The weapon of forced displacement against the indigenous Ahwazi
People
Since the Islamic Republic Regime's rise to power, the mullahs'
regime has enforced ethnocide policies against the Ahwazi Arab nation and other
non-Persian nations. In fact, the threat of forced displacement, deportation or
execution against the Ahwazis, Kurds, Turks, Baluchs and Turkmens is somewhat
permanent.
For years and until today, the lack of reaction of the
international community concerning the state of human rights in Ahwaz and other
non-Persian regions in the integrity that is called the prison of occupied
nations which was built upon fire, blood, and international conspiracies, has given
the Iranian regime and it’s clique a right of life and death over entire
communities.
From 1925, the ousted Pahlavi monarchy and current Islamic Republic
Regime both carried a deep historical hatred against the Arab nation. They have
continued their policy of Persianization and ethnic cleansing in the Ahwazi
regions. Tens of thousands of Ahwazis were displaced, mainly in the regions of Mohammara,
Abadan and Shosh and shoshter. Without exaggeration, a close link can be
established between the rise to power of the Islamic republic regime in 1979
and the forced displacements, deportations, and migratory waves of Ahwazi Arabs.
It seems that the Iranian regime has failed to obliterate the
identity of non-Persian people within its totalitarian policy. The ongoing mass
execution, the massive impoverishment, cultural dispossession and the denial of
all fundamental civil, cultural, human, and political rights seem insufficient
to eliminate the will of non-Persian people. Therefore, the regime has adopted
a systematic vicious policy for the entire non-Persian region called anti- Socio-environmental
agenda that has systematic demographics/ethnic roots. For example, Lake Uremia in South Azerbaijan,
which is the largest lake in the Middle East and the second largest salt-water
lake on earth, faces the risk of drying out. Many environmental scientists
warned that disappearance of the Lake would result in severe salt storms.
It has been estimated that six to eight cities will be destroyed,
covered by layers and layers of salt. At
least 10 million people have to be displaced to avoid the storms. Most of the
population will be forced to flee their homeland and will have no choice but to
immigrate to other regions of Iran.
People of Baluchistan also experienced this first hand as they just
rarely survived from the mass displacement scheme following the drying of Hamun
Lake. Many locals had to abandon their homeland to rescue their lives from the drought,
dust storms, and epidemic disease that claimed the lives of many Baluchis. The
Iranian regime has not taken any concrete measures to revive Hamun Lake in
Sistan-Baluchestan and to revitalize the regions' agriculture, which is heavily
dependent on the water. As a result, Hamun Lake dried up, leading to the death
of fauna and flora in the area of Sistan-Baluchistan.
Displacement, air-pollution, Water shortages and crop-failure in
Ahwaz
Forced migration and land confiscation
Despite Iran’s constitution and signature of ICCPR, there is strong
evidence that Iranian authorities are orchestrating a systematic and ultranationalist policy of land confiscation and forced migration that
are in line with the ethnic reconstructing program outlined in top confidential
letters written by Sayed Mohammad-Ali Abtahi when he served as Iran’s vice
president. The Abtahi letter leaked to the international media in 2005,
promoting April intifada in Ahwaz that led to an unprecedented popular uprising,
which engulfed the entire Ahwaz region and more than 100 people killed by the
security forces. The letter was written in 1999, suggests a time-frame of 10
years to accomplish the ethnic restructuring programme. Iranian authorities are
encouraging forced migration of Ahwazi Arabs out of Ahwaz and their replacement
with loyal ethnic groups, particularly ethnic Persian, constructing separation
walls to segregate indigenous Arabs from non-indigenous settlers and the
privileged migrants.
Ethnically exclusive settlements such as Shirinshahr and Ramin
have been built in recent years to house Persians from Yazd and Fars provinces
that have been brought into the area to take up jobs denied to Arabs.
The regime is encouraging ethnic Persian to settle on the land confiscated
from Ahwazi Arabs farmers by placing advertisements in Farsi-speaking provinces
and cities, which promise cheap fully furnished apartments with all amenities.
In fact, since the military occupation of Alahwaz, the Iranian
regime deliberately began to implement their malicious agenda in constructing
exclusive settlements to bring Persian settlers to Ahwazi lands in order to
change the demography of Ahwaz.
Moreover, they are trying systematically to raise the level of
poverty and unemployment rate between the Ahwazi Arab people while the Persian
settlers enjoy top priority in achieving employment opportunities.
More than 12,000 hectares of Ahwazi farmland north of Shush and
shoshter have been taken to resettle the faithful non- indigenous Persian,
according to directives by the ministry of Agriculture and the Revolutionary
crop command.
In the recent years, the Iranian officials brought many of Persian settlers
to this region by building various settlements for Persians settlers. These
persianization policies have forced Ahwazi Arabs into poor shanty towns around
the city.
The confiscation measures of Shush and Shoshter arable lands are
carried out directly by the department of Natural Resources of the Iranian regime.
The department of Natural Resources and the Mehr Housing institute are
cooperating directly to usurp the Ahwazi lands and when their projects face popular
resistance from local people, the security forces intervene quickly to arrested
and even kill unarmed civilians with live bullets. In relation to Ahwaz the regime has been cruel
on everything both human and environment and always confronts the legitimate
demands of Ahwazi people with fire, shipments of tear gas and excessive military force.
The regime’s authorities normally confiscate the Ahwazian lands
under the pretext that such a lands are considered a conservational zone and
must be protected from being destroyed or spoiled. However, the real story on
the ground is different. They usurp the farmer’s lands just to construct
settlements to bring Persian settlers to Ahwazi lands to change the
demographic of Ahwazi Arab populations
and making them a minority in comparison with the Persian settlers. The
objective of the land confiscation and settlement programmes is to prevent
unrest among Ahwazi Arabs from destabilizing this strategic oil-producing
region.
Waves of emigration of Ahwazis to neighboring countries
The Iranian regime crackdown
against the Ahwazi civilians has forced thousands of Ahwazis to seek refuge in
Iraq and Turkey. From April 2005 until now, more than 2000 Ahwazis had sought
refuge in European countries.
Most recently, Australia saw an unusual phenomenon; waves of
illegal Ahwazi immigrants landed in Australia. They fled Ahwaz due to non-stop oppression,
poverty, growing financial crisis and high unemployment.
Anti-socio-environmental
policies
Water supply
Although Ahwaz has huge water resources, (about 33% of Iran’s
total), the region is suffering from a serious water crisis. The water crisis
has caused by ecological mismanagements of Karoon River; the largest river flow
through Ahwazi lands. Since 1979, the Iranian revolution, the Karoon River has
faced more than 400 incidents of serious contamination. Beside the policy of
land confiscation, a parallel policy against Ahwazis is being practiced that is
diverting water of main river course in Ahwaz such as Karoon, Al-karkha, and
Al-Jarrahi and pumping it to central Persian areas such as Isfahan, Yazd and
Kareman for the purpose of irrigation. This happens while they deprive the Arab
farmers of utilizing this water and making their struggle for survival very
difficult and very frustrating. Periodically they fabricate flood via their
dams that are known as Arab killer Dams that have been
constructed for this purpose in order to demolish the infrastructure of Ahwazi
Arab villages and their fertile lands to restrict their brutal circle force on
Ahwazi Arabs farmers to abandon their lands and look for other alternatives for
make living. They consequently facilitate the displacement of Arab people and
confiscations of their arable lands and demolition of Arabian villages and the
countryside of Ahwaz.
(A)Mehr news agency
Sugar cane plantations, which were established after the Iranian
regime confiscated thousands of hectares of Ahwazi Arab former’s lands forcibly,
place heavy demands on water supplies. Furthermore, all the sewage is dumped into
the main River Karoon which supplies all Ahwaz city water. As a result, water becomes
contaminated and undrinkable.
(B) Mehr news agency
Internal displacement
In the recent years, up to 60% of Ahwazi land experienced the worst
long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since the regime began
its scheme of water diversion. It is estimated that 1.5 million of the people
who are mostly dependent on agriculture in the countryside, particularly in
Howeyzeh, Mohammara, Falahya, Omidyah and Romhormoz and khalafiyeh had driven into extreme poverty.
This has led to a massive exodus of farmers and agriculturally
dependent rural families from the countryside to cities. This problem has been
compounded by the continued exploitation and neglect of Ahwazi natural resources,
which has contributed to water shortages and land desertification.
The massive internal displacement from rural to urban centers and
significant discontent among Agriculture-dependent communities are the
main factors of social and political unrest in the Ahwaz region.
Air pollution
In terms of suffocating air pollution, Ahwaz outstrips Beijing and
Delhi by a long stretch, according to the latest findings of the World Health
Organization (WHO).
Ahwaz City's measure of air-born particulate matter (PM10) is 372
ug/m3, which is a third more than the world's second-most polluted city,
Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar and the only city in the world where average
PM10 levels rise above 300 ug/m3.
In this new study, WHO says
Ahwaz has the highest measured level of airborne particles small enough to
cause serious health problems in humans.
The astonishing level of air pollution has taken its toll on the
local population, which mostly belongs to the persecuted Ahwazi Arab ethnic
group.
Life expectancy is the lowest in Ahwaz and residents suffer high levels
of respiratory problems, cancer and many other rampant diseases. some cities in Ahwaz such as falahya (also known
as Shadegan)and Khafajia (also known as
Sosangerd) people are suffering from unusually
high rate of skin ,heart ,and kidney diseases due to the continued
storage and uses of chemical, biological and other related polluted materials
remaining from Iran_ Iraq war and the government has not taken any action to
remediate the situation and in Ahwaz the state hospitals are unhealthy and ill-equipped with insufficient numbers of
doctors and medicines that lead to make
the death rate unacceptably high.
The Iranian regime has sought to blame its arch-enemy the United
States for the pollution, claiming that the toxic dust is the result of the use
of depleted uranium bombs that were dropped during the Iraq War. However,
nearby Kuwait City and Bushehr have PM10 levels far below Ahwaz City and none
of the respiratory illnesses suffered by the inhabitants of the Al-Ahwaz
region. Ahwaz City has by far the worst track-record in the Arabian Gulf.
Ahwaz City's PM10 levels are the highest in the world
© Ahwaz News Agency
Contributing factors include desertification caused by river
diversion and the draining of the marshes and the oil, petrochemical, metals
and sugar and paper processing plants in and around Ahwaz.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has officially
warned the Iranian Environment Association that the southwest of Iran is facing
a situation similar to the environmental catastrophes that have affected the
Aral Sea in Central Asia and the Amazon jungle. The region contains extensive
marshes and rivers that support endangered species of fish as well as migratory
birds. Ahwazi farmers and fishermen also depend on the waters for their
livelihoods.
(D) shushtarnews
Great controversy surrounds the river diversion programme. The
government's plans, already under development, seek to siphon off 1.1bn cubic
meters of water from the province's main rivers to central Iran. This is
destroying the marshlands like Horelazim, which serve as an important habitat
for wildlife, as well as helping to regulate humidity and rainfall further
inland. Agriculture felt the worst of the effects of river diversion in 2012,
which worsened the effects of drought. Ecological and environmental values of
the Horelazim and falahya marshlands are
unique that the drying of these
marshlands in Ahwaz and Iraq has increased the incidence of fatal dust storms
in the region.
But, wildlife and human health are being punished the most, with
some species of birds and mammals facing extinction in the region and Ahwazi
Arabs suffering neurological, respiratory and birth disorders as well as high
levels of cancer.
Like all problems in Iran, the solution is political. Without
regime change that empowers the local population in how economic development progresses,
the government will continue to plunder and rape Al-Ahwaz while the indigenous
inhabitants, wildlife and natural beauty will pay the ultimate price.
It is certainly obvious
that the Iranian regime is intentionally ignoring the drying of marshlands
and rivers to achieve its geopolitical goals. Under this hypothesis, the regime
is using the deliberate neglect of Karoon River and marshlands to facilitate
the migration, displacement and ethnic cleansing of Ahwazi Arab in Iran. Such
tactics have been utilized in many places across the globe in the past, e.g.,
in Czechoslovakia.
Written by
Rahim Hamid
Sources:
http://www.ahwaziarabs.info/search/label/environment, Ahwaz
news agency(C)
http://www.mehrnews.com/detail/Photo/2046781#ad-image (A),(B)
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