The honourable Mr. Chairman of the Danish Parliament
Ladies and Gentlemen members of the Parliament,
Esteem learned participant’s members of the European Union and all invited guests, greeting to you all
I would like first to extend our sincere thanks to the Danish Parliament for its important initiative to look into the national rights of peoples and ethnic minorities and communities in Iran. We in the Al-Ahwaz Arab People Democratic-Popular Front and in Alahwaz would like to express our thanks for undertaking this important initiative.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it is said that old empires were built on the shoulders of the oppressed people, and this principle is true for the colonial powers by its oppression of people of its colonies.
Today these old empires and colonial powers are living side by side with their former oppressed people and people of former colonies. We se Britain attending the commonwealth with its former colonies, and France with its Franco phonic gathering. We see also that states which contain many nations within it border by repression are forced to withdraw on reach a voluntary agreement with these nationalities was transformed into the soviet union and after the dissolution of the soviet Union all states became independent including federal Russia, Yugoslavia is changed way of another to independent states with full sovereignty each one making their contribution to world civilization progress.
Of course there is another example for bring together nations in a union of brotherhood, I mean the EU in which all these nations decided to co-exist under one system in a region where wars between these nations was the norm, in one voluntary union.
All these are examples for decisions taken for a happy life for the people and to grant everyone his just right without injustice and inequality or under occupation, colonial rule or repression.
As for issues related to the people of Iran, it is valuable to talk about Iran specifically;
Iran of today sometime refers to as Persia was the scene for many invasion and settlement by many nations, later on Persia became the homeland of the Persian people in the form of contemporary state of Iran. Iran itself occupied the surrounding regions and ruled them for long time. These people achieved freedom and set up their independent states. On the other hand few of the contemporary states in the Caucasian region were annexed from Iran under the terms of Turkmanjye and Golistan treaties among many, despite the continuous claims by some Iranian zealous for these independent states to be returned back to Iran.
It is useful here to mention the independent of Bahrain, in which their people exercised their rights for self-determination, the people decided to be independent instead of being part of Iran.
Despite what have been mentioned before about the possibilities of nations co-existing the current state of Iran pursed in the last 80 years policy of repression and suppression of all demands for freedom by peoples and for their national and human rights. It has persisted in its policy to obliterate the national identity of the peoples and denying their existence. My colleagues representatives of political organizations and parties will deal with what is currently happening to their peoples so I will talk about what the Arab people has suffered in our homeland Alahwaz. I will give you a brief account of the situation there without gong into the historical events due to the restriction of the time.
The contemporary Alahwaz was an Emirate known as “Al-Mohammara Emirate”, which the Reza Shah armies occupied in 1925. Al-Ahwaz was under an Emirate rule and its only contact with Iran was its high commissioner representing the foreign ministry of the Gajarian Dynasty on level and economic relationships and the payment of annual charge to Persia to provide security on one hand and to stop her from interfering in Al-Ahwaz internal affair, it also a token of the alliance between the two in opposition to those planning to invade Al-Mohammara such as the Ottoman Empire.
Al-Mohammara at that time had its own post and telegraph international systems connecting it directly with the British network, two British consulates were established one in Al-Mohammara city“Today called Khorramshahr” the capital of the Emirate and the second one in the city of Al-Ahwaz.
This situation changed suddenly after the October Bolshevik Revolution with its liberation slogans, as a result of this change Britain was forced to change its regional strategy and decided to transform Iran into a strong barrier to stop the Soviet Expansion to the south towards the Gulf and the British colonies there. It was vital to strength Persia economically as it has vast human resources, the oil wealth in Al-Ahwaz became its worst enemy, since then our people has suffered terribly under the yoke of a dictatorship that the history has rarely seen until now for over 88 years. Britain discarded its ally Sheik Khazaal the ruler of Al-Mohammara Emirate and re-alliance itself with Reza Shah for the above mentioned reasons, and his army was trained under the supervision of general Ironside. Reza Shah then led this army against the guerrilla leader Meriza Kochak Khan in the northern forest and was able to overthrow the Bolshevik Republic established in northern Iran. After that Reza Shah became Minster of War and after that Prime Minster, repressing all forces and controlling all centres of power and decision making, after that he re-directed his armies and soldiers towards to invade and occupy Al-Ahwaz, taking prisoner its Emir Sheik Khazaal under the cover of night and sending him to Tehran secretly deceive and trickery. Since that event Reza Shah was able to incorporate all semi independent provinces in addition to those recently occupied areas like Al-Ahwaz which had never before this event was beyond the reach of Persian army and when some kings of Persia wanted to interfere in its affair they would maintained a presence for few day or weeks and abandoned it and withdrew from its territories.
After proclaiming himself Shah of Persia, Reza Shah began his racist policy to personalise Al-Ahwaz. In 19336 he ordered the killing of the imprisoned Emir of Al-Ahwaz in Tehran by strangulation him; he gave his orders to a group of racists to change the names of all Arabic cities in Al-Ahwaz, as a result: Al-Ahwaz was re-named Khouzistan Province, AlMohammara city to Khorramshahr, Aob, and badan to Abadan, Alkhfaji, ya to Sousangerd. They also changed the names of other cities and over 85% of the Arabic villages. The policy of persianization continued to achieve the following objectives:
To efface the Arabic identity in Al-Ahwaz historically, linguistically, and culturally, Demographic changes were carried in favour of non-Arabic race in the region within a systematic planned policy, as a result of which over one million non-Arabs are currently living in the area at a time when Ahwazian people are forced to seek employment in the Arab Gulf States or forcing many of them to migrant to other part of Iran losing in the process their identity at a time Al-Ahwaz oil reserves represents the second largest in the world and oil revenue provide 83% of the Iranian Gross National Income.
This policy of impoverishment and agriculture land confiscation has continued during which Arabic farmers were replaced by others for demographical and political objectives, for example, for Sugar Cane Project 125,000 hectares of agricultural land was confiscated and over 11000 workers were employed, more than 8500 of them were brought from Iran interior. In addition a policy to make Hawaiian people homeless was purse as a result of which thousands of them fled the country fearing repression and persecution among them twenty thousands went to neighbouring Iraq following the massacre of Black Wednesday during which over 800 martyrs and wounded were fallen in the city of Almohammara “Khorramshahr”, others fled to the Gulf States and many thousands to Europe, America, and other countries, there is a solid link between the racist policy of the regime and the changing of our region demography.
It is important to bring to you attention the confiscation of rivers and to divert their flow to benefit Iran interior or to political projects that has the objectives of encourage the immigration of non-Arab to Alahwaz, they also continue to sell fresh water to neighbouring states such as Kuwait and Qatar, according to contracts approved in the last 3 years.
As for the political repression, it does not require much details and I can summarized it by the fact that, it use to be one section in Qaroon Prison in Alahwaz dedicated for political prisoners, now we have 4 prisons in which Ahwazian political activists are held in Alahwaz city, in addition more in most of the Arabic cities and many more detention centres. The sentences ranging from 15 to execution using cranes and heavy tractors.
One more important crime against our people is currently in implementation, which is the encouragement of the use of the poisoned drug Heroin among our people, in addition to opium, the price of Heroin is so cheap it is the same as the price of cigarettes about 30 cent of a Dollar, providing the addicts with 24 hours supply of this drug, the dealers are even in the prisons to hook political activists.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our Ahazian Arab people are peaceable and has no desire to be dragged into a circle of violence with the current regime until now, but we can not foresee the future as a result of Iranian authorities refusal to reconsider its treatment of our national rights and their persianization, degradation, denying our people identity, repression, impoverishment and starvation, imprisonment, exile and execution policies will breed violence definitely in the future if peaceful means became ineffective and failure.
Our presence today among the honourable members of the Danish Parliament provides us with the hope and belief that the people of the world and their representatives are responding to the cry of our peoples in Iran, we have high hope that this positive response will widened to cover all of Europe and its parliaments, due to the respect and admiration that the Danish Parliament and people enjoy in relation to defending human rights issues.
The wended the resulted from the racist policy of the regime and dominate culture on one side and the peoples of Iran will not heal by wishes only, but by serious efforts on part of the peoples on one side and the forces of good in the world on the other hand, we expect support to these forces to end the continues bleeding in Iran. Our people and all peoples demand their rights for self-determination, similar to all people of the world so that we can bridge the gap of the development away from suppression, repression and injustice.
We are sure that other repressed peoples of Iran share our vision and the fact that we desperately need the support of the peoples of the world, as we are confronting backward, repressive and viscous regime the only language understands is the language of blood, killing, exile and execution, where it built more prisons than schools and spent on the army more than on health.
With our thanks and greeting and our wishes of freedom to all peoples of the world.
AHWAZIAN ARAB PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC, POPULAR FRONT