World Refugee Day 20 JUNE

A Day to Remember Refugees in Syria

Written by Najla Ahwazi

Today is World Refugee Day, a day of remembrance and recognition of the world’s refugees, of whom there were an estimated 11.4 million in 2007, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some groups number in the millions—like the 3 million Afghans mainly in Pakistan and Iran, or the 2 million Iraqis in Jordan and Syria. Other groups are much smaller, like the few hundred Ahwazi refugees in Damascus, Syria.

While the number of Ahwazis in Syria may be small, their protection concerns are not. Syria, despite its “Pan-Arab” philosophy, maintains tight and secretive relations with Iran. Iranian refugees in Syria are continuously harassed, followed, intimidated, and jailed—not for transgressions against the Syrian state, but for their political activities and opinions in Iran. Last December, four Ahwazi refugees were forced to flee Damascus to seek asylum for the second time, this time in Lebanon. They had been threatened with extradition to Iran, as well as attacks on them and their families. UNHCR, much to its credit, accepted these men once they reached Lebanon, and agreed to continue processing their cases for third-country resettlement. Their cases remain pending.

Other Ahwazi refugees in Syria are not so lucky. In May 2006, Syrian authorities deported several Ahwazi refugees plus a Dutch national of Ahwazi origin; the men were arrested upon return, and according to friends and family in Iran, severely tortured in prison, where they remain, pending execution. Despite the international outcry over Syria’s deportation of these recognized refugees, the damage was done, and Syria’s blatant violation of the principle of non-refoulement of refugees barely acknowledged.

Then, in March 2007, Syrian agents rounded up six young Ahwazi refugees and held them in one of many secret security detention facilities in Damascus. After forty days’ incommunicado detention, the authorities suddenly released five of the men, who were then resettled to a safe third-country. The fate of the sixth young man remained unknown until the end of the year, when he too was suddenly released and allowed to be resettled well outside of Syria. For nine months, however, neither UNHCR nor the family of the 21 year old man were allowed access to him, or even acknowledgement that he was still alive, or even still in Syria.

Again, despite international attention to this case and attempts at many levels to secure information and release of the detained men, Syria’s harassment of Ahwazi refugees continued unabated. A month later, another Ahwazi refugee was arrested at the airport as he prepared to board a flight to a safe third country. He was held for several weeks, and then suddenly released. His case for resettlement had been pending departure for more than six months, held hostage to slow processing and inadequate attention being paid to Ahwazi cases in the Damascus office of UNHCR.

Then, in the early morning of 5 March 2008, a 31-year old Ahwazi refugee named Saeed Hamadi was about to depart for resettlement when he too was arrested at the Damascus airport. The five Ahwazi men who were there to see him off were likewise detained and questioned, but unlike Saeed, not arrested. Saeed disappeared into one of Syria’s detention centers, where he remains, more than 100 days later. Requests by UNHCR to Syrian authorities have fallen on the typical deaf ears of the regime. Appeals to the UN and International Red Cross/Red Crescent have not produced any information, or acknowledgement of his continued detention. No information is forthcoming, so his friends and family wait, uneasy.

Syria’s arrest of departing refugees not only violates the very nature of refugee protection, it also circumvents the mandate and work of UNHCR to protect the most vulnerable from persecution on the grounds of political opinion. The regime’s targeting of Ahwazi Arab refugees is also ironic, given Syria’s own political ideology espousing pan-Arab solidarity. That a non-Arab state, Iran, is manipulating the actions of this Arab strongman, is disturbing. That the Arab League is mute on the topic of human rights violations against Ahwazi Arabs is shameful. That Ahwazi Arab refugees have no safe haven in Syria—and few alternative places to which they can flee persecution—is unacceptable.

On the day he was arrested at the airport, Saeed Hamadi had a plane ticket, valid entry and travel visa for his destination, and exit permission from the Syrian authorities themselves. He committed no crimes in Syria—and none anywhere else for that matter. Quite the contrary: while in asylum in Syria, Saeed was a leader in his community, tirelessly and selflessly looking out for the most vulnerable Ahwazi refugees.

Saeed Hamadi deserves our thanks for his work as a community leader and liaison. He has the right to protection from persecution, in a place where he can live in security and dignity, without the threat of harassment, arrest or execution for his support of minority rights. On this World Refugee Day, Saeed Hamadi should be safe and free, perhaps working or studying a new language, in his new country. Instead, he remains illegally imprisoned, somewhere in Damascus, for no crime beyond being an Ahwazi refugee in Syria. Saeed, like too many others, became the victim of the Iranian regime’s manipulation of rumor and scare tactics, designed to suppress the Arab minority even after they’ve left Iranian soil.

UNHCR’s World Refugee Day campaign for 2008 states, “Millions of refugees live in urgent need of protection. Remember them today.” We remember Saeed Hamadi, and look forward to the day, hopefully soon, when he’ll be released from prison and safely resettled far from Syria and Iran. We just hope that no other Ahwazi refugees are arrested in the meantime, or ever again.

The Ahwazi Arab Struggle and International Reactions

Source

http://www.arabmediawatch.com

Although all Iranian citizens suffer political repression and serious restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, state violence against Ahwazi Arabs is more extreme than against critics in Tehran. Any form of Arab political mobilisation has been crushed, with the government executing anyone suspected of engaging in minority rights activism.

Ahwazi Arab minority rights activists are portrayed by the Iranian government as representing all that it regards as "evil". The government and its supporters routinely denounce Ahwazi rights activists as Satanic, Wahhabi (Sunni extremists), Ba'athist or agents working on behalf of the Israeli, British, US or Saudi governments. Although Ahwazi activists campaign against social, cultural, economic and political exclusion, the government insists they have a religious agenda that is antithetical to the theocratic establishment, the "source of truth." Consequently, Ahwazi dissidents are often put on trial for "enmity with God", which is punishable by death.

Yet, the Ahwazi Arab struggle has been marginalised by exiled opposition groups, such as the monarchists, republicans and even some communists. This is, in part, a legacy of the Pahlavi dynasty's racial nationalism. These "opposition" movements have often declared that they would stand beside the current regime against Ahwazi Arabs to prevent what they see as the destruction of their country by an "alien" race, even when Ahwazis themselves do not advocate secession. Often, supporters of these movements seek to play down the suffering or Ahwazi Arabs or the importance of their struggle to freedom and democracy in Iran, and have lobbied international human rights organizations to eliminate all mention of ethnic discrimination.

Ahwazi Arabs also have few friends in the Arab world, although there is growing recognition of their suffering by some Gulf states such as Kuwait. As they are predominantly Shi'ite, Ahwazis elicit little sympathy from their Sunni Arab brothers. Moreover, many governments in the region are careful not to upset the militaristic and aggressive power lying to their north, viewing the Ahwazi issue as a struggle that could cause them unnecessary problems were they to be involved.

In the international community, the British government, members of the House of Commons, the European Commission and the European Parliament have condemned ethnic discrimination against Ahwazi Arabs and other national groups. However, they have concentrated on individual cases of human rights abuse against Ahwazi Arabs, particularly the use of the death penalty, rather than broader issue of ethnic persecution. British government ministers have voiced concern that any proactive stance could cause more problems than it would solve, confirming Iranian propaganda that claims the British government is funding, training and arming separatist organizations. Neither the UK nor the EU have endorsed the Ahwazi Arabs' right to self-determination or the Mohammerah Declaration of 1979, which embodies the aspirations of Ahwazi Arabs. Yet, if the Iranian regime is to be prevented from driving the Ahwazi people literally off the map, then it's vital that their predicament be placed firmly on the 'political map' here in the West as well as the Arab world. Ahwazi Arabs can neither rely on their Iranian compatriots nor their Arab brothers for support. International solidarity is therefore essential to ending their persecution.

Al-Intifada, Racism or Nationalism?

A reader, who is not an interested party, may find the posts of this weblog biased and even racist. Well, to begin with, one should consider that when I talk of the racism practiced in Iran, I can not mean only the one practiced against Ahwazi people (though I especially mean that). Racism in Iran is practiced against all of non-Persian ethnic groups living in different parts of Iran. I am not going to go into details of this racism. The case is that when I write in my Arabic weblog in Maktoobblog.com some of Arabs from different countries put comments like "what's your problem with such nice Islamic country?!", or "Come on, we are fed up with Al-Orouba(Arabic Identity)", or "Why don't you Ahwazis just live in peace with Persians, why should you be so racist?".
The worst thing that they could say is about Iranian government being an Islamic one! I really love to see Syria or Egypt go under the control of Ikhwan-Al-Muslemin, so that after tasting the secular dictatorship, get stuck with its Islamic version and then it will be a really interesting story.
Then they talk about us being racist? Of course, I do not expect from Arab nations, who live in censure and ignorance their whole life, to understand our situation. But then what becomes of the scholars? What is the position of Arab Scholars when the question is Palestine? Do they call Palestinian resistance against whatever Israel does to them Racism? Or maybe Israel-Palestine issue is the only one understandable to many of Arabs?
Arab Scholars should go and do some readings to see what really Persian theoreticians and thinkers write about them. People like Zarrinkoub, Safa, Afshar, and many more, are only some examples of Persian racism taught in the universities under the name of history and literature.
On the contrary, we Arab of Ahwaz, live among Persians, marry them, befriend them and communicate with them in all of possible ways. And yet, our Arabic race is a brand on our foreheads to let them recognize that we are different, we are the barbarians, we are the ignorant, we are the enemy, and we are the one whom they should watch and not let move. How is an Ahwazi expected to react? The history of human being reveals that the one who keeps silent in front of oppression is doomed to death and abolition. And this is not something I need to repeat for the wise reader. However, I need to emphasize that raising against discrimination cannot be considered racism itself. If I do not talk for my people, if I do not write about their sufferings, then who should do that? And, moreover, with this little weblog, or other few Ahwazi websites, can we even be counted in front of the huge media of Iranian type that advertise for them day and night? Under suppression the most trivial steps of a small forgotten group of people towards freedom count. This movement takes different shapes. For Ahwazi Arab people it gets the shape of nationalism as the only way possible towards freedom, and it is in no way racism. Racism is for the dominated group. Power brings racism. And for the minority group having something in common is only a motivation, an excuse for movement. How can the nationalistic view of a powerless group under oppression be felt in any way racism?
Which represents racism to a fair eye, Palestine, or Israel? Let Arabs remember this when they want to comment on the peaceful human demands of Ahwazi People for their rights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8UXzSIyGyI

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALIREZA ASGHARZADEH

Source: www.durna.eu

various non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran have no animosity against the dominant Persian group. All they want is to be treated equally as equal citizens of their country. It is only the elites of Persian group and their culture that constantly humiliate other groups as subhuman, lacking in culture, lacking in civilization, lacking in linguistic abilities, and so on. For instance, the Persian culture identifies Turks as donkeys (Tork-e khar); it identifies Arabs as dogs (Taazi), and so on and so forth. It bans the languages of non-Persian groups and seeks to supplant them by its own Farsi language. Obviously, here we are dealing with a racist and colonial condition in which one group dominates others.

INTERVIEWER: Lisa A. Hamdoon, University of Toronto

Lisa: I have just finished reading your book, Iran and the Challenge of Diversity: Islamic Fundamentalism, Aryanist Racism, and Democratic Struggles, and must say, am quite impressed. I mean, this book is nothing like the others on Iran and the Middle East. In general, I never find the work coming out of Middle East departments to be critical. Is your work critical because you work outside conservative Mideast departments? Can you tell us what makes your book so different?


Alireza: Thank you Lisa. My work is critical for many reasons. First of all, I am deeply rooted in the critical tradition of social scientific research and consider myself and my work to be a part of this rich tradition. I have always valued critical thinking and reflection, and try to illustrate this through my work. Secondly, the environment is of course very important. If you work in environments that stifle critical reflection, if you work with individuals who do not know the first thing about critical thinking and freedom of expression, of course you won’t be able to produce critical work. If you work in the departments which still espouse positivistic research methodologies of the 1940s and 1950s, of course you won’t be able to do anything of significance. Such methodologies usually consider praising of the dominant order (e.g., patriarchy, racism, sexism, nationalism, nation-statism, the homeland, the nation, the ruler) as positive, impartial, and objective research; but when you critically engage issues of marginality, systemic oppression and exclusion, your work is considered to be “emotional,” “non-objective,” “non-scientific,” etc. Maybe that is why the Middle East departments in general are not able to produce critical work. Particularly, the work coming out of these departments on Iran is for the most part a regurgitation of Orientalist and Aryanist views on Iran’s history, culture, ethnography, anthropology, philology, antiquity, etc. With the exception of a few works, you don’t come across anything challenging, different and fresh.

Lisa: Is that why some of these academics show hostility toward critical work and critical thinkers such as yourself?

Alireza: Yes, that could be one of the reasons. We have to realize that most of these individuals have built reputations for themselves around a repetition and regurgitation of Orientalist views on Iran. So when someone like me comes along and says that, for instance, Iranian is not synonymous with Persian and that Persians are but one minority ethnic group in Iran, constituting about 36 percent of the total population, these folks get furious and start calling us names, this and that.

Lisa: Recently I came across a review of your book written by Dr Kaveh Farrokh and posted on a number of Iranian sites, including one titled “Aryamehr.” The reviewer labels your work as anti-Iran! How would you respond to this?

Alireza: These kinds of labels are normally used in dictatorial environments and by individuals with extremely undemocratic mindsets. Such labelling represents a very reactionary approach to any kind of text. What does it mean for a book to be anti-Iran? Imagine that you write a book criticizing the Canadian government’s approach to Aboriginal peoples, and then someone turns around and labels your work as anti-Canada! Or someone critiques the caste system in India and is labelled as anti-India! These are fascistic methods that are used to stifle free expression and to silence the voice of dissent. My work exposes the unbearable racism and Hitlerite Aryanism practised in Iran since 1925. In any racist situation, there are those who benefit from racism and there are those who suffer from it. Those who benefit from the existence of racism and systemic oppression in Iran label my work as anti-Iran. It is as simple as that. But they are in the minority. My work speaks to the suffering and marginalization of Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens, Baluchs, Lors, Bakhtyaris and other excluded groups such as women, workers, peasants, students and so forth. And these are the oppressed majority in Iran.

You have to realize that in all racist environments, the dominant group who benefits from racism comes to believe that it has the sole ownership over the entire country. Just as it seeks to define ‘the nation’ in terms of its own ethnicity and identity; so too it imposes its language on the entire population, masquerading it as the so-called “national language;” its history masquerades as “the national history,” its identity becomes the identity of all peoples living in that country. So if someone critiques the privileged position of this dominant group, that critique gets identified as a critique of the entire ‘nation’ and country. This exclusionary act in itself testifies to the existence of racism and systemic oppression in Iran. The way they try to intimidate us, to silence us by threatening to get us expelled from our jobs, all these McCarthyist methods show that we are dealing with very undemocratic and indeed fascistic mindsets. In my book I clearly show that this racism is not limited to the government in power but includes many writers and intellectuals from the dominant group as well. You say they identify my book as “anti-Iran” on a website called “Aryamehr.” You might be interested to know that “Aryamehr,” the site you say has published this review, in Persian means “the light of Aryans!” This title alone should suffice to expose the kind of ugly racism with which we are dealing here. So, is it any wonder that those glorifying “the light of Aryans” to call an anti-racist book “anti-Iran”?

Lisa: In addition to you, other authors and academics like Brenda Shaffer, Mehrdad Izadi, and Naser Pourpirar are also identified as “anti-Iran.” How would you comment on this?

Alireza: Brenda Shaffer wrote a wonderful book in 2002 titled "Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity." Through this work she studied, among other things, the impact of the independence of northern Azerbaijan on the processes of identity formation in southern or Iranian Azerbaijan. Brenda’s research showed that the independence of northern Azeris has a major influence on how Azeris of Iran (will) identify themselves. She reached a conclusion that contrary to the dominant perspective, Iranian Azeris view themselves as a distinct ethnic group within Iran. That is to say, they are cognizant of their distinct history, their language, their ethnicity, and their nationality; and they are aware of their differences with other ethnic groups such as the Persians, the Kurds, the Arabs, and so on. This was a sound scholarly observation that had been misrepresented by generations of Orientalist scholars. So when the book came out, these so-called scholars of Iranian studies started dismissing it, obviously not so much from a scholarly standpoint but for a variety of ideological reasons.

However, those of us who were active in the field knew very well that Brenda had hit the nail right on the head. Azerbaijanis were a divided nation and any development in one part of this nation would inevitably influence the other part. Now after five years since the publication of Brenda’s work, everybody can see how objective and accurate her study was; and how vacuous her attackers have been. All you have to do is take a look at what is going on in the streets of Tabriz, Urmiyeh, Aradabil, and Zanjan; see how hundreds of thousands of people came out on May 22 last year to reclaim their Azerbaijani and Turkic identity; take a look at the prisons in (south) Azerbaijan and you’ll see they are full of individuals identifying themselves as “hoviyyat-talab” (reclaimers of identity). Brenda Shaffer had hypothesized this situation several years ago, when the Azerbaijani movement in Iran was still quite invisible. If her book is not a scholarly work, then I wonder what a scholarly work is, filling of thousands of pages about Div-e Sepid, Ashkboos, Rostam-e Dastaan, and other mumbo-jumbo from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi? Or weaving colourful narratives about “Takht-e Jamshid” or Persepolis, an Orientalist constructed Achaemenid palace that now local Iranian historians, architects and engineers prove with certainty that never existed?


Lisa: Naser Pourpirar is also labelled as Anti-Iran. I noticed you reference him quite a bit in your book. What is his story?

Alireza: Naser Poorpirar (or Pourpirar) is a very intelligent historian, and a very complex character. I respect him for his originality and his independent research, but I don’t agree with his methodology and with some of his conclusions.

Lisa: How do you mean? Can you expand on it a bit more?

Alireza: You see, in my book I explore some aspects of an emergent anti-colonial and critical historiography in the region. In Africa, for example, we have T.O. Ranger who initiates over 40 years ago the importance of writing African history from an African standpoint, based on African epistemologies and methodologies. And in India, we have the Subaltern Studies Collective, a group of researchers and scholars who come together in early 1980s and begin writing a history of India and South Asia from the standpoint of the subaltern, the marginalized and excluded. This kind of historiography is not a top-down method of history writing; it is a bottom-up historiography. And this is a major departure from all sorts of elitist, ‘nationalist,’ Orientalist and colonialist historiography. Well, in Iran this historiography starts effectively with Naser Poorpirar. For the first time in Iran’s modern history, a local historian decides to take on the challenging task of re-examining a history written by foreign missionaries, travellers, priests, ambassadors, anthropologists, philologists, and historians. And this local historian is Naser Poorpirar. No one else has done this before him. In Iran he is the first to produce a local historiography by exposing misconceptions and misrepresentations inherent in the Orientalist historiography of Iran. He has done a great job in this field and he will be remembered because of this.

Lisa: What about the problematic area of his work that you mentioned?

Alireza: You might have noticed that my book starts with a mild criticism of Edward Said’s Orientalism. I critic Said for failing to properly discuss “Aryanism.” The reason for this is, in an Iranian context we are dealing with Aryanism more than anything else. As a matter of fact, in my book I show the evolution of this concept of “Aryan race” from its inception up to the emergence of fascism and Nazism in Europe. I show clearly in the book how Adolph Hitler’s definition of this term does not differ that much from its current definition in dominant Iranian literature. In an Iranian context then, we need an interrogation of this concept of ‘Aryanism’ more than any other term. Poorpirar does not do an effective job in this area. Aryanism, moreover, was a discourse constructed to reject Judaism, Semitic races and biblical religions. It was an anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish project from the very beginning. How can such a project be manufactured by the Jews? And herein lies a major contradiction in Poorpirar’s methodology.

Lisa: Is he saying Aryanism is constructed by the Jews?

Alireza: He does not discuss Aryanism per se. He tends to indicate that the current animosity among different ethnic groups in Iran and in the region is a result of historical Jewish conspiracy. Now the way I see it, there are several things wrong with this picture. To begin with, various non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran have no animosity against the dominant Persian group. All they want is to be treated equally as equal citizens of their country. It is only the elites of Persian group and their culture that constantly humiliate other groups as subhuman, lacking in culture, lacking in civilization, lacking in linguistic abilities, and so on. For instance, the Persian culture identifies Turks as donkeys (Tork-e khar); it identifies Arabs as dogs (Taazi), and so on and so forth. It bans the languages of non-Persian groups and seeks to supplant them by its own Farsi language. Obviously, here we are dealing with a racist and colonial condition in which one group dominates others. There is a huge power configuration and power imbalance at work here that Poorpirar’s conspiracy theory does not and cannot address.

Instead of focussing our attention on Persian racism and its elimination through our democratic anti-racist struggles, he wants to divert our attention to some historical wild goose chase regarding Purim, this and that. Now I have nothing against doing historical research; but I am against linking in a deterministic way the events of 2500 years ago to contemporary situations. Contemporary conditions require contemporary solutions. It is not a Jewish conspiracy that today the language of the Kurd, the Turk, the Arab, the Baluch, the Lor and the Turkmen is banned in Iran. It is a result of an 80-year-old racism. Of course, we should go back to history and try to see what has happened that we have ended up this way; we should try to analyze, if we can, the historical roots and causes of our contemporary problems. But this is different than getting ourselves stuck in the swamps of history. An engagement with history is useful insofar as it provides insights for our contemporary issues. Historicism, antiquarianism, and a superficial fascination with ancient history will not solve our contemporary problems.

The other loophole in Poorpirar’s conspiracy theory is the phenomenon of colonialism. For the most part, Aryanism and bio-genetic racism were discursive constructs to justify the colonization of other lands by white Europeans. The idea was that the white Nordic race was a superior race genetically, mentally, and culturally while other races were inferior and could not create higher civilizations, could not properly run their own affairs, could not manage their own resources. It was thus seen as a mission of the white Aryan race to colonize these supposedly inferior races and run their affairs for them. You cannot single out Iran, as Poorpirar does, and say that in the case of Iran it was a Jewish conspiracy to infiltrate Aryanism into the country, but in the case of India, for example, it was the work of British colonialism. This historical conspiracy theory does not hold much water.

Furthermore, if the current racism in Iran was a result of Jewish conspiracy, then the presumably anti-Zionist Islamic regime in Iran should have done away with this racism immediately after dethroning the shah and seizing the political power in 1979. But why didn’t they? Why doesn’t the current Islamic regime lift the ban on Non-Persian languages? Why does it not allow these languages to become languages of instruction, of schooling, of reading and writing for their speakers? Is this too a Jewish conspiracy? Is the current Islamic regime in Iran controlled by the Jews as well? The historical conspiracy theory is a ridiculous argument promoted particularly by the government of president Ahmadinejad and his fundamentalist supporters. Thinkers like Pourpirar, in order to survive and to write, capitalize on these foolish sentiments so that they may get some kind of immunity from Iran’s sensor and torture organizations.

Lisa: So why doesn’t the government do these things that you mention?

Alireza: Well, why didn’t the apartheid regime in South Africa relinquish its power and its racism willingly? Why does not any group benefiting from systemic racism denounce its power and give away its privileges willingly? Why does any dictatorial person or regime cling on to power till the last moment? It is about power and privilege and maintaining it forever. As I discuss in the book, Iranian racism is not limited to the government and state apparatuses. There are many intellectuals, academics, writers and thinkers outside the government circle that support this racism. You cannot identify a dozen Persian intellectuals who support the lifting of the ban on the use of non-Farsi languages, let alone fighting for the human rights of their oppressed countrymen! These members of the dominant group do not support the anti-racist struggle of non-Persian communities in Iran simply because they themselves benefit from the ongoing racism. They are not on the receiving end of racism and they benefit psychologically, materially and culturally from the smooth functioning of this racism. At this day and age one would expect that as intellectuals, writers and scholars they would start familiarizing themselves with their own privileged position, and would start interrogating such position. Unfortunately this has not happened in Iran. It has happened in India, in South Africa, and even in Euro-western contexts by interrogating notions of “whiteness” and “white privilege;” but not in Iran and amongst Persian intellectuals.

Lisa: In the book you talk of democratic struggles for a democratic Iran. How does your version of a democratic Iran look like?

Alireza: In order to answer your question, we have to ask another question: What should an Iranian version of democracy be based on? In my view, the first step should start from the acknowledgment that Iran is a diverse multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural society. Any democratic system should be based on a humane, fair and equitable management of this rich diversity in economic, linguistic, educational, political, and socio-cultural realms. This could be the real bases for a democratic Iran. How well prepared are Iranian intellectuals to come down off the clouds of abstraction and discuss democracy in the real society, among real communities of difference? Obviously, those exiles who have the ears of the White House and Hollywood and who are awaiting to bring back the monarchy through “the baby shah” are not even close to understanding democracy. Likewise, those who mistake democracy with Arab-bashing and Islamophobia, on the one hand, and a return to a supposedly golden era of “the Aryan race” of Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes have no idea about democracy. What I mean by democracy is a way of running the affairs of one’s community/society which is based on principles of human rights, equal access to resources, respect for difference, respect for freedom of expression, and more importantly, respect for the right for self determination of individuals, communities, and ethnicities. This right for self determination includes political, economic, cultural, and collective rights and freedoms at both individual and communal levels. This kind of democracy cannot be imposed either from above or outside. It has to be developed and implemented in accordance with the requirements of local conditions, local needs and demands of diverse communities.

Arrest of An Ahwazi Activist in Syria

Mohammara News Agency (MONA)

Saeed Hamadi, Ahwazi refugee and human rights activist, has been arrested in the morning of fifth of March (at 2:00 am) in Damascus airport. His destiny and where he was transferred to have remained unknown.
Saeed Hamadi was under the protection of UNHCR. He was arrested by Syrian security forces shortly before his supposed fly to Copenhagen.
Attempts of UNHCR offices in Syria and Geneva to find out about the destiny of this Ahwazi human rights activist have not been successful.
Syrian government has been arresting Ahwazi activists who come to find a shelter in Syria since 2005, when Ahwazi people demonstrated against the highly practiced discrimination by Iranian government that has its roots in racist views against Arabs.
Three Ahwazi activists who were arrested by Syrian Government in 2006 and were handed over to Iran, are now facing the danger of execution.

ARE IRANIANS ANTI-ARAB?

by Amir Taheri

Asharq Alawsat

March 30, 2007

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/20673

For the past few weeks, the Iranian blogosphere has been buzzing with a debate about two ancient letters the authenticity of which is doubted.
The first is supposed to have been written by Omar Ibn Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam to Yazdegerd III, Emperor of Persia, sometime in the 7th century AD. In it, the Caliph calls on the emperor to abandon his Zoroastrian faith and convert to Islam in order to avoid war in this world and fire in the hereafter.
The second letter, supposed to be Yazdegerd's reply, is a brief re-statement of the core values of pre-Islamic Iranians.
Although the letters have been available to scholars for centuries, their authenticity was never established.
Some scholars believe that the letters were forged long after their supposed authors had entered history. One hypothesis is that the letters were composed in the 10th century as Iran reached a tipping point, after which it became a Muslim majority nation.
What is remarkable is that both letters express virtually the same values. Both insist that monotheism is the only acceptable truth, and underline such concepts as piety, justice, equity, and self-reliance.
The reader is left with the impression that what is at stake in this epistolary duel is not religion but national identity. In effect, Yazdegerd is saying that if the test of faith is monotheism and ethical life, the Persians passed it soon after they appeared in history.
The two letters reflect some of the traditional anxieties of most Iranians and the schizophrenia that Iran has suffered from since it converted to Islam en masse.
One side of Iran is proud of its Islamic identity, sometimes to the point of arrogance. The average Iranian believes that his nation contributed more to Islam than any other. Some Iranian writers, citing the grammarian Sibuyeh and the lexicographer Ruzbeh as examples, claim that Persians played a key role in shaping the Arabic language. The Persian ancestry of great Arab poets, from Abu Nuwas and Mahyar al-Daylami to al-Jawahiri is seldom forgotten by Iranians.
Soon after Iranians started converting to Islam, a number of fables were invented to facilitate the passage.
One was that Hussein Ibn Ali, a grandson of the Prophet (PBUH) had married Bibi Shahrbanu, the youngest daughter of Emperor Yazdegerd, the author of the supposed letter, thus starting an Arabo-Persian bloodline that would continue through successive Imams of Shi'ism. The deference shown to descendants of Hussein and Shahrbanu, known in Persian as "sayyeds"(gentlemen), helped soften of anti-Arab sentiments.
Another side of Iran, however, is gripped by the fear of being regarded as Arab, or even mildly Arabized, in any form. It is this fear that has prompted anti-Arab sentiments in Persian literature.
But are Iranians in general anti-Arab?
This was the question discussed by Iranian and foreign scholars at a seminar in Tehran last February. Although most participants answered the question in the negative, the seminar did not produce a consensus.
There are two distinct images of the Arab in Persian literature.
One image is that of rapacious marauders.
The classical Persian word for the Arab is "tazi" which means "raider". The most evil figure in Persian literature is Zahhak, the cruel ruler who becomes an instrument of the devil. He is presented as an Arab, born in Jerusalem and invited by the Persian aristocracy to become king and end dynastic feuds. However, once his cruel nature is exposed, the people, led by the ironsmith Kaveh, revolt and chain Zahhak in Mount Damavand, the majestic summit near Tehran.
Any student of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) would be moved by the description of Zahhak's misdeed.
Another image of the Arab in Persian literature is the opposite. Here, the word Arab denotes wisdom, piety, generosity and courage.
Saadi, one of Iran's greatest poets, is one example of Arabophilia. In his Golestan (The Rose Garden),a collection of parables, he often closes an argument by stating: As Arabs say�.
Many of his heroes such as Luqman, Shibli, Hatam of Tayy and Dhulnun the Egyptian, whom he portrays as models of humanity, are Arabs.
Apart from Ferdowsi and a few minor poets such as Suzani of Samarkand and Athireddin of Akhsikath, who expressed some anti-Arab sentiments, most Persian classical poets had a positive view of the Arabs. Even then, as one speaker at the Tehran seminar noted, the anti-Arab verses ascribed to Ferdowsi may have been added to his Shahnameh by others.
Such great poets as Nizami and Jaami composed long narrative poems with Arab heroes. Qays and Leila and Wameq and Azra became iconic figures for most Iranians.
One speaker at the Tehran seminar argued that xenophobia is a sign of self-doubt. Thus, whenever Iranians felt confident in their identity, they did not manifest anti-Arab sentiments. It was only when they felt that their Persian-ness was under threat that they looked for an "other" to hate. Even then, the "other" that the Persians found was seldom the Arab.
A more frequent object of hatred was the Turk who was identified with war, cruelty, massacre and pillage in both Persian literature and folklore.
The Arabs ruled parts of Iran for some 80 years, before local Persian princes emerged in Sajestan and Khorassan. Various Turkish dynasties, however, ruled Iran for over 1000 years. (The last Turkic dynasty ended in 1925.)
Nevertheless, fomenting anti-Arab sentiments has always been easier than encouraging hatred of the Turks. The reason is that at least a quarter of Iran's population speaks one of several dialects of Turkish. In most cases, these ethnic Persians have lost their original language and adopted a Turkic dialect. And, yet, they identify with their language, not ethnic origin.
That, in turn, makes it difficult for the mass of Iranians to express anti-Turk sentiments.
As the Tehran seminar showed, much of the anti-Arab sentiment in Iran today was produced over the past century or so, largely due to the emergence of European-style nationalism which emphasized the concepts of blood and soil.
Turkey under Ataturk also exported anti-Arabism to Iran under Reza Shah Pahlavi. Just as Ataturk had ordered a "purification" of the Turkish language by replacing as many Arab words as possible, Reza Shah created an academy to purge the Persian vocabulary of its Arab component. Over a 10-year period, some 5000 Arabic words were replaced with Persian ones, often borrowed from obscure texts or coined by academicians.
Ahmad Kasravi, one of Iran's greatest intellectuals in the 20th century, became an advocate of de-Arabzation along with other prominent writers such as Sadegh Hedayat, Ibrahim Pour-Davoud and Massoud Farzad. Abdul-Hussein Zarrinkub's book "Two Centuries of Silence", a damning account of Arab domination, became a best-seller in the 1960s.
The eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s did not lead to any significant increase in anti-Arab sentiments in Iran. But the Khomeinist regime, especially under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has nurtured its version of anti-Arabism. In this version, the Arabs are castigated because they are supposedly not "Islamic" enough!

Shirinshahr

http://www.errachidia.org/sport/video-ethnic-2-OyJ2jnbPX9M.html

Documentary by Al-Ahwaz TV on the exclusive Persian township of Shirinshahr and the ethnic cleansing of Ahwazi Arabs. Shirinshahr is based on unique footage shot on the road to the ethnic Persian township currently under construction. The new town is being built on land confiscated from Ahwazi farmers. The film shows the constrast between the abject poverty of Ahwazi Arabs compared to the large investments being ploughed into exclusive Persian settlements built on their land.