Open letter to Swedish foreign Minister Ms. Margot Wallström
We are writing to you due to upcoming visit of Iranian foreign minister Mr. Javad Zarif to Sweden.
Iran is a country shared by many national groups of Ahwazi Arab, Azerbaijan Turk, Baloch, Fars, Kurd, Lor and religious groups like Baha’i, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Shiite/Sunnis Muslims. Iran has institutionalized discrimination against women, national and religious minorities.
The Iranian state manipulates statistics to portray Iran as a country with Persian majority, while
factually it is not a Persian majority country. In November 2009, then Iran’s Education Minister,
Mr. Hamid Reza Haji Babai, in a seminar announced, “70 percent of children in Iran when starting schools,
do not have Farsi as their mother language and do not successfully learn the Farsi language after several years being in school”.
70% of children are formally being denied the right of access to start education in their mother language and face the social, psychological, economic and cultural consequences of this deprivation. Many of these students do not complete their intermediate education, and those who manage to carry on, will face discrimination in the higher education during the ideological process named “GUZINESH”, meaning “Selection Procedure”. At this stage, many of today’s High Tech subjects unofficially, taken away from none Persian/ none Shiite students, and if someone succeeds to pass this filtration, and completes his/her education, once again will face “the Selection Procedure” in the job market.
Article 12 of the constitution states: “The official religion of Iran is Islam and the Twelve Ja’fari School of Thought and this principle shall remain eternally immutable”. This explicit endorsement of a school of Shiite Islam alienates the Kurds, Turkmen, Baloch, and Ahwazi Arabs, who practice Sunni Islam.
The death penalty continues imposing in political cases, where individuals commonly accused of “enmity to God”, where National Minorities like Ahwazi Arabs, Balochs and Kurds over represent execution statistics in proportion to their population in Iran.
Despite Article 15 of the Iranian constitution and Article 27 of the ICCPR, the Ahwazi Arabs, Balochs, Kurds, Lors, Azerbaijani Turks, and Turkmen face difficulties in exercising their rights to use their own languages, in education and in public. For example, all state schooling is exclusively in Persian in these regions, where a result, dropout rates are high.
According to Mr Alireza Sarrafi, an educational analyst/researcher; based on admission to Iranian education centers’ results of intermediate schools’ attendance from year1376 to 1377 (1997 to 1998), non-Farsi speaker admissions to education institutions drops from 42 percent in colleges to 10 percent in post-graduate education.
In contrary to official statements that the teaching in minority languages has permission, Tehran does not permit teaching in Arabic, Balochi, Kurdish, Luri, Turkic or Turkmen languages.
The only language that has permission is Armenian Language for the Armenian minority in Tehran, which has been there since the instatement of the Iranian Pahlavi regime.
Iran treats its religious and ethnic minorities as second and third class citizens and women belonging to national and religious minorities face more discriminations. The current Iranian system is a form of apartheid system. This situation demonstrates the urgent need of a new social contract that recognises Iran’s different ethnic groups such as the Ahwazi Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Balochs, Fars, Kurds, Lurs and Turkmen, all as equal partners in their collective rights and duties.
We ask Swedish foreign minister Ms. Margot Wallström:
– To show her concern over national minorities’ discriminated rights in Iran and demand Iran
to stop its discriminative policies and suppression against national minorities in Iran.
– To ask Iranian government to let United Nations special rapporteur, Mr. Javaid Rehman to visit Iranian National Minorities’ regions, i.e Ahwaz (Khozistan), Azerbaijan, Balochistan, Loristanaat, Kurdistan and Turkmen regions, examining our substantiated claims in this letter.
Member parties:
1 – Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan
2 -Baluchistan People’s Party
3 -Baloch United Front – Federal Republican
4- Kurmanj People Organisation of North Khorasan
5 -Democratic Solidarity Party of Ahwaz
6 – Democratic Union of Azerbaijan
7 -Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan
8- Balochistan Peoples Front
9- Party for the Union of the Bakhtiari, of Loristan and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer- Ahmed 10- The Turkmen Solidarity Council
Jamileh Hassankhali:
Email: jamilah58@gmail.com Telephone: +4673-3026300 Contact person of CNFI in Sweden
Nasser Boladai
Email: Nasser.boladai@balochpeople.org Telephone: +46 739343724
