Iranian
intelligence officials have linked a riot in Tabriz by thousands of ethnic
Azeri Turks with "issues in Khuzestan".
The security services reportedly fired at the crowd killing up to 20
Azeris after demonstrators chanted slogans such as "Azeri people will
not tolerate sufferings" and "Chehraganli, the hero of
Azerbaijan", a reference Mahmudali Chehraganli, the leader of the
Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (SANAM) which campaigns
for self-determination of ethnically Azeri areas of Iran.
Speaking to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), a local intelligence
ministry official said: "the ones inciting unrest and vandalism [...]
were all supported by foreigners." He also accused the US and Israel
of seeking to incite ethnic disputes in Iran, saying: "Now that we
are more united than ever, American and Israeli intelligence services have
put Iran's ethnic issues on the agenda. Exploiting yesterday's move was in
line with that."
The Azeri riot was sparked by a cartoon in a conservative Iranian
newspaper in which the Azeri people, who comprise around a quarter of
Iran's population, were caricatured as cockroaches.
The government closed down the newspaper for "creating divisions
within the people", condemned the cartoon and arrested the cartoonist
and one of the newspaper's editors who are now being held in the notorious
Evin Prison where political dissidents are usually imprisoned.The regime
has also arrested 54 Azeris on charges of vandalism. The police have vowed
to arrest more accused of violence.
The scale of the Azeri unrest has shaken the regime and forced it to take
drastic action to quell the anger shown by Iran's second largest ethnic
group. However, a ban on a weekly newspaper published in Iran's ethnic
Azeri provinces was closed in March on charges of ethnic bias and of
acting against national security. The banning of newspapers due to their
protrayal of ethnic issues has inflamed ethnic divisions in Iran.
Ethnic
Azeris are often subjected to ethnic slurs in Iran and the Azeri language
is effectively banned in schools and restricted in the media. Although
some of Iran's most senior religious and political leaders are Azeri,
Persian culture and the Farsi language is imposed on the non-Persian
minorities who make up at least half the country's population.
These include Ahwazi Arabs, Kurds, Balochis, Turkmen and other groups.
Some regional ethnically Persian groups which have their own dialects and
cultures, such as the traditionally nomadic Lurs, also hold grievances
against the regime over its model of economic development which often
leaves them marginalised.
The Iranian Azeri population is larger than the population of Azerbaijan,
while Iran's Arab population, estimated at up to five million, is greater
than the size of Gulf states such as Kuwait or the UAE.
Ethnic minorities are increasingly mobilised in their opposition to the
government, with a large number of mass demonstrations and rising
militancy seen in provinces such as Kurdistan, Balochistan and Khuzestan,
which is the homeland of the Ahwazi Arabs.
The Ahmadinejad administration is keen to portray the growth of ethnic
movements as a foreign plot, although it has refused to publish the
evidence it claims to have linking ethnic movements to foreign governments.
Links
Azerbaijan Cultural Society
Congress of Nationalities for a
Federal Iran
permalink
keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Iran
links Azeri riots in Tabriz to Ahwaz intifada