, so he is no stranger to the sirens. But the past week has been something different. “It’s very difficult, that’s why we’re coming to sleep here,” he said.

The light rail stations aren’t the only places people have sought shelter.

Around 400 people also sleep in an underground parking garage at one of the city’s biggest malls each night, according to organizers. Mutual aid groups set up more than 100 tents, each one in a parking space, providing a bit more privacy for people who wanted to sleep in a safe area.

Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station — a half-abandoned cement behemoth — also opened its underground atomic shelter to the public for the first time in years.

While likely one of the safest places in Israel during a missile attack, the creepily deserted rat- and cockroach-infested shelter, filled with standing water from leaky pipes, attracted only a handful of curious onlookers during the day and no residents at night.

Not taking ‘unnecessary risks’
Roi Asraf, 45, has been sleeping at the train station in Ramat Gan for the past few nights with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, even though they have a safe room at home.

“I don’t like to take unnecessary risks,” he said.

They now have the routine down: They give their daughter a bath at home, get everyone in their pajamas, and walk to the train station by 7 p.m. Local volunteers have run a nightly show for kids to help settle them before sleep.

“I hope (the conflict) will be short and quick,” said Asraf, after his daughter, Ariel, bounded off with her mom to catch the show. Despite the difficulties, he supports Israel’s attack on Iran.

“If I have to sleep a week of my life in a train station for everything to be safer, I’m willing to do it,” he said.

Libya objects to Greek tender for hydrocarbon exploration off Crete

Updated 20 min 18 sec ago
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Libya objects to Greek tender for hydrocarbon exploration off Crete

  • Greece opposed the agreement, saying it had no legal basis
  • Last month Athens invited bidders for hydrocarbon exploration in two blocks south of Crete

TRIPOLI: Libya’s internationally recognized government of national unity has objected to Greece’s approval of an international tender for hydrocarbon exploration off the island of Crete, saying some of the blocks infringed upon its own maritime zones.

The two countries have been trying to mend relations strained by an accord signed in 2019 between the Libyan government and Greece’s regional rival Turkiye, which mapped out a sea area between them close to the Greek island.

Greece opposed the agreement, saying it had no legal basis as it sought to create an exclusive economic zone from Turkiye’s southern Mediterranean shore to Libya’s northeast coast, ignoring the presence of Crete.

Last month Athens invited bidders for hydrocarbon exploration in two blocks south of Crete following an expression of interest by US major Chevron.

Libya’s Tripoli-based foreign ministry said in a statement late on Thursday that some of the tendered sea blocks off Crete fell within disputed zones and were “a clear violation of Libya’s sovereign rights.”

The ministry objected “to any exploration or drilling activities in these areas without a prior legal understanding that respects the rules of international law,” it said, calling on Greek authorities to prioritize dialogue and negotiation.

Responding to questions at the Greek parliament, Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said Greece was willing to discuss with Libya “the delimitation of maritime zones within the framework of international law.”

Gerapetritis is expected to visit Libya in the coming weeks, an official with the Greek foreign ministry told Reuters on condition of anonymity.


Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

Updated 20 June 2025
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Israeli defense minister warns Hezbollah against joining conflict with Iran

  • Hezbollah has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting

JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon’s Hezbollah to exercise caution on Friday, saying Israel’s patience with “terrorists” who threaten it had worn thin.

The head of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said on Thursday that the Lebanese group would act as it saw fit in the face of what he called “brutal Israeli-American aggression” against Iran.

In other statements, the group has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting and a Hezbollah official told Reuters last week that the group did not intend to initiate attacks against Israel.


Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

Updated 20 June 2025
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Gaza rescuers say 43 killed by Israeli forces

  • Civil defense official says 26 people killed while gathered near aid distribution center

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed at least 43 people on Friday, including 26 who had gathered near an aid distribution center, the latest in a string of deadly incidents targeting aid seekers in the Palestinian territory.
“Forty-three martyrs have fallen as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 26 of whom were waiting for humanitarian aid,” Mohammad Al-Mughayyir, director of medical supply at the civil defense agency in Gaza, told AFP.


UN warns of ‘disastrous consequences’ of escalating Sudan fighting

Updated 47 min 29 sec ago
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UN warns of ‘disastrous consequences’ of escalating Sudan fighting

  • “The recent fighting and grave risk of further aggravation in an already brutal and deadly conflict raise severe protection concerns,” Turk said
  • “For too long already, the world has witnessed the unbound horrors unfolding in Sudan”

GENEVA: The United Nations’ rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday that escalating fighting in Sudan’s west and center risks aggravating harm to civilians and abuses, more than two years into the country’s war.

Turk in a statement warned of “the disastrous consequences stemming from ongoing and escalating hostilities” in the Darfur and Kordofan regions, “where civilian casualties, sexual violence, abductions and looting have been reported in multiple areas.”

“The recent fighting and grave risk of further aggravation in an already brutal and deadly conflict raise severe protection concerns, amid a pervasive culture of impunity for human rights violations,” Turk said.

The war since April 2023 pits Sudan’s army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, with both sides facing repeated accusations of human rights violations.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands and displaced 13 million, including four million who fled abroad, triggering what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“For too long already, the world has witnessed the unbound horrors unfolding in Sudan and the untold suffering of its people. Civilians must be protected at all costs. Violations and crimes must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be held to account,” Turk said.

He pointed to a paramilitary attack on the long-besieged North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher “following months of increased mobilization of fighters, including the recruitment of children.”

Turk said this mirrors a previous offensive on a nearby displacement camp that “led to hundreds of civilian deaths, widespread sexual violence and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Turk also said civilians were “trapped” in Dibeibat town in South Kordofan state as the warring sides fight to capture it, while the army-held city of El-Obeid in North Kordofan is “reportedly surrounded” by paramilitary forces.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration on Wednesday said more than 16,000 people had been displaced from areas hit by violence, including South Kordofan and Darfur.