The secret killing of political prisoners is a method widely used by the Iranian regime, increasing in frequency in recent years.

A 37-year-old man, named as Abdullah Batrani, has become the latest known Ahwazi victim of the Iranian regime’s brutality, with regime intelligence thugs subjecting him to two days of torture in front of his young son in a detention centre in Ahwaz city, where he died on Sunday 22 May.

Amongst the injuries inflicted on the victim during the barbaric torture sessions, his eyeballs were gouged out, his testicles were crushed, his back and legs were burnt, five of his teeth were pulled out, and both his eardrums were ruptured. 

Human rights activists in the Ahwaz region in south and southwest Iran reported that Abdullah, a married father of two from the regional capital’s Al-Thawra neighbourhood, was detained along with his son by personnel from the regime’s Intelligence and Public Security Police from their home in the city’s 20 Azadi Street two days before his death. No reason was given for their arrest.

Abdullah’s widow told the activists that during the raid, carried out with no arrest warrant or any charges being stated, as is usual for the regime, the arresting officers had demanded that Abdullah pay them a bribe in order to secure his and his son’s release. Abdullah, who didn’t have the money they wanted, retorted by asking why he was being arrested and demanding to know why he should pay them extortion money.

The regime agents were apparently angered by Abdullah’s courage in refusing to be cowed by their criminal actions, with his widow recalling that he told them, “It’s not my business to compensate for your financial failings – it would be better to ask your police department to raise your salaries rather than trying to extort money from ordinary people with threats.”

She added that the agents threatened that if he refused to pay their bribe, even though he lacked the money to do so, they would “send him to Hell.”

After subjecting Abdullah to a vicious beating in his home and detaining him and his son, the police security forces forced his son to watch while they brutally tortured him, particularly targeting his head and body, in a detention centre run by the Intelligence and Public Security Police division, known as NAJA, for two consecutive days.

The Intelligence and Public Security Police (in Farsi: Pelis-e Atlâ’at-e vâ Aminit-e ‘mumi or simply Security Police (Persian: Pelis Aminit), abbreviated as PAVA, is an infamous domestic security agency and law enforcement agency. The agency, a subdivision of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Law Enforcement Force, is part of the Council for Intelligence Coordination.

Human rights NGOs silent on Islamic Republic’s brutal torture of Ahwazis

Human rights activists revealed that Abdullah’s son, who’s still terrified and traumatised by being forced to watch his father being savagely beaten and tortured for two days, had noted the PAVA agents carrying out the torture were incensed that his father had dared to reprimand them and their colleagues for raiding his home, with the boy reporting that throughout the torture sessions the agents kept shouting at Abdullah: “How dare you yell and scream at us!”

Doctors who carried out the autopsy on Abdullah’s body and detailed the horrific injuries told his family that the likely cause of death was a stroke induced by massive internal bleeding in his brain caused by crushing blows to his head inflicted with a heavy object.

Iranian regime authorities haven’t yet given any reason for the arrest of Abdullah and his son, though a security official purportedly told his widow verbally that the police agent responsible for his arrest and torture has been arrested and is under investigation. His family is considering legal action over his death, although they are sceptical that this will have any effect since no regime official has ever been prosecuted to date for deaths by torture, which is common in regime prisons, with many Ahwazi victims ‘disappearing’. 

The systemic nature of the regime’s use of lethal torture means Abdullah Batrani’s death is not an anomaly but only the latest such incident in a long record of torture killings of Ahwazi detainees in detention centres and prisons run by the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence services or police intelligence services, with targets ranging from human rights activists to political dissidents, poets, protesters and often ordinary civilians.

As noted above, the efforts of victims’ families to obtain justice for their loved ones are fruitless, with families likely to be persecuted themselves for any campaign to raise awareness of these cases. Even in the worst and most blatant cases of torture killings in regime detention, families will receive no compensation for their loved ones’ murder; the ‘best’ they can hope for is to receive notification from regime officials that the officers responsible have been arrested, put under investigation, dismissed or exiled to distant areas as punishment; many suspect that these claims are false and simply an effort to placate relatives and deter any further complaints.

In Ahwaz, the regime’s security police personnel mainly use two types of extrajudicial killing to terrorise and subjugate the indigenous Ahwazi people; the first of these is killing under torture in various detention cells. The second is killing by random shootings at close range in the streets, usually carried out while the victims are driving a motorcycle or vehicle.

DUSC has documented several cases of both types of extrajudicial killings by the regime. Here we first list some of the cases of victims killed under brutal torture, then in a separate investigative report will address the several cases of those murdered by shooting, with both types of murder primarily committed by police security forces who act with complete impunity, knowing they will face no punishment.

Ali Cheldawi case

On 9 December 2007, a young Ahwazi man named Ali Cheldawi died following two months of torture by intelligence services in a detention centre in Ahwaz city. Security forces arrested Mr Cheldawi on 13 October 2007, during peaceful protests against regime injustice which took place that day following the Eid al-Fitr Prayer in the town of Hamidieh.

As is common practice, security services forbade Mr Cheldawi’s family from conducting public burial and mourning rituals for him, forcing them to bury him in an unmarked grave in the infamous La’natabad[‘Cursed’] Cemetery in Ahwaz, so-named by the regime in reference to the Ahwazi prisoners buried there who are killed or executed for their dissent or political activities against the Iranian regime. All the graves there are unmarked, a further insult from the regime to its victims and their families.

The impunity conferred by the world’s silence means that the regime freely victimises and targets Ahwazis randomly, often simply to intimidate others and underline the IRI’s absolute power and the absence of any justice.

Ali Batrani case

Intelligence service personnel routinely abduct activists without any formal arrest procedures, take them to one of the black site prisons and torture them to death before simply dumping the victims’ bodies in nearby rivers. This was the horrific fate of another man, also named Ali Batrani, from the regional capital, who was arrested there during the protests of 15 April 2005. Three days later, on 18 April 2005, his body was found floating in the Karoon (Karun) River.

Speaking to Amnesty International about his case, his family reported that his horrifically tortured body, still bearing the marks of handcuffs, had not been returned to them until 10 May, almost a month after it was recovered from the river, recalling torture marks like a hole in his knee and heavy bruising to his face and the soles of his feet showed he had been subjected to ferocious beating. Even after receiving his body, his grieving family then had to pay a fee to the regime that murdered their son to receive permission to bury him.

Gheiban Abidawi case

Another victim, 38-year-old Gheiban Abidawi, a married father-of-four from the town of Hamidieh who worked at a dairy goods manufacturing centre in Ahwaz City, was arrested by regime security forces during the post-Eid al-Fitr prayers in his home town on Friday, 13 October 2007.

According to a family friend, Gheiban’s family received no news of him for close to three months, as the regime predictably refused to issue any information on his whereabouts or even on the reason for his arrest despite their desperate pleas. Finally, after three months, an official at the Ahwaz Information Office called the family to inform them that he had been registered as dead on 31 December 2007, with security agents taking his son and brother to the morgue in the city to see his body, which they said showed clear signs of torture. Adding further insult to injury, the family was not allowed to take the body for burial or even to be informed of where he would be buried, and they too were forbidden from conducting the customary mourning and burial rituals.

Mohammed Cheldawi case

Another victim is 17-year-old Mohammed Cheldawi who was an activist on social media platforms. He was in contact with several human rights activists overseas and was reporting the news of the Ahwazi prisoners in Ahwaz to the human rights organisations. He was arrested in mid of January 2009 by the intelligence. Two months later, the intelligence agencies contacted his family, telling them that Mohammed has died.

The intelligence agency told his family that they shouldn’t establish any consolation gatherings if they want to take back their son’s body and that he should be buried on the watch of the intelligence personnel. When his family received his body, they said that gruesome torture appeared unambiguously on his body. He had evident burns on his chest and back. Yet, the intelligence personnel warned Mohammed’s family in March against sharing news of his death with outside entities. The intelligence told the family that if they do so, they would be arrested.

Reza Maghamsi case

On Sunday, 27 March 2011, an Ahwazi rights activist named Reza Maghamsi, a resident of Dezful, was tortured to death in detention by agents of Intelligence services. He was killed by severe blows to the pelvis and spinal cord and by internal bleeding in his ruptured intestine.

Reza had been detained for participating in protests at the Mirza Kuchak Khan Sugarcane company, over its dumping of toxic industrial waste in the Dez river, polluting its water, the primary source of drinking water for local Ahwazi people, and making it undrinkable. He had also protested at similar actions by the state-owned oil, gas and petrochemical companies over discharging their toxic waste into local waterways and land, destroying local people’s farmlands and denying Ahwazis any type of jobs.

Nasser Alboshokeh Darfshan case

In another case, on 1 February 2012, 19- year- old Nasser Alboshokeh Darfshan was arrested by the agents of Ahwaz Intelligence Office in his shop. He was accused of participating in protests and writing graffiti in support of the Arab Spring, and calling for a boycott of the Iranian regime’s parliamentary elections.

Around a month later, the Ahwaz Intelligence Office contacted Nasser’s parents and requested that they come and pick up their son. His parents quickly prepared food, thinking their son would be hungry after his ordeal, and brought a property document to serve as funds for his bail in the hope they could secure his freedom; instead when they reached the detention centre, they found their son’s battered, maimed and heavily bruised body in an ambulance which was preparing to take it to the morgue in Golestan Hospital, where it was held for 11 days with his family not allowed to retrieve it. 

The grief-stricken parents were first told by regime authorities that their fit, healthy young son had died of natural causes; having seen his maimed body, they dismissed this claim. Another regime official told a family member that Nasser had committed suicide, another ludicrous and insulting claim intended to deny the regime’s culpability.

Following their ordeal, Nasser’s parents filed a lawsuit over their son’s death. Despite the family’s request, the forensic pathologist who carried out the autopsy on his body refused to provide the family with a certificate giving the cause of death, having informed them verbally that Nasser had been killed by a combination of suffocation and internal bleeding, with the pathologist fearing for his own safety if he appeared to publicly report the truth of the case. Despite numerous attempts to pursue the case through the legal system, the case, like all those filed against regime authorities, was ultimately dropped, with nobody held responsible for Nasser’s detention, torture and death.

Mohammad Kaabi Case

In mid-January 2012, another young Ahwazi man, Mohammad Kaabi, from Susa city, was detained by regime intelligence forces after organising nightly protests and writing graffiti and slogans on street walls in the city calling for protest and the boycotting of Iranian parliamentary elections. A few weeks later, on 2 February, intelligence agents informed his family that he had died. They were instructed to collect his body from the morgue, but forbidden from holding any mourning ceremonies for him. The battered and mutilated state of his body showed that he had been tortured to death in one of the regime’s secret detention centres.

Ali Reza Ghobeishawi case

On Monday, August 2012, the family of 37-year-old cultural activist Ali Reza Ghobeishawi, from Khalafiyeh city, was notified by regime authorities that he had died after being arrested a few days before by Iranian intelligence agents and detained in Ahwaz city.

The horrendous wounds on his body made it clear that he had been tortured to death, with Ali Reza’s family members reporting that his jaw and ribs had been broken while his nose and forehead were horribly bruised and swollen.

Ali Reza’s ‘crime’ was to be active in raising awareness of the importance of preserving Ahwazi culture and tradition and encouraging his fellow Ahwazis to teach the Arabic language to their children – another fundamental human right forbidden to Ahwazis by Iran’s regime. As in other cases, regime agents prevented his family from holding a funeral ceremony or mourning rituals for their son.

Jameel Suwaidi case

Three months later, on 5 November 2012, a 45-year-old Ahwazi man named Jameel Suwaidi, a welding worker in the capital city of Ahwaz, was abducted by Iranian intelligence agents in front of his home in al-Nahda neighbourhood (Lashkarbad in Farsi). For thirty days, his family desperately tried to locate him, to no avail. Finally, a friend of the family who was working at the local morgue told them that to stop searching for Jameel in jails as he was already dead, with his body transferred to the central morgue in Ahwaz by regime intelligence services. The family confirmed that his entire body showed signs of torture, including multiple puncture wounds, broken cheekbones, a smashed nose, teeth pulled out and the skin of his genitals, horrifically burnt and peeled off.

Jameel’s ‘crime’ was taking part in nightly protests in Ahwaz and organising cultural activities in his home.

Satar Sayahi case  

A few days later, on 11 November 2012, the celebrated Ahwazi poet, Satar Sayahi, known as Abu Srour, died in a solitary confinement cell in one of the infamous detention centres run by regime intelligence services in Ahwaz city. Regime agents told his family he had died of a heart attack, but his family said that his doctor found some traces of poisonous substances in his blood test.

Hossien Aramshi(Jaderi) case

In October 2013, the family of 37-year-old Hossein Aramshi (Jaderi)received notification from a pathologist that his body had been transferred to a morgue. The distressing call came a week after he was arrested over taking part in a peaceful protest against the regime’s racist and discriminatory employment policies against Ahwazis.

His family said that the effects of torture were clear from his battered and mutilated body, which bore fractures to his ribs, jaw and skull, as well as a gunshot wound to one arm inflicted during his arrest. It is still unclear which regime security agency was responsible for Hossein’s arrest, with the forensic pathologist fearful of giving accurate information to the bereaved family in case he should be targeted in retaliation.

Speaking to DUSC, Hossein’s family said it would not make much difference to them to receive information about who arrested him, where he was taken and who was responsible for his torture and death since there is no way for them to bring his torturers and killers to trial given the Iranian regime’s system, which makes it more likely that the victim’s family will be targeted for seeking justice than that justice will be done over his death, particularly in the case of Ahwazis, where protesting at the regime’s racism, oppression, brutality and systemic injustice is seen as cause for persecuting and killing the protesters.  Anyone participating in demonstrations is automatically accused of threatening national security.

Mohammad Hamadi Case

On Friday, 27 November 2015, 35-year-old Mohammad Hamadi, a 35-year-old Ahwazi political prisoner and father of a young child, died in suspicious circumstances in Sheyban prison in Ahwaz, where he had been languishing for seven years for the ‘crime’ of supporting justice and freedom for Ahwazis. His family said that he was completely healthy when he was imprisoned, adding that they had been told by fellow inmates that he was already dead when he was rushed to the Molla Sani Infirmary near Ahwaz, a medical facility controlled by the IRGC. Prison officials claimed that this political prisoner had died of a stroke.

Mohammed, who was an electrician engineer by trade, had been arrested in 2008 by regime intelligence officials, subjected to torture, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for acting against the country’s security for his political and cultural activities, such as organising a celebration of the UN’s Mother Language Day. He spent most of his prison term in Sepidar Prison of Ahwaz and was transferred a few months before his death to Sheyban Prison.

The secret killing of political prisoners is a method widely used by the Iranian regime, increasing in frequency in recent years.

Ali Sawari case

On Monday, 26 March 2018, the body of 50-year-old Ali Sawari, an Ahwazi prisoner, was returned to his family in the Sepidar neighbourhood of Ahwaz city, by officers from the Sheyban Prison near the regional capital after he was murdered under torture aimed at extracting confessions from him.

Hatem Marmadi case

A few months later, in June 2018, 20-year-old Hatem Marmadi from the city of Khafajiyeh, died under torture in a regime prison in the capital city, Ahwaz. Marmadi had been abducted a year earlier from his family’s home by regime intelligence agents, and charged with participating in political and cultural activism. In this case too, the regime refused to hand over his body to his grieving family or to inform them of his burial place.

Ahmad Heydari & Adnan Sawari cases

 On 13 November 2018, the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization (AHRO) issued a statement quoting ‘reliable local sources’ who reported that two Ahwazi political detainees identified as 28-year-old Ahmad Heydari and 34-year-old Adnan Sawari had been tortured to death by the regime’s intelligence agency in Ahwaz.

According to the AHRO, sources close to Ahmadi Heydari’s family told the organisation that the intelligence service’s press office informed them the next day that their son had been killed. They claimed that he had died in a clash with investigators, a claim his family did not believe. 

Benyamin Alboghbiesh case

On 26 June 2019, 26-year-old Benyamin Alboghbiesh young Ahwazi activist died under torture in an Iranian regime prison, three months after he was arrested along with his brother. 

Benyamin was arrested by officers from the Iranian regime’s infamous intelligence service in a raid on their home in the Zaytoun Karmandi neighbourhood of the regional capital, Ahwaz City, on 15 March 2019, along with his brother Mohammad Ali Alboghbiesh, aged 29.

 Benyamin’s family reportedly received a brief phone call from a regime official on the day of his death to inform them that he had died at one of the intelligence service’s notorious detention centres.

These are only some of the reported cases of Ahwazis killed in Iranian regime custody or assassinated by police. It’s believed that many more such deaths take place but are never reported, with the victims simply ‘disappeared’ into the regime’s vast network of prisons and torture centres, their bodies disposed of in unmarked graves, and their families too scared to ask questions about their whereabouts for fear of possible further punishment for their imprisoned loved ones or for themselves.

Like its totalitarian peers past and present, Iran’s regime can only get away with its crimes due to the tireless appeasement of the supposedly pro-democracy ‘international community’, whose leaders enjoy making speeches about human rights, but not taking action to uphold them.

Several issues are evident upon examining this chain of events and extrajudicial murders. First, the cases of Ahwazis being brutalised, murdered under torture, or assassinated span various categories and include individual of all ages and backgrounds. Some are cultural heritage activists, others are just young people who had ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, still others are peaceful political protesters, and finally, in some extreme examples, they are individuals who stood up to the organised crime tactics of the regime intelligence thugs and rejected extortion. But regardless of the reason for the atrocities committed against this broad spectrum of Ahwazis, it is clear that they have committed no crime nor engaged in any subversive activity that would be considered against the law in any normal country. 

This is an important issue to emphasise for the sake of addressing the unjust treatment of these human rights cases by the international human rights community, because Iran and its propaganda machinery have succeeded in painting an impression of all Ahwazis as separatists, secessionists, or terrorists.

Tehran has terrorised Europe in particular with the spectre of another refugee crisis in the event of Ahwaz separation, and strove to portray even minors, children, and women’s rights activists as dangerous subversives. Tehran’s anti-Ahwaz messaging reached a point where the legitimate human rights defenders of a helpless population standing up for equal rights and protections as citizens have been equated to terrorism, ideological extremism, and an agenda of regional mayhem. 

The regime has succeeded in protecting the very chaos, division, and disintegration it has spread across the Middle East and beyond through militias onto a portion of the people suffering from well documented and systematic oppression, with random murders and cases severe tortures now meeting impunity and silence from the international human rights community which hides behind the mantra of Iran’s propaganda.

Ironically, this level of inaction and excuse has manifested itself in other areas, whereupon regime apologists have claimed that any pressure on Iran with respect to human rights or any other issue would result in a “war” behind Iran and the Western states. On the contrary, however, when faced with impunity, Iran tends to escalate its oppressive measures. Indeed, Iran has merely presented human rights activists around the world with convenient excuse to focus on far less challenging causes and to excuse inability to make progress by blaming the victims.

The international media and human rights NGO blackout is related to other factors as well. The Ahwaz cause has only started to become prominent in the last few years, thanks to the concerted efforts of activists in the West. In the past, and around the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, New York Times, and other major publications have covered or at least mentioned the plight of “minorities” in Iran, but since then, the conversation has faded into the background thanks to the fact that many of the activists did not speak English, and Iran has targeted Kurdish, Ahwazi, and other activists abroad with assassinations, using terror, bribery, and disinformation to tarnish the potential for coverage in the media until the stories of these non-Persian groups were nearly forgotten even by the Arab states, much less by the Western audiences.

Furthermore, the ignorance around the issues was perpetuated by the fact that pro-Iran officials and journalists referred to relevant regions by Persian names; therefore, even in cases when demonstrations, uprisings, or human rights abuses were brought up to the international attention, they were lumped in with other Iranian causes and were not distinguished in any way.

None of that, however, ultimately absolves the international community and human rights group from the responsibility to hold Iran responsible for oppressing the Ahwazi people who are victimised twice over – first, as any Iranians increasingly oppressed and ignored by the regime which has misappropriated funding and humanitarian aid and squandered public resources on wars and funding of terrorism.

Second, Ahwazis are clearly targeted on the basis of their ethnic and cultural identity, as many of the cases of seemingly random extrajudicial assassinations and arbitrary detainments and tortures show.

Regardless of the political dimensions related to any potential territorial disputes, no government has a right to engage in extrajudicial killings, to deny its citizens the right to due process, or to engage in torture, brutality, and extortions. Iran’s violation of international laws, treaties, and basic civil norms should compel every self-respecting human rights organisation to take up detailed reports chronicling both the general and the specific issues involved, as well as to stage campaigns highlighting the individual cases even as commemoration of untimely deaths.  

These campaigns and reports are used by presiding government bodies in Western countries to inform administrations and lawmakers about the human rights situation in Iran, and have the power to affect policy, including issues of sanctions, direct negotiations, and diplomatic relationships. By suppressing the relevant information from public and diplomatic discourse, these NGOs have denied both the public and the relevant officials the opportunity to examine evidence and to construct informed opinions and policy that could help the people in need and pressure the regime into changing its course. By abdicating their responsibility to help address these injustices in a transparent manner, these NGOs have empowered the oppressive powers and have contributed to the denial of justice to victims, survivors, and their families. 

There is a cynical aspect to this self-perpetuating situation: the more the information about Ahwazis is suppressed, the lesser known these issues in the public and the less interest it generates.

Human rights NGOs thrive on popular causes, which is why some, often far lesser deserving issues project infinite resources devoted to their perpetuation and remain forevermore in the public eye, while others, such as the oppression of Ahwazis, evades scrutiny.

Lesser-known causes do not generate fundraising appeal; furthermore, with many human rights NGOs are aligned with political causes that favour reconciliation with Iran. They view the highlighting of certain issues deemed controversial by the regime as an obstacle to larger diplomatic efforts or as “triggering” a potential opposition to these efforts among the Western public. Therefore, these agencies appear to pursue agendas that are not directly in line with their stated mission. Is it any wonder then that only Amnesty International has given a brief amount of attention to Ahwazi human rights cases, and that over all the amount of attention devoted to these issues have been far less than what has been allotted to other issues?

Brutal tortures and forced confessions are generally are highly emotional issues that generate sympathy even among people not familiar with regions and causes. But some situations have entire industries dedicated to the “marketing” and promotions of these stories, while the Ahwaz cause is being actively silent.

Another concern is the apparent conflict of interest between the general Iranian diasporas, who tend to subvert the conversation about Ahwazi human rights by politicising the issue of the underlying territorial dispute and thus implicitly legitimising the Iran regime’s response to the activism related to that cause.

 The victims’ families have no legal recourse inside the country, nor do they have the financial means to appeal the case before international courts. These campaigns require independent support, but siding with Iran and turning a blind eye to its abuses and iniquities has become the political mood of the day. Between the Iranian diaspora and the funding of the Iran regime lobbies, it is easy for the human rights organisations to turn a blind eye to the genuinely voiceless and the powerless.

Finally, there is also the issue of possibly corrupt international mechanisms for addressing these cases. The UN has an official position of a rapporteur to deal with extrajudicial cases; the most recent appointee in that position has done nothing for the Ahwaz cause, and before becoming the head of Amnesty International, has been implicated in speaking against some countries while ignoring far broader issues in countries like Iran, and refusing to engage with the diaspora of the affected communities. This individual was caught participating in discredited and debunked smear campaigns that pass for human rights activism with the relevant public, but refused to answer questions or address the issue of extrajudicial killings of Ahwazis. Because apparently, it was not high profile enough and because the “client” was indigent.

This woeful inaction violates the duty of someone appointed to that position to hold all parties equally responsible pursuant to the articles of the UNHCR and applicable measures of the international law. Such double standards incapacitate victims, and paralyse any movement towards highlighting these violations.

As a member of the UN, Iran’s abuses are frequently excused and ignored; and it occasionally gains seats on human rights committees despite having a track record of severe abuses in every imaginable area. As a result of complete disenfranchisement in that respect, the Ahwazis are isolated from the international human rights community and have no recourse in appealing for their cases.

Only Ahwazi human rights groups speak out on behalf of their own issues. The isolation of the Ahwazi human rights groups is a double “punishment” – first, they are denied resources to address their problems, and second, as a result of having no allies, they are perceived as having no legitimacy or credibility.

 If no one will stand with the Ahwazis, the public opinion seems to say, then how legitimate and relevant is their cause? Iran regime’s meddling in human rights organisations and the media censors the voices of the victims, and prevents them from building relationships with potential allies.

This extension of Iran’s human rights abuses abroad needs to stop as it violates the sovereignty of independent states where the Ahwazi diaspora resides. Social corruption has allowed Iran to inflict double standards globally; however, ultimately, Iran’s ability to shut down discussion about situations that most challenge the Islamic Republic’s political legitimacy hurt those states as much as they hurt the powerless Ahwazis.

Article first published on Dur-Un-Tash Studies Center.

Rahim Hamid is an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

Irina Tsukerman is a New-York based Human Rights Lawyer, National Security Analyst. She can be followed under @irinatsukerman.

Anti-Arab discrimination permeates every facet of life for the Ahwazi people

Even in the present age of unparalleled cynicism, it is still frustrating to consider how some causes are elevated to international discourse and set forth by media and human rights organisations alike as essential news and human rights, even as similar cases – which in many instances meet the key elements supposedly embodied by popular causes – are neglected and obtain no place in the conscience of the international community.

Consider, for example, the arrest of Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist from the village of Nabi Salih in the West Bank. Her international reputation derives from her many appearances in images and videos in which she would confront Israeli soldiers. In 2017, during one such episode, she slapped an Israeli soldier, which led to her detention for 18 months, during which time she had regular access to counsel. She was released on 28 July 2018. All the while, the majority of media and human rights groups openly supported her and calling on the Israeli government to pardon her and/or release her. In short, she was treated as an icon in many circles around the world. A Google News search for her name will return roughly 14,200 results in English alone.

To explain the authors’ extreme frustration, consider the plight of Maryam Ameri (aged 28), Fatema Tamimi (aged 39), and of Azhar Alboghobeish (aged19). They are Ahwazi women who were arrested in the dark of night for the ‘crime’ of merely advocating education for Ahwazi children in their native Arabic language, which is long proscribed by the regime, and networking with other human rights activists in the region and beyond to raise awareness of the crisis there and the regime’s persecution. Mrs Tamimi in particular is an Ahwazi poet, professional photographer and human rights activist noteworthy for her attempts to preserve and share the very Ahwazi culture and history that the Iranian regime so desperately seeks to erase.

None of these women so much as confronted a soldier, much less assaulted one; none of their names have merited any outrage or media attention outside of Ahwazi human rights organisations. Maryam was arrested on 26 November, Fatema on 9 December, and Azhar on 10 December. A Google search for their names results in precisely zero “News” results. The only indexed results are articles such as this one, written by local human rights organisations and others who have learned of the regime’s depredations and spend their time and effort in documenting these crimes.

Fatema’s arrest is particularly newsworthy, and by any objective metric should be newsworthy beyond human rights interests. Her arrest took place very soon after Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, visited Mashour for the purpose of assessing the situation of the flood that destroyed and drowned large areas of the area following widespread protests by local Ahwazis at the inaction and the negligence towards the suffering of people from the yearly flood, which has once again been exacerbated by regime efforts to redirect relief to ethnically Persian areas. Some may recall that in April of 2019, the authors documented a similar visit by Salami’s predecessor, the late and unlamented Qassem Soleimani, which was followed by deployment of the IRGC’s Basiji militia into Ahwaz.

Mashour in particular, is the city which witnessed a shocking massacre of its young Ahwazi people due to protesting at unemployment and rise of prices and racial discrimination by Iranian officials in denying the Ahwazis any chance of being hired in the several petrochemical companies reserved only for Persian economic immigrants. The Ma’shour Massacre consisted of artillery being opened up first on the young protesters on the street, and then following them into the sugar cane fields in which the wounded attempted to hide. As we reported at that time little more than a year ago, it was days before the gut-wrenching odour of the young protesters burned alive along with the sugar cane set ablaze ceased inundating the people of Ma’shour with every gust of wind off the charred and smouldering marshes.

Fatema has notably composed several folkloric songs for Ahwazi children in an effort to revive the memory of Ahwazi tradition and customs so that the new Ahwazi young generation can preserve its Ahwazi identity and culture.

She also produced documentaries on Ahwazi historic buildings and the necessity to protect them from being destroyed. She also has travelled extensively to every area, emphasising the rural regions, meeting with elder women and men asking them about their own lives as well as asking them about the tales that used to exist among the past Ahwazi generations. Particularly given the decades-long assault on Ahwazi education, preservation of this oral history is absolutely essential, and even more so due to the regime’s sustained efforts in erasing Ahwazi history and heritage.

As the authors have helped document, Anti-Arab discrimination permeates every facet of life for the Ahwazi people, who are denied the opportunity to be educated in their own Arabic language and forced instead to learn only in Farsi, which most view as the language of occupation and oppression. This culture of discrimination and denial of the most fundamental rights in every area of life is, for the rulers in Tehran, a means of ensuring that Ahwazis remain powerless and marginalised; those who dare to object to this systematically unjust and racist system are targeted as “troublemakers”, with thousands arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, tortured and all too often executed on ludicrous charges such as “enmity to God.”

Fatema is a mother of two and works in local press outlets and social media platforms as a photojournalist, correspondent, director and cultural activist. Over the past years, a number of her works have focused on floods in Ahwaz and documented the reasons behind the floods and the disastrous social and economic consequences and results of them in these Ahwazi regions. She has been working in local newspapers since the 1990s, and has produced a number of short documentaries on the poverty, addiction, unemployment and prosecution from which the Ahwazi people are suffering. She has 25K followers on Instagram. 

In one of her Instagram posts, while she was wearing the traditional long dress of Ahwazi women and talking about the history of Ahwazi buildings that are neglected, destroyed by the Iranian regime, she walked out of one building to stand in front of a camera. As she said: “Ahwazi heritage is a huge asset that we Ahwazis inherit from our forefathers. This asset includes material and non-material landmarks. Having knowledge of heritage and maintaining it is the duty of every single Ahwazi person among us because it is our history and identity which distinguishes us as Ahwazis from the rest of peoples. Our loved Ahwaz, as one of the ancient societies, whose civilian history dates back to 5,000 years BC, has a rich heritage. We have attempted, as part of a series of episodes, to shed light on this cultural heritage.”

Not only is she unlawfully detained as a political prisoner, but criminalising her work is flagrantly illegal under international law, and explicitly violates Iran’s obligations under the few treaties it has signed. As the authors have repeatedly pointed out, Iran has been a signatory to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights since 1975, and is therefore bound by its Article 27, which clearly and unequivocally provides that “In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.”

Ahwazi rights groups and social media users condemned the arrests of Maryam, Fatema, and Azhar, as well as all the countless cultural, social and political activists arrested by the regime as part of its illegal and thoroughly racist policies, and have demanded the immediate release all Ahwazi detainees who are arrested for being cultural and/or civic activists.

These are not isolated cases, but part of a campaign of intensification by the regime, which includes targeting and persecution of Ahwazi activists in Iran and overseas, with an increasing number of social media accounts and communication platforms appearing, run by ultranationalist loyalists and propagandists specifically to slander and vilify Ahwazis as illegitimate ‘immigrants’, subjecting them to constant racist, anti-Arab abuse; a favourite theme is to label Ahwazis as Saudi immigrants, insisting that if they wish to practice their ‘inferior’ Arab culture, they should go back to Saudi Arabia. The regime’s intelligence service is suspected of being directly responsible for many of these accounts, and those on Twitter and Facebook are very certainly regime-affiliated since they could not otherwise access either site from Iran. These accounts accuse Ahwazis, amongst other things, of being troublemaking separatists, lying about Iranian history, and working with or for Saudi Arabia, Israel and the USA to undermine Iran’s regime.

And in this darkness, the regime continues to erasure Ahwazi history by any means necessary, and without any scrutiny or consequence.

Article first published on Dur Untash Studies Center.

Rahim Hamid is an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

Aaron Eitan Meyer is an attorney admitted to practice in New York State and before the United State Supreme Court, and a researcher and analyst. He has written extensively on lawfare, international humanitarian, and human rights law. He tweets under @Aaronemeyer.

He did not commit any legal breach at his residence, and his file is being considered by the UN in Turkey.

The Turkish security services took the decision earlier in September, keeping Soleimani in the dark. The decision was taken suddenly without any prior notice.

Soleimani only knew when he referred to one of the official entities last September 30. He was informed that his ID is no longer valid when went to the security director. The latter informed him of the decision to close his file and deport him within days.

It has been revealed that the Turkish security apparatuses deliberately refrained from informing Soleimani of the decision in order for him not to challenge the decision on the specified date and address it from the legal aspect via lawyers and courthouses.

Danyal Soleimani entered the Turkish soil as he fled the injustices of the Iranian regime on June 30, 2016. Then, he was under 18. In case the Turkish authorities handed him over to the Iranian government, he will be either sentenced to death or to life in jail.

There is no justice or law within the Iranian judicial system and the other repressive apparatuses of the police state in Iran, which carries out torture and extrajudicial killing against all those opposed to it.

Danial hails from a family known for its opposition to the regime. His grandfather was executed by the government in 1980. His uncle Abdullah Soleimani was sentenced to death in 2006 and his cousin was killed by the Iranian regime forces in 2009.

A large number of his family have been arrested, including women and the elderly over the past years.

The Iranian security apparatuses bear a big deal of grudge and venom towards his family, treating them very cruelly and ruthlessly. Mr. Danyal  has relatives who are political asylums in the US and Europe.

Fayez Rahim Soleimani, Danyal ’s brother, called on the Turkish authorities to reconsider the unjust decision, to avoid being involved in human rights violations against the Ahwazis and not to enable the regime to crack down, repress and kill the Ahwazis.

He also held the Turkish accountable for any harm that could be inflicted on his brother. He added this issue will make Turkey bear a tremendous political and humanitarian responsibility and create an Ahwazi public opinion hostile to it.

Rahim also pointed out that it is necessary for the UN offices in Turkey to intervene to solve this matter, given the fact that the Ahwazi refugees in Turkey are registered with it, and they are supposed to be under its guardianship.

When bitumen emulsion is inhaled by humans, its durable adhesive nature could potentially kill a person by blocking airflow to the lungs.

Bitumen emulsion or petroleum mulching, in which a thin coat of petroleum-based material is applied to a surface, has been among the most common methods used by the Iranian regime to attempt to reduce sandstorms in Ahwaz. Studies show, however, that the authorities responsible used this technique without paying any attention to the results or the already-known devastating environmental effects of their mulching operations on the indigenous flora and fauna or on the wider regional ecosystem, particularly concerning regeneration and the damage to the region’s soil.

The area to the west of the Karoon River where bitumen emulsion is being carried out is known as Maysan region to local Ahwazis and Dashte Azadgan in Farsi. It contains a number of villages and towns and four sizeable cities, called Khafajiyeh, Howayzeh, Basitin and Rofaye.

This report intends to analyse the environmental effects of the regime’s petroleum mulching project, particularly on the ecosystem and the habitat of the dunes system in the Beit Kusar area of Khafajiyeh in Ahwaz territory.

The Beit Kusar area is located to the south of the Meshdakh hills, a natural reserve around eight kilometres to the east of Basitin (Bostan) city travelling on the Basitin -Um Al-Dibs road. While the region has sand dunes, it also has rich, varied and extensive vegetation.

 Beit Kusar has a unique natural ecosystem, with a rich diversity of indigenous plants and animals. Along with its rolling fields, the diverse ecosystem makes it a longstanding popular wintering migration ground for some of the best-known protected bird species, the sociable lapwing and the Houbara bustard.

The desert areas of Beit Kusar and Beit Rashed ( Fakkeh area bordering Iraq) are also home to a diverse variety of vegetation such as Tamarind Tree and Calligonum Comosum, with this biodiversity creating a unique ecosystem which has been devastated by the regime’s mulching program;  ironically, the deep-rooted vegetation which has long helped to prevent sandstorms is threatened by the mulching program supposedly intended to stop sandstorms, which will actually undoubtedly increase them. Due to the similarities between the ecosystem of this area and the Meshdakh area which is already under a natural protection order and the continuous, stable connection between them, Iran’s Department of Environment should extend the protection order to the Beit Kusar area to prevent further destruction.

If no such action is taken and the regime continues with its oil-mulching program here, the ecological devastation will be horrendous, leading to the extinction of many already endangered indigenous species of plants, birds and animals in the area, as well as leading to further pollution in surrounding areas when the oil used in the mulching process is washed away during the rainy season to poison the soil.

Explaining the issue of bitumen emulsion or Petroleum mulching

It’s clear that taking ill-conceived, inappropriate and unscientific action to solve environmental problems can actually intensify the existing problems and even make them far worse. In the case of the Iranian regime’s oil-mulching program and related projects, the devastation inflicted on the environment by the ‘solution’ is far worse than the original problem of sandstorms that the program was introduced to solve, leading to terrible destruction of the regional ecosystem that may be irreversible.    Iran’s regime is well aware of the potential damage caused by mulching, with the Budget Law of 2019 introducing legislation prohibiting mulching except in limited cases and in accordance with environmentally sensitive regulations – legislation which it has subsequently ignored.

One of the cases cited for this legislation was the use of oil mulching and the subsequent discoloration and poisoning of lands and sand dunes in the Fakkeh area of Basitin city, carried out under the pretext of fighting sandstorms and still ongoing. Despite the abolition of the use of petroleum products for use in mulching in stabilisation and preventing sandstorms, supported by the Budget Law of 2019, mulching has continued, supposedly in accordance with eco-friendly operations. Indeed, only months after the Budget Law underlining the proscription on this activity was passed, contractors hired by the provincial authorities’ Natural Resource’s Department began mulching operations in December 2019 using the same petroleum products.  Only after widespread opposition from environmentalists in the region and local organisations, were these operations temporarily suspended on the orders of the prosecutor of Maysan (Dashte Azadegan city) who ordered a review of this issue and instructed that scientific studies be carried out to find more appropriate, environmentally friendly methods of preventing sandstorms. Unfortunately, the responsibility for conducting these studies was given to the regional Department of the Environment (DoE), following protocol set out by the Secretary of the DoE’s National Agency for Combating Sandstorm Phenomena in 2018, meaning that operations were resumed on February 25 using the exact same environmentally devastating techniques.

Seyed Baqer Mousavi, an Ahwazi environmentalist and environmental activist, has been tirelessly exposing the horrendous consequences of petroleum mulching on the natural environment in the Meshdakh natural reserve area, posting numerous photos and video footage on social media showing the devastation wreaked on the area’s unique flora and fauna, including heartbreaking photos of creatures killed by ingesting the lethal toxins contained in the mulch materials.

Like other environmentalists, Mousavi is urging an end to the use of petroleum mulching in this Ahwazi area, saying that it poses a lethal danger to the unique and rich biodiversity of the area.

Mousavi condemned supporters of mulching who argue that desert areas are simply arid lifeless wastes, saying such ignorance shows they clearly know nothing about the natural world or the environment and the desert ecosystem of Meshdakh, whose rich and unique biodiversity are endangered by their selfish wish to disregard nature for their self-interest.

Speaking about the deaths among indigenous animals and birds in the area, he said, “We found the bodies of a number of these animals last year in the hills, covered in black, stinking mulch. It is wrong to say that mulching is not harmful because so far, no organisations other than the Ministry of Petroleum have studied petroleum mulching, while Studies should be conducted by a neutral institution. However, these studies have also confirmed some negative consequences.”

Mousavi named a number of the rare reptiles in the  Maysan area which are unique to the Ahwaz region, warning that these species are  at risk of complete extinction due to petroleum mulching, including the Arabian horned viper, Eryx jayakari, the Schmidt’s fringe-toed lizard,  the Arabian toad headed iguana, the Amphisbaena, the Bridled Mabuya or Bridled Skink, and the Middle Eastern short-fingered gecko, along with the common Leopard Gecko.  All of these species, he emphasised, live only in sand dunes and die when these sands are destroyed or contaminated with petroleum products.

He adds: “The most important mammal that lives in the sands of Meshdakh is the Reem deer. The mulch does not kill the deer but causes them to migrate because it [the mulch] is a poisonous, foul-smelling substance whose effects last for several years and pollute the vegetation cover in the region which the deer feed on. Wolves, hyenas and foxes are among the other animals that are emigrating due to mulching. The Cheesman’s gerbil is a mouse found only in Ahwaz and feeds on insects and plants that dies due to mulching in the area. Wild rabbits, which are also indigenous to this area also died, with their bodies found, covered in petroleum mulch last year.”

Mousavi warned that the mulching operations will have a devastating effect on the entire region if they continue. “Petroleum mulching will eventually destroy the region’s vegetation cover,” he asserted. Talking about a regime plan to plant trees there in another ill-conceived effort at environmental protection that is more likely to damage the environment than help it, he added, “Planting American Prosopis Juliflora trees in the mulched areas will take water from the other regional plants, and Prosopis Juliflora forests will replace the sands and vegetation cover.”

He explained that while some people believe deserts are arid environments devoid of life, in reality untreated scrubland in climates such as that in Ahwaz can retain moisture, meaning that there’s an extensive coverage of vegetation around the sand dunes; in the Maysan area, as well as  plant species such as turmeric, squash, rhubarb and various legumes.  He warned, however, that the long roots of Prosopis Juliflora absorb all the moisture in the surrounding soil, potentially leaving the region stripped of its other vegetation and creating a dead zone.

Mousavi pointed out that the millennia-old presence of a longtime local human population in the area, as well as the flora and fauna there, demonstrates the falseness of the idea that desert areas are lifeless wastelands, adding, “We have not had any problems with sand dunes in the  Maysan area so far, and the existence of the surrounding villages confirms this.”

As noted above, this natural wilderness is home to the beautiful and rare Reem deer, with petroleum mulching just one of the causes driving these species to the brink of extinction; other causes are periodic flooding, worsened by the regime’s damming and diversion of local rivers and digging of irrigation canals that the deer drown in during the rainy season.

Environmental rights groups have repeatedly reported that the Reem deer, also known as Arabian gazelles, which are native to the   Um Al-Dibs area to the west of the Ahwazi regional capital, Ahwaz, are in danger of extinction in the area due to dozens drowning in the irrigation canals dug throughout the region. 

Despite being warned about this risk to these already endangered species, Iranian environmental and wildlife organisations have taken no action to protect the remaining Reem deer in the area.

Heartbreaking photos of drowned deer have been widely shared on social media by Ahwazi netizens in recent days, showing tragic images of an entire herd of the graceful creatures which were unable to escape the waters of the irrigation canal in the  Um Al-Dibs area after falling in recently.

In the early 1980s, more than 1,500 of these beautiful gazelles grazed the lands in the region, but many were killed by stray gunfire in the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, while a large number of the remaining deer have subsequently been illegally hunted for sport by senior Iranian army and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps  (IRGC) commanders, according to Ahwazi local eyewitnesses, leaving the species in real and immediate danger of extinction.

Ahwazi environmental experts in 2016  put the total numbers of Reem deer in the region at 200; with the figures continuing to fall due to hunting and drowning,  the same activists are warning that unless state organisations take immediate action to protect the species that has lived in the area since time immemorial, it is in serious danger of extinction.

In 2015 alone, at least 25 of the gazelles have died as a result of drowning in the local stretch of the 107-kilometre irrigation canal which runs from the dam on the Karkheh River, passing through  Um Al-Dibs. Now only around 70 of the deer remain.

Local experts say that the creation of the irrigation channels by the Iranian regime in the early 2000s to irrigate lands forcibly seized by the regime from Ahwazi local farmers in the west of the region led to the deer being cut off from their main pastures on the other side, leading many to make dangerous attempt to ford the channels, during which large numbers of them perished

The experts further stated that they had received confirmation that 25 of the endangered deer had fled to Iraq, where they were either hunted for sport or been killed for food by other predatory species.

A number of Ahwazi environmentalists and other activists have spoken out about the tragedy of the native species standing on the brink of extinction, with one of them, environmental activist Fakher   Maramazi, publishing an article entitled ‘Who Is Responsible for the Elimination of This Cultural and Environmental Heritage, and Why Is This Great and Treasured Rare Deer Dying Out With No Action Being Taken To Date?’

Like the terrible devastation inflicted by petroleum mulching, the heartbreaking disappearance of the Reem deer from the Ahwaz region and their possible extinction has prompted many such questions among the local population. The regime, however, has provided no answers.

The impact of Bitumen emulsion or petroleum mulching on the local population and its livestock

When bitumen emulsion is inhaled by humans, its durable adhesive nature could potentially kill a person by blocking airflow to the lungs. It is similarly, if not more, fatal to animals when inhaled or ingested, sticking to the lungs and obstructing airways or by creating a breeding ground for infection.

In this video, we see a shepherd complaining of having lost many sheep due to the bitumen being sprayed on existing vegetation that constitutes his sheep’s daily diet. He is asking the government not to spray very close to the villages, and lamenting that life is already utterly difficult with the current COVID-19 situation.

The desperate man says: “I am asking the government to help us and urge the local authorities to stop the bitumen emulsion spraying on this sandy area and its vegetation. As you see, we have no other option to make a living except our livestock, Coronavirus is spreading here, many locals are infected, and all the roads are closed. Why do they keep spraying this area with emulsion? Many local reptile species vanished, no snake nor deer survived, even ants and scorpions are eliminated.  Those species that did not die out have been migrating, abandoning the area.”

“As you see, these fauna and flora are native to the area and are preventing the rise of sand particles and [thereby] lessen the sandstorm. Because of the existing vegetation, there is no need for bitumen emulsion for mulching; the vegetation stops the sandstorm. By insisting on spraying emulsion, they are causing our suffering to be more unbearable, our animals – such as sheep – are infected. Now, we are trying to treat our infected animals; treatment of each sheep cost us 5 to 6 million [between $240 and $300 in U.S. dollars]. Once our sheep eat the contaminated plants, its lungs get an infection and severe obstruction, and it dies. I am asking, kindly, of all regime officials and local authorities to have mercy towards our lives and our source of living, which is our livestock, and stop this devastating emulsion spraying on our lands.”

While several nations have experimented by using bitumen as a temporary stabilising measure while creating anti-sandstorm dunes, it is only done in order to provide some stability until vegetation can be grown. When vegetation is already present, however, spraying any sort of petroleum emulsion product is entirely counterproductive, as it kills the vegetation while providing only transitory protection. And unlike bitumen, studies have shown that vegetation covering as little as 15% of sand surfaces is enough to stabilise them. [Lancaster, N. (2011). Desert dune processes and dynamics. In Arid Zone Geomorphology: Process, Form and Change in Drylands (ed. Thomas, D.S.G.) pp. 487–516. 3rd Edition. Wiley].

In the second video, we see an elderly woman villager complaining that they have nothing left except for the sheep and asking the government to stop the spraying of the bitumen as it is taking away the farmers’ livelihood, which is not much to start with. We can also see their poor living conditions, living in tents in remote areas without any apparent services being provided for them. They reside without access to adequate ventilation or air conditioning in the sweltering summer heat of Ahwaz, which underscores the low quality of life in the region.

She says, “please listen to me, see the condition of our lives. We are oppressed and impoverished people, we do not have any water for farming, we have no job to make a living, all we have these remaining livestock, and despite our miserable situation, you add insult to injury by spraying the bitumen on us, while we are struggling with Coronavirus. I am begging government officials to help us and stop spraying this toxic bitumen. We have animals such as sheep for making a living. We have families and children here. Please stop it, where can we go, why do you keep displacing and besieging us here.”

Yasser Hasan, an Ahwazi environmental and civil activist based in London, has stated that the main aim behind the Iranian regime’s use of environmentally devastating mulching in Ahwazi areas is to displace more of the indigenous Ahwazi people from their lands to enable the regime to take control of more of the oil and gas-rich region in order to launch further prospecting and drilling operations there.

Hasan explained that the use of mulching, along with the regime’s massive dam-building program on the region’s rivers which is also causing rapid desertification, is killing plants and wildlife and forcing many farmers and fishermen to abandon their beloved lands simply to survive. The mulching is already helping to accelerate the cycle of desertification caused by the river-damming, helping to push the already searing summer temperatures in the region higher. The environmentalist added that although the regime responded to public pressure by approving the allocation of 200 billion toman (approximately 13.3 million dollars) in 2019 for planting trees in the area as a measure to help in reducing sandstorms in the region and restoring the ecological balance, the regional governor and local officials from the regime’s own environmental service had embezzled these funds for their own use.

The environmentalist said that these policies which actively prevent any move to preserve or protect the natural environment in Ahwaz and to safeguard the region’s flora and fauna make it clear that the primary objective of the regime’s actions, closely coordinated with the regime’s infamous intelligence services, is to empty the area of its local Ahwazi population by making the region intolerable and uninhabitable for the local Ahwazis.

Hasan added that whilst the increasingly unbearable climatic conditions make it difficult for the regime to attract Farsi-speaking ethnically Persian settlers from other areas of Iran to work at its oil and gas facilities and refineries (jobs denied to the local Ahwazi people), they are offered incentives such as high wages and homes in specially built settlements provided with all mod cons to move to the area as a means of changing the demographic balance there; it should be noted that Ahwazis are not allowed to live in these settlements. Even with these incentives, however, these settlers prefer to return to their own regions whenever possible to escape the arid climate, sandstorms and heavy pollution from the oil and gas facilities in Ahwaz, which was once known as a regional breadbasket.

This means that, ironically, the regime’s efforts to make the conditions in the Ahwaz region intolerable for its indigenous people in order to alter the demographic balance have also made it intolerable for the ethnically Persian settlers who it wishes to see outnumber and replace the Ahwazi people. Despite the regime’s decades of efforts to drive out the native Ahwazi people and devastate their lands by persecution, poisonous mulching, pollution, dam-building and desertification, amongst many other strategies, the Ahwazi people remain and will not be driven out. 

Faisal Maramazi, a London-based Ahwazi rights activist, also told DUSC, ” A few years ago the Iranian authorities began a large project to spray bitumen emulsion outside Ahwaz cities and around villages on sandhills covered in vegetation, causing a complex range of environmental problems with animals and natural plants dying as a result.”

He added, ” The Iranian authorities claim this is the only way to control the sand particles on these hills, preventing them from being lifted by high winds and storms and creating sandstorms – but to this day, there is no scientific proof to support this theory.”   

Maramazi explains that the desert areas and scrublands in the Ahwaz region could not be the source of the horrendous sand storms since the topsoil in these areas consists of large sand grains that, even in strong winds, will settle nearby. Ahwaz only began to be plagued by sandstorms around 11 years ago, in 2008, right after the Iranian government started drawing water from the once verdant seasonal lagoons and wetlands for use on its environmentally ruinous sugarcane farms. The clay soil of these dried lagoons has the smallest soil particles found in nature; in their natural wet state this is not a problem, but following desertification, which happens rapidly in the hot climate in Ahwaz, the vast lagoons turn into dustbowls, with the dusty sandy clay soil particles picked up by the wind and carried for vast distances, creating horrendous sandstorms.

Ahwazi rights groups and environmental activists have repeatedly expressed concerns about the environmental issues in Ahwaz, which have been either caused or exacerbated by the Iranian government. For some time, they have been urging the international environmental activists’ community to act collectively.

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) should pressure Iran to put an immediate stop to this hideous and inhumane abuse of the natural resources in Ahwaz and all of its components. Iranian authorities have to allow the natural water to return to the drying wetlands. We hope that by doing so, one day Ahwaz can have its nature back, all the local animals and plants have their habitat restored, and all people will have clean air as before and enough water for farming.

Despite repeated warnings from many environmental activists about the catastrophic environmental impact of drying out the lagoons and the wetlands, however, the Iranian government proceeded with its economically and ecologically ruinous sugarcane-farming project, as well as transferring millions of litres of water from the rivers that once made Ahwaz a regional breadbasket to areas of central Iran via a massive system of upriver dams and pipelines.

The desertification of the wetlands has caused worsening droughts across Ahwaz, driving countless species of animals and plants to extinction, as well as leaving the people of the region in catastrophic conditions, with breathing conditions and respiratory illnesses that were rarely seen previously now widespread, incapacitating or killing the region’s indigenous Ahwazi people at a horrific rate. All the evidence suggests that these diseases and illnesses are the results of the sandstorms, with many suggesting that the enriched clay of the dusty, dehydrated lagoons and swamps contains a vast variety of pathogens that could, if inhaled, cause novel respiratory diseases. Despite this, the Iranian regime is refusing to invest in any academic studies, apparently fearing the results which are likely to expose its own terrible incompetence. 

Article first appeared on Duruntash Studies Center.

Rahim Hamidis an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

Local officials deployed dozens of security forces who responded to our demand for water with bullets and tear gas and beat dozens of us…

Iranian regime security forces last week reportedly brutally beat, injured and forcibly dispersed Ahwazi protesters for holding a peaceful demonstration in the Gheyzaniyeh rural area 40 kilometres east of Ahwaz city.  The protest on Sunday May 24 was held due to increasing water scarcity, which has been steadily worsening for three decades and is now reaching a critical point at which water is increasingly either completely unavailable or is often so heavily polluted that it’s unfit for human consumption or even for livestock and other animals.

Iranian police met the protesters with a violent crackdown injuring a number of people and detaining many others.

Desperate locals in the area, which was once watered by rivers now dammed upstream and otherwise rerouted by the regime, are forced to wait for weeks until local officials approve their request for water essential for drinking, household use, and nourishing the livestock and date palm trees that provide their meagre sustenance. Their latest request brought only four tanker-loads of water for the entire population of 89 villages in the area, which came not from the regime but from fellow Ahwazis who came from across the region to bring water to the area after hearing about the regime’s abuses of the protesters. 

With bleak irony, the protests and the regime’s customarily vicious response took place on ‘Al Quds Day’, when the Iranian regime commemorates its supposed solidarity with the Palestinian people, and its purported support for the oppressed and opposition to injustice globally. While the regime’s forces were quietly shooting Ahwazi citizens for demanding water, Iran’s leaders officially marked Al Quds Day by sending Iranian oil tankers to support Venezuela’s regime.

One despairing local, who gave his name as Mohammed, told Duruntash Studies Center (DUSC), “Imagine – 89 villages left without water for over 30 years, and the officials sent four tankers for all this population! Imagine how little water each household gets from that – some households have over seven members. We have domestic animals, livestock, palm trees to live on. We are desperate, stranded, just trying to keep ourselves and our poor animals alive!” 

Regime forces were quickly deployed to these areas to crush the demonstration as protesters shamed the regime by pointing out that despite the Ahwaz area being home to 95 per cent of the oil reserves claimed by the Tehran regime, the people live in conditions of absolute poverty and struggle to survive without clean water, health services or decent schools. The Gheyzaniyeh region alone, whose 600-plus oil wells export around two million of barrels per day, contains 80 mostly interconnected villages with a total population of 26,000, most of whom are farmers or ranchers.

Although the area’s population exceeds 26,000, Iranian regime officials don’t recognise it as a county. The regime fails to make any distinction between rural and urban areas in Ahwaz and routinely refuses to provide its indigenous people with basic services. Meanwhile, in other, ethnically Persian areas of Iran, areas with populations lower than 10,000 are recognised as counties in their own right.

Mohammed added that the timing added to the sense of insult among locals angered by the regime’s abuses. “It was Eid al-Fitr; we’re fed up of this abuse and locals gathered to protest at this brutality and inhumanity, with young men blocking the roads leading to Ahwaz city, and Ramez and Amidiyeh to force the local officials to open their eyes and pay attention to our suffering.  Instead, the local officials deployed dozens of security forces who responded to our demand for water with bullets and tear gas and beat dozens of us. We’re just grateful for the popular solidarity of other Ahwazi people from all areas who brought us water using their own cars.” 

Another young local, Fouad Hassan, said: “The oil and gas that Iran sends to Venezuela’s refineries is from our area, Iranians hear and see the pleas of anyone in the world except our voices and send our wealth to them.  Our area is two minutes’ walk from all these giant oil and gas industrial complexes – why don’t they want to bother themselves by providing water pipes to us, ignoring us while they send their oil ships thousands of miles to save Venezuelan refineries? The answer is, because we’re Arab and Iran only wants our oil. How many rivers does the Ahwaz region have? The Karoon, the Karkheh, the Dez…? So why does Iran spend billions building massive pipelines extending all the way to the Persian areas of Isfahan, Kerman and Yazd while it would take them less money to give us enough water to live?”

Another local youth, Mohsen Saleem, said: “I have a Master’s degree in oil engineering and I dreamed of being hired to work in one of these oil companies built on our lands five minutes’ walk from our villages to get there. But they won’t hire us [Ahwazis] – if we argue with them, they only humiliate us, mock us, saying ‘Instead of that, why don’t you go and improve your accent to make it bearable to hear you when you speak to us?’

“Every month we bury one or two of our locals here who’ve died of cancer. Few here live beyond 50, and everyone dies from various types of diseases caused by air pollution from these oil companies. This is land of oil Paradise for Iran and Hell for its Ahwazi people.”

Mohsen added, “The Ahwaz plain was once the most desirable area for farming. According to experts, however, exploitation of water, water diversion projects, and particularly the construction of several dams, has now caused the formerly arable plain to become a semi-arid land where agriculture is no longer considered a promising job.”

A female local also spoke with DUSC, saying “our villages are encircled by hundreds of oil pipes, I have a few sheep and goats and two cows. I used to have more but our lands don’t have any green grass now like they used to; our animals get stuck between the oil pipes and due to the scorching heat, they get stuck, many die from heatstroke.  Our children want to play and they only have one option – to run around on these pipes in bare feet.”

A human rights activist from the city of Ahwaz said that despite  Gheyzaniyeh being an Ahwazi area, many people in the city only heard its name for the first time when seeing it on the TV during Eid al-Fitr, when they saw the all-too-familiar images of an Ahwazi teenage protester shot by Iranian regime forces with blood running down his leg, while in the background they heard people yelling in protest over water shortages and thirst.

The pain and suffering of these local people have been hidden and ignored, like many Ahwazi areas, until recently when they protested. The regime responded by beating and shooting at the protesters, followed by predictable visits by regime officials claiming to offer sympathy. Yet their empty rhetoric slamming the Rouhani government for incompetence and mismanagement and unbalanced development was clearly intended merely to settle their internal political rivalries. Their self-serving attempts to co-opt Ahwazi suffering is not new to Ahwazis. It was just last year, in November, when suffering Ahwazi people in Ma`shour, an area very much like Gheyzaniyeh, protested at regime-endorsed systemic job discrimination and poverty by blocking the roads leading to petrochemicals. The protesters were massacred and burned in the nearby marshlands. Predictably, regime officials flooded the area after the massacre, promising to resolve the people’s suffering, and allocate a budget for building services, schools, and prioritising the employment of locals in the Petro companies. Those empty promises were never fulfilled, and are clearly nothing but meaningless rhetoric used by the regime as damage control following protests, and the regime’s inevitably violent and brutal response.

A common bleak joke amongst Ahwazis is that their only share in the region’s oil wealth is death, a result of the disproportionately high levels of cancer and respiratory diseases linked to the massive air pollution from the numerous oil and gas wells and the petrochemical plants which belch out acrid black smoke that often blankets the once-verdant region.

While Ahwazis’ homes and farmlands are routinely seized by the regime without warning or compensation by the oil and gas companies, the indigenous people are denied jobs at the oil and gas fields and the refineries.  The same applies to the sugarcane farms and refineries in the region; since the regime launched its loss-making domestic sugar industry in Ahwaz in the 1990s, it has confiscated massive tracts of arable land beside the region’s three major rivers to establish sugar plantations, despite the climate being wholly unsuited to sugarcane farming, as well as building refineries to treat the sugarcane, which use the rivers’ water in the treatment process before belching out untreated industrial pollutants used in this process back into the rivers.  As with the regime’s oil and gas industries, the displaced Ahwazi people are denied jobs in the plantations or refineries; instead, the regime constructs well-appointed settlements with facilities denied to the indigenous Ahwazis to attract ethnically Persian settlers from other areas of Iran who are persuaded to move to the region by the offer of homes, jobs and generous subsidies.   

As well as poisoning the Ahwazis’ air, land and water, the regime has also cut off much of the remaining water supply by building massive dams upstream on all three of the main rivers that once made Ahwaz a regional breadbasket where farming and fishing were the main industries; these waters are now mostly rerouted to other, ethnically Persian areas of Iran, leaving Ahwaz suffering from horrendous drought and worsening desertification.

All these policies seem clearly intended to help the regime to depopulate the area of its indigenous Ahwazi population, a policy made clear by statements by the regime’s own officials which have led to regular protests by the long-suffering and oppressed Ahwazi people.

This area is one of the most deprived parts of the region, despite being home to many oil and gas companies exploiting Iran’s largest oil fields. The Karoon and Maroon Oil and Gas Companies and the National Oil Drilling Company are located in this area and the transit route of Iranian ports and Maroon and Razi Petrochemical Facilities also pass through it. Karun Oil and Gas Company produces more than one million barrels of crude oil per day, and the total daily production from oil wells of this area last year was estimated at two million barrels. However, Gheyzaniyeh and its surrounding areas are a showcase for economic, social and environmental problems, leaving its population destitute and suffering from wilful neglect and worse.

Khaled Karim, one of the locals says, “the local young people are denied any type of employment working these oil wells or for the companies that own them. Their farmlands are forcibly confiscated for oil drilling with almost no real compensation, the remaining lands turned into dead land unfit for farming after being wholly contaminated with the toxic substances used for oil prospecting.

“Our palm trees are dying from pollution and drought as the desperate locals, in order to survive themselves and to keep their livestock, are forced to give up on demanding the clean water pipes to their homes promised by regime officials. Instead, they have had to revert to their ancestors’ tradition of digging up wells, with the contribution of all the locals, so that all use it for their own and their animals’ drinking.

“But as oil drilling spread to their lands the water wells of the poor population got contaminated with oil. The water tastes oily and has led to the spread of intestine cancers among the majority of the population, including many children and has killed many of their animals that they were relying upon to make home dietary products to resist the hunger and poverty.”

According to Gheyzaniyeh’s district governor, “two-thirds of dust storms arise from this area. Oil companies, landfills, and recycling sites around the area cause smoke and the suffocating smell of garbage. The sandy unpaved and bumpy roads, and the lack of cultural and educational centres and school shortages are all part of the region’s long list of problems. “Water scarcity is one of the many problems of Gheyzaniyeh’s residents. Despite the lack of proper educational, medical and welfare facilities, they have for years considered access to pipeline water their most important demand, and for many years officials have been making empty promises to them.”

Gholamreza Shariati, the governor of Ahwaz, is one of those who have paid lip service, emptily promising to put an end to the suffering of locals due to water shortages. In addition to the protests in Gheyzaniyeh, Shariati and his wife are also involved in the corruption case of Haft Tappeh Sugar Company. Iranian media have reported that the director of the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane company, who was arrested for money laundering, embezzlement and the theft of millions of dollars, revealed in a closed-door trial that he had “paid $ 25,000 for the overseas trip of the governor of Ahwaz region and his family” and “donated $ 200,000” to his wife.

It must be stressed that the director of the Haft Tappeh and the governor of Ahwaz are the primary persons who issued orders to crack down on Ahwazi labour protests and strikes that were organised for not receiving their wages and their dire working conditions in Haft Tappeh Sugarcane company. Mr Shariati, who came to the governorship of Ahwaz four years ago, appointed by the first government of Hassan Rouhani, promised in January 2016 to solve the problem of Gheyzaniyeh’s lack of water within three months.

Two bills were passed at the time, one involving 25 kilometres of pipelines from the water facility of Karoon city to the Mosharrahat district of Gheyzaniyeh, and the second to build 55 kilometres of water pipelines in another part of the region to reach the rest of rural areas, which was to be jointly operated by the Oil Company and ABFAR Company (Rural Water and Sewerage Company). At the same time, the CEO of the National Company for the Southern Oilfields of Ahwaz spoke of the company’s special attention to the development of Gheyzaniyeh and promised cooperation and investment.

This documentary film is in the Persian language about the sufferings of one of the villages of Gheyzaniyeh area. Iranian reporter Ellahe Habib Elahi says: “I don’t know how do you define misery or how do you explain it? What are these pipelines? Are they merely oil pipes or misery pipes indeed? Please follow me to share with you some parts of that great misery.”

Masoud Tawakoli, Iranian reporter says: “This is just one of the seven hundred of oil wells of Gheyzanieh area of the Ahwaz region.”

Iranian reporter: “We are here with Mr Baledi, the chief/elder of the Rozaneh village that is one of Gheyzaniyeh rural area; Mr Baledi will talk about some of the shortcomings and the deprivations of the village.”

Baledi, the headman of the village says, “here the village population was around 1500 people which was more than 300 families. They were forced to immigrate due to lack of the most basic essential facilities and currently they are less than 45 families. In total, approximately 250 remain in this village, although the number diminishes with each day. These people are continuing immigration due to the difficult life situation.”

Reporter: “Which companies are based around here?”

Mr Baledi: “Different companies as you can see like Karoon Oil and Gas company’.

Reporter: “Of course the companies that have been established and worked here for more than 50 years have had to provide necessary facilities for people of the surrounding area. Which facilities have they supplied the villages with, given that they had focused on operating oil prospecting here for the last fifty years?”

Mr Baledi: “As you can see they haven’t done anything, they did not provide us anything in all the 50 years since the Oil has been discovered and the oil companies have been established in this region, but just to mention the new area govern, Mr Hashemi has tried hard to persuade the companies to supply the local population with clean drinking water, and they promised to supply two tankers of drinking water in the summer !!”

Reporter: “Please explain to us about the hygiene and the health services of the area, at least do you have a health centre”?

Mr Baledi: “There are no basic health services in the area. People have to go to the city for any treatment or doctors’ visits, even just for shots.”

Local elderly woman: The people who get sick here pass away in winter due to lack of facilities. This is our land and homeland, but we suffer from unemployment and the companies are reluctant to hire our people. All the labour recruits are from other cities.”

About Schools

Local young man: “All the primary students first to fifth grade just study in the same classroom and with the same teacher, the school is only one classroom. It is tough for them to tolerate this condition. These conditions have driven them to drop out of school because most of their parents are unemployed and unable to support them financially for transportation so that the children go to urban areas for education. Completing education at least until high school diploma takes a few years, I mean it is not one or two years. Also, parents cannot afford other necessities of educational needs and requirements even if these children wish to continue their education.”

“Even the local young people get their high school diploma, the oil companies will never hire them in these companies even as a doorman or guard. If we apply for jobs or go to the company to file a complaint, they never allow us to enter the entrance gate, let alone to talk to the authorities about the unemployment and the difficulties we suffer from.”

“The bigger problem than unemployment is the lack of clean drinking water in the area. We have to go 40kms to Ahwaz to buy some drinking water with an affordable price considering that some people haven’t got any vehicle to travel with.”

Reporter: So, the water that provided to the area by tankers is not safe to drink?

The local young man: “No, it is not safe to drink it, it is just for washing, and the tankers do not come regularly and keep us waiting for a long time. We have to buy barrel water from the city. The concerned officials should take action and have a sense of responsibility towards us. We suffer from thirst and lack of electricity in such warm weather, let’s forget about employment, we do not want job opportunities.”

 Reporter: “Have the authorities or MPs come to visit the region?”

The local young man: “Yes, they have come, and they know about the problems we suffer from but unfortunately have done nothing to help to ease our sufferings! About the roads, we have just one dirt road which is totally ruined, and we cannot drive on such road on rainy days, and we can’t take our patients to the hospital in winter days.”

Reporter: Yes, that’s right, the road is ruined, and if there was no guide with us, we were unable to find the village.

The local young man: “yes, there are no signs nor signs to direct drives to the correct routes around the village.

 We have got just one power transformer in all the area. The weather is too hot here, and we are about 50 families. At noon as the temperature reaches its highest points, the power goes out frequently making our life more miserable and unbearable.”.

Another local man: “I have had some livestock, and all my domestic animals perished due to lack of water and drought.”

The headman of the village (Mr Baledi): “What you see here is a seasonal spring that fills with water during rainy days, and the villagers who are besieged with oil wells use it as drinking water for themselves and their domestic animals. Its water is totally unhealthy and lethally contaminated.”

Reporter Ellahe Habib Elahi: “we are responsible, and we will be held accountable in front of Justice.”

More videos from Gheyzaniyeh area

The following video shows that after nearly two decades of Gheizaniyeh residents’ attempts to get various Iranian departments to solve their problems including the water scarcity, all attempts were unsuccessful. Finally, without other options, residents closed entry to the Ahwaz capital by obstructing the major Omidiyeh highway with stones. It was a move intended to get their voices heard and grievances acknowledged by administrative leaders. But instead, Iranian regime forces fired live bullets into the demonstrators, injuring some of them and arresting others.

The second video depicts the miserable circumstances that Gheizaniyeh residents are suffering from. The residents are saying that every two weeks a single water tanker comes to the village. The area has no infrastructure, no schools, unpaved non-asphalt roads, no mosque and all the young are unemployed. One resident said we are deprived of all essential life necessities.

The third video shows one of the young men from the Gheyzaniyeh area speaking about their suffering in this area that has had no water for more than a month. He said that “we reached out to all Iranian departments, but they did not respond to us. The Iranian officials do not pay attention to us, and the only way that they look at us is when we close the main roads; then they will shoot us by live bullets and either kill or injure us.”

One young man, whose name is withheld for his safety, says, “I am broken. I married two years ago, and my wife was pregnant. In her last few days, she had sudden bleeding and her water broke. Because there is no basic health centre anywhere near us, I had to take her to Ahwaz city, 45 km away, but my baby died.

“Iran can send our oil everywhere, and it can easily send our water to Iranian areas, but why do they not want to give us basic services? We are not wondering; we know the answer, because we are Ahwazis. Ali Khamenei is trading with Palestinians, and says Muhammarah is a second Quds. It is not fair; Muhammarah is occupied, like all Ahwaz areas. Iranian brutality can be seen when you visit any Ahwazi area. The war ended three decades ago, but Muhammarah still carries its ravaged destruction on its sleeve like all Ahwazi areas. Our suffering is beyond the concept of colonization and occupation. While Israel is helping Palestinians amid COVID-19, Iran deprives Ahwazis of water access and medical care.”

The fourth video shows an old man, saying that “whenever we talked about our need for drinking water, the official in Gheyzaniyeh quickly labelled us Wahhabis. We are not Wahhabis, we are only demanding drinking water, nothing else. Anyone saying otherwise is not telling the truth; we just want water.

The last video shows the visit by the representative of the Iranian supreme leader to a child who had been shot by Iranian occupation police forces during protests. Looking at the child’s face, it is clear that the visit was simply to suppress Ahwazi rage, and likely to threaten the people as the regime did following the  Ma`shour massacre. Tellingly, there was no follow-up meeting to address the people’s demands.

Ruled by an uncaring and hostile regime, Ahwaz has seen its farmland turned to desert, its waters pumped out and diverted, and its oil resources ripped from the ground. In the throes of drought, the people’s protests have been met with live fire and crocodile tears, even as their pleas go unheard. It is clear that the ruling regime has no problem seeing them die, but will the world finally take notice and demand that they be given basic necessities to survive?

Article first appeared on Duruntash Studies Center.

Rahim Hamid is an Ahwazi author, freelance journalist and human rights advocate. He tweets under @Samireza42.

Aaron Eitan Meyer is an attorney admitted to practice in New York State and before the United State Supreme Court, and a researcher and analyst. He has written extensively on lawfare, international humanitarian, and human rights law. He tweets under @aaronemeyer.