Why Iran’s ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of regime’s violent crackdown on protests

Protesters taking to the streets of Sanandaj, the capital of Iran's Kurdistan province, as demonstrations continue to spread weeks after the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, despite growing calls for restraint. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 18 October 2022
Follow

Why Iran’s ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of regime’s violent crackdown on protests

  • Despite constitutional protections, non-Persian ethnicities in far-flung enclaves have long faced discrimination
  • Majority of those executed by the regime in early 2022 were ethnic Arabs, Kurds and Balochs

RAQQA, SYRIA: Mahsa Amini, or Jina Amini, the name of a Kurdish woman killed by the Iranian morality police on Sept. 16, has echoed across social media in support of the protest movement that is posing the biggest challenge to the clerical rulers in years.

To Iranian law enforcement, Amini was just a nameless member of an ethnic minority that has been oppressed for decades. Little did they know that her death at the hands of one of its units would spark a massive uprising with the potential to topple the regime itself.

On Sept. 13, the 22-year-old Amini was arrested in Tehran — allegedly for failing to wear a veil properly, which is mandatory in Iran. Her brother, whom she had visited, was told she would be taken to a detention center and released after an hour. Two hours later, she was in a coma.

Three days later, she was dead.

Though the Iranian regime reported that she died from pre-existing medical conditions, leaked testimonies from her co-detainees and CT scans show that she was severely beaten and suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage.

The death of Amini immediately sparked a massive wave of protests across Iran. Civil unrest erupted throughout the country, from the western Kurdistan (or Kordestan) province, of which Amini was a native, to central Iran and Sistan and Balochistan province in the south.

According to an activist in Kurdistan, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, the protests began as Amini’s body was buried.

“People started chanting the Kurdish slogan of ‘Women, life, freedom,’ and many other nationalistic slogans during her burial ceremony. Later they took to the streets of the city and gathered in front of the governor’s office,” he told Arab News.

Within hours, protests spread to other cities in the province, and on Sept. 18, the entire region went on strike, closing their shops and taking to the streets in protest. Within days, the protests spread nationwide.

The ongoing crackdown on those who do not fall into line with the Iranian regime, while the bloodiest in decades, is widely seen as the culmination of decades of oppressive treatment of minority groups by Iranian authorities.

Chapter 2, Article 15 of the Iranian constitution allows for the teaching of regional and tribal languages in schools and their use in the media. Chapter 3, Article 19 states that “all people of Iran, whatever the ethnic group or tribe to which they belong, enjoy equal rights.”

Despite supposed constitutional protection and the fact that non-Persian ethnic and linguistic groups make up nearly 40 percent of Iran’s population, minorities have been subjected to mistreatment, from political discrimination to oppression, by means of arbitrary arrest and execution.

Kurds are the third-largest ethnic group in Iran, making up approximately 10 percent of the population. Various estimates place their numbers at around 40 million, spread across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.




The Iranian diaspora have supported protests against the Tehran regime in cities around the world. (AFP)

“The situation is so bad in Kurdistan that I don’t know where to start,” the activist said.

“Our people suffer the worst things that are beyond imagination for people from other countries. Kurds are considered third-class citizens in Iran. First, because we are Kurds; second, because we are non-Shiite Muslims or practice other Kurdish religions; and, third, because of our opposition to the central government.”

The activist continued: “We are deprived of our very basic rights as human beings. Kurdish language and Kurdish parties are banned from the system. Kurdish cities suffer from extreme poverty and unemployment which is the result of Iran’s discriminatory policies against Kurds.

“Kurdistan enjoys the least amount of development, and Kurdish society has paid a high price for the official marginalization.”

Iran’s Kurds have suffered since 1979; Kurdish parties in Iran boycotted the March 1979 referendum to create the Islamic Republic of Iran, and have been paying the price for it ever since.

Iranian intelligence has persecuted Kurds even outside its jurisdiction. In 1989, a Kurdish politician and leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan was assassinated in Germany.




Demonstrations have taken place across Iran, including in the Kurdistan capital Sanandaj. (AFP)

His successor and three other Kurdish opposition figures were also killed three years later, and no fewer than 10 Iranian Kurdish dissidents have been assassinated outside Iran since 1989.

Though the current wave of unrest began in Kurdistan with the death of a Kurdish woman, the Iranian regime’s persecution of minority groups has spread beyond the Kurdish minority.

In May 2022, a wave of protests against deteriorating economic conditions swept Iran, and a spike in executions came in its wake. However, minority groups were disproportionately targeted by security forces, according to the human rights organization Iran Human Rights, or IHRNGO.

The Baloch people, a primarily Sunni Muslim group that inhabits the southern region of Baluchistan in Iran, make up only two percent of the population.

It has long suffered from economic underdevelopment, having both the lowest Human Development Index and gross national income per capita of all of Iran’s provinces, according to 2019 statistics from Netherlands-based Global Data Lab. Despite this, they have been subjected to egregious human rights violations.

A June report by IHRNGO stated that executions reached their five-year peak in Iran this year. The number has jumped from 110 in all of 2021 to 168 in the first six months of 2022 alone. Arab, Kurdish, and Baloch minorities made up the majority of executions, with Baloch prisoners accounting for 22 percent of executed people.

Arabs, too, comprise around two percent of Iran’s people, and have faced oppression and discrimination. Most of them reside in the Khuzestan province, which is rich in oil resources and a major industrial hub.

FASTFACTS

* Ethnic Persians account for 60% of Iran’s 86.7 million inhabitants. 

* Ethnic Azeri, Kurd, Lur, Baloch, Arab, Turkmen and Turkic tribes make up the rest.

Despite this, the province suffers from widespread poverty and unemployment, according to Arab MP Mohammad Saeed Ansari, who claimed that around half of oil workers are brought in from outside the province and that Arabs are often denied employment opportunities there.

The UK-based Minority Rights Group International reported that nearly a quarter of a million Arabs in Khuzestan have been displaced by large government infrastructure projects.

The leader of an Arab separatist movement in Iran, Ahmed Molla Nissi, was assassinated in front of his home in The Hague in 2017, adding to the long list of foreign assassinations of minority dissidents by Iran.

In July 2021, at least nine people were killed in Khuzestan as they protested, demanding access to clean water, according to Human Rights Watch.

Amid the current unrest, protests have broken out in Khuzestan, with many oil and petrochemical facilities on strike and their workers taking to the streets. On Oct. 12, a video shared on Twitter reportedly showed a giant banner depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s picture being set ablaze in Ahvaz, the provincial capital.




Cities across Iran have seen protests since 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died on September 16 after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly failing to observe the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women. (AFP)

“Arab citizens live as the poorest people on the richest land — Khuzestan. This is the official name that it was given, but this place is Arabistan or Ahwaz,” Youssef Yaseen Azizi, an Arab Iranian former administrator at Tehran University and a member of the Iranian Writers’ Union, told Arab News.

“During the time of the Shah and the Islamic Republic, they brought non-Arabs to the region and settled them in the Arab cities and villages.”

Azizi believes the regime has deliberately forced Arabs and other minorities out of public life in Iran.

“Arabs only occupy around 5 percent of positions in public institutions,” he told Arab News. “The Arabic language is forbidden in schools. Many Arabs cannot find employment in the petrochemical factories simply because their name is Arabic. 

“It has reached the level that they can openly say, ‘I will not employ you because you are Arab.’ Ali Khameini’s oil company in Ahwaz has hired 4,000 workers in the last ten years, and only seven of them were Arabs.”

Such attitudes might suggest Arab lives in Iran are considered cheap. 

“Arabs have rebelled many times, and often ended up in prison, or were killed,” Azizi told Arab News. “We were always oppressed by the brutality of the authorities. Just 10 days ago, Emad Heydari was tortured to death in prison in Ahvaz.”

According to the website of the Ahwazi Democratic Popular Front, 31-year-old Heydari — a newly married activist from the Malashieh region — was arrested on Sept. 27 and died in prison on Oct. 6. Iranian authorities said he had suffered a stroke. Activists are unconvinced by the official narrative.

“During the 2019 protests against the increasing price of fuel, which started from the Ahwazi Arabs and spread from there, 200 Arabs were killed. They didn’t show Arabs any mercy,” Azizi told Arab News.

“The Arab press and civil society must know what is happening to us and cover it daily. They must speak on all channels and in all of their books and meetings, and support us, because we are alone. Until now, there is no channel which has covered our pain and showed it to everyone. But our resistance will continue.”

The disproportionate targeting of minority communities during the current civil unrest in Iran mirrors its past treatment of minorities. Kurdistan and Sistan and Balochistan have been subjected to the most outstanding amount of violence, according to the Critical Threats Project, an intelligence analysis project created by the American Enterprise Institute in 2009.

Two weeks after Amini’s death, a group of protestors gathered after Friday prayers in the Baloch-majority city of Zahedan to show their support for the nationwide protests and demand justice for the alleged sexual assault of a 15-year-old Baloch girl by an Iranian police commander.

Amnesty International reported that Iranian security forces opened fire on the crowd with tear gas and live ammunition, with footage showing shooters on roofs aiming at demonstrators. Between 66 and 96 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the course of just hours of what has come to be known as “Bloody Friday.”

The New York Times has since spoken with 10 residents from Zahedan, including witnesses and activists; family members of the victims; and a medic who helped treat more than 150 people for wounds.

All made the accusation that security forces fired indiscriminately on unarmed protesters and civilians with bullets and tear gas. Helicopters were also deployed, according to witnesses.

“According to residents, the violence on Sept. 30 was preceded by a smaller demonstration two days earlier, in another city in the same province, Chabahar,” the US newspaper said in a report on Oct. 14.

The Iranian regime’s heavy-handed treatment of ethnic-minority areas has only intensified as the protest movement has expanded to include broader calls for an end to conservative theocratic rule.

“I call on the international community to put more effort on recognizing our issues and help us solve them,” the Kurdistan-based activist told Arab News.

“Today the people of Kurdistan and Iran need full support to overthrow this regime.”

-----------------

The forgotten Arabs of Iran
A century ago, the autonomous sheikhdom of Arabistan was absorbed by force into the Persian state. Today the Arabs of Ahwaz are Iran's most persecuted minority

Enter


keywords

UN chief calls for probe into deaths near Gaza aid site

Updated 54 min 8 sec ago
Follow

UN chief calls for probe into deaths near Gaza aid site

  • Antonio Guterres says he is appalled by reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid
  • Israeli gunfire killed at least 31 people and wounded 176 near aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah

GAZA: UN chief Antonio Guterres called Monday for an independent investigation into the killing of dozens of Palestinians near a US-backed aid center in Gaza after rescuers blamed the deaths on Israeli fire and the military denied any involvement.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli gunfire killed at least 31 people and wounded 176 near the aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, with AFP photos showing civilians at the scene carting away bodies and medics at nearby hospitals reporting a deluge of gunshot wound victims.
The Israeli military, however, denied its troops had fired on civilians in or around the center, and both it and the aid site’s administrator accused Hamas of sowing false rumors.
“I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday. It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food,” Guterres said in a statement, without assigning blame for the deaths.
“I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.”
The Israeli government has cooperated with the group running the site, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to introduce a new mechanism for distributing aid in Gaza that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system.
The UN has declined to work with the group out of concerns about its neutrality, with some aid agencies saying it appears designed to cater to Israeli military objectives.
An eyewitness from the scene in Rafah, Sameh Hamuda, 33, had told AFP he was headed toward the aid site amid a crowd of other Palestinians when “quadcopter drones opened fire on the people, and tanks started shooting.”
“Several people were killed right in front of me,” he said.
Another witness, Abdullah Barbakh, 58, also told AFP “the army opened fire from drones and tanks.”
Following the reports, the Israeli army said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.”
Army spokesman Effie Defrin said in a video message that “Hamas is doing its best, its utmost, to stop us from” distributing aid, and vowed to “investigate each one of those allegations” against Israeli troops.
“I urge you not to believe every rumor spread by Hamas,” he added.
GHF also denied any deaths or injuries took place, adding that “these fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas.”
Israel has come under increasing international pressure to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza following a more than two-month blockade on aid that was only recently eased.
The UN has warned the entire population of the territory is facing the risk of famine.
It has also reported recent incidents of aid being looted, including by armed individuals.


Talks aimed at securing a ceasefire and the return of hostages taken by Hamas during its October 2023 attack that triggered the war have failed to produce a breakthrough.
Militants took 251 hostages during the attack, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
After the two sides failed to agree on a new ceasefire proposal last week, Hamas said it was ready to “immediately begin a round of indirect negotiations to reach an agreement on the points of contention.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, meanwhile, said he had told the army “to continue forward in Gaza against all targets, regardless of any negotiations.”
Since a brief truce collapsed in March, Israel has intensified its operations to destroy Hamas.
On Monday, Gaza’s civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said 14 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in Gaza, “including six children and three women, in addition to more than 20 missing individuals still under the rubble.”
“This house has been bombed before... and people were martyred previously,” resident Mousa Al-Bursh told AFP.
“The house primarily belongs to the Al-Bursh family, but it shelters many others, more than one family, and we don’t know the number of victims inside.”
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 4,201 people have been killed in the territory since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,470, mostly civilians.
Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.


Nearly 41% of kidney patients died in Gaza as Israel destroys major dialysis center

Updated 02 June 2025
Follow

Nearly 41% of kidney patients died in Gaza as Israel destroys major dialysis center

  • Israeli forces destroyed the Noura Al-Kaabi Dialysis Center in northern Gaza
  • The facility was damaged amid the war and remained standing among the heavily ruined area of Beit Lahiya

LONDON: Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip revealed on Sunday that nearly half of the kidney failure patients in the coastal enclave have died since October 2023 amid ongoing Israeli attacks and restrictions on humanitarian and medical aid.

Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza barred 41 percent of kidney patients from accessing life-saving dialysis treatment, resulting in their deaths, according to the Wafa news agency.

On Saturday, Israeli forces destroyed the Noura Al-Kaabi Dialysis Center in northern Gaza, one of the few specialized facilities providing kidney dialysis to 160 patients.

Video footage appears to show Israeli military excavators completely demolishing the facility that was partly damaged amid the war and remained standing among the heavily ruined area of Beit Lahiya.

“The destruction of this center is a catastrophic blow to the health system,” a Palestinian medical source told Wafa, warning of dire consequences for the remaining kidney patients in Gaza.

“This is a disaster with consequences we cannot yet fully comprehend,” they added.


Israeli strike on Gaza kills 14 Palestinians, mostly women and children, hospitals say

Palestinians react at the site of an Israeli strike on a mosque, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, June 2, 2025.
Updated 02 June 2025
Follow

Israeli strike on Gaza kills 14 Palestinians, mostly women and children, hospitals say

  • Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals confirmed the toll from the strike in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli strike on a residential building in the Gaza Strip on Monday killed 14 people, mostly women and children, according to health officials.
The Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals confirmed the toll from the strike in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, saying five women and seven children were among those killed.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militant group is entrenched in populated areas.
The Israel-Hamas war began when Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Hamas is still holding 58 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of the population.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout.
Israel has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned, and Hamas is defeated or disarmed and sent into exile. It has said it will maintain control of Gaza indefinitely and facilitate what it refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its population.
Palestinians and most of the international community have rejected the resettlement plans, viewing them as forcible expulsion.


Iraq probes fish die-off in southern marshes

Updated 02 June 2025
Follow

Iraq probes fish die-off in southern marshes

NAJAF: Iraqi authorities on Monday launched a probe into a mass die-off of fish in the southern marshlands, the latest in a string of such events in recent years.
One possible cause for the localized die-off could be a shortage of oxygen sparked by low water flow, increased evaporation and rising temperatures fueled by climate change.
Another possible reason could be chemicals used by fishermen to make it easier to catch their prey, local officials and activists told AFP.
AFP images showed large quantities of silver fish floating in the marshlands of Ibn Najm near the southern city of Najaf.
Buffaloes could be seen surrounded by dead fish, trying to cool themselves off in the water.
“We have received several citizens’ complaints,” said chief environmental officer in Najaf, Jamal Abd Zeid, adding that a technical inspection team had been set up.
An AFP photographer at the site saw a team of civil servants collecting water from the marshland.
Among the issues the team was tasked with probing, Abd Zeid said, were a shortage of water, electrical fishing and the use by fishermen of “poisons.”
For at least five years, Iraq has been hit by successive droughts fueled by climate change.
Authorities also blame the construction of dams by neighboring Iran and Turkiye for the drastic drop in flow in Iraq’s rivers.
The destruction of Iraq’s natural environment is only the latest layer of suffering imposed on a country that has endured decades of war and political oppression.
“We need lab tests to determine the exact cause” of the fish die-off, said environmental activist Jassim Assadi.
A lack of oxygen caused by low water flow, heat, evaporation and wind were all possible reasons, he said.
He said agricultural pesticides could also have led to the mass die-off.
Probes into other similar events showed the use of poison in fishing led to mass deaths.
“It is dangerous for public health, as well as for the food chain,” Assadi said.
“Using poison today, then again in a month or two... It’s going to accumulate.”


Medical NGO blames new US aid group for deadly Gaza chaos

Updated 02 June 2025
Follow

Medical NGO blames new US aid group for deadly Gaza chaos

  • Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organization reported being “shot from all sides” by Israeli forces.
The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses told AFP the Israeli military had opened fire.
The GHF and Israeli authorities denied any such incident took place but MSF and other medics reported treating crowds of locals with gunshot wounds at the Nasser hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis.
“Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,” MSF said in a statement.
MSF emergency coordinator Claire Manera in the statement called the GHF’s system of aid delivery “dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective.”
“It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.”
MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with “visible gunshot wounds in their limbs.”
MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid.
“They told us to take food — then they fired from every direction,” he said. “This isn’t aid. It’s a lie.”
The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.”
A GHF spokesperson said: “These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas,” the Islamic militant group that Israel has vowed to destroy in Gaza.