The Iranian regime is stepping up its land confiscation programme in order to expand Persian settlements in Al-Ahwaz (Khuzestan), despite condemnation by the UNCHR and European Parliament last year.
The Shahinshahr and Ramin settlements are the focus of a new wave of land confiscations, in addition to the ethnic cleansing being carried out along the Arvand Free Trade Zone along the Shatt Al-Arab.
The regime is encouraging ethnic Persians to settle on the land confiscated from Ahwazi Arab farmers by placing advertisements in Faris-speaking provinces and cities. The adverts promise cheap fully furnished apartments with all amenities, which is in stark contrast to the squalor of the slums and villages where most Ahwazi Arabs reside.
A number of exclusively Persian settlements have already been built on Ahwazi Arab land, including the Ramin-1 and Ramin-2 townships, Shahinshahr, Shirinshar and Jufir. New Persian townships are being constructed on a daily basis. Similar ones are being built daily.
Some of these settlements were highlighted by Miloon Kothari, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, following a visit to Al-Ahwaz last year (click here for report).
In an interview, Kothari said: "when you visit Ahwaz ... there are thousands of people living with open sewers, no sanitation, no regular access to water, electricity and no gas connections ... why is that? Why have certain groups not benefited? ... Again in Khuzestan, ... we drove outside the city about 20 km and we visited the areas where large development projects are coming up - sugar cane plantations and other projects along the river - and the estimate we received is that between 200,000-250,000 Arab people are being displaced from their villages because of these projects. And the question that comes up in my mind is, why is it that these projects are placed directly on the lands that have been homes for these people for generations? I asked the officials, I asked the people we were with. And there is other land in Khuzestan where projects could have been placed which would have minimised the displacement."
A recent official announcement by the Iranian regime states: "The new company that oversees the new city of Ramin (outside Ahwaz) in accordance with the article 2 of the below law and other laws pertaining to purchase and confiscation of lands for building cities and other military and civilian developments, law # 1358/11/117, issued and approved by the respected revolutionary council, is planning to expand the first phase of the New city of Ramin, and needs take over and possess parts of area of Sanicheh and Jalieah, plaque # 29 and 42 of zone 5 of Ahwaz, in accordance with the attached layout [pictured].
"Therefore, this announcement will be published only twice in one month, for informing the owners of said properties, who must repond within 15 days from the publication of this announcement, with their ownership documents, to this location, for their submittal (relinquishment) of their properties to us. Attend the office of this company located in Kianpars corner of Sixth Street West, 2nd floor.
"If owners do not visit the office, the expropriation and confiscation will continue to take place according to the law."
The land confiscation programme - including the Arvand Free Zone - is in line with the "ethnic restructuring" programme outlined in a top secret letter written by Sayed Mohammad-Ali Abtahi when he served as Iran's Vice-President. The letter was leaked to the international media last year, prompting the April intifada in Al-Ahwaz. (click here to download the letter) (2/24/2006 10:13:39 PM)

Amnesty International has expressed its outrage over an "alarming rate" of executions in Iran, particularly the use of the death penalty against children.
The human rights organisation has recorded 28 executions so far in 2006, following at least 94 in 2005 - although it states that "the true figure is likely to be much higher." The use of the death penalty is increasingly being used against political prisoners.
An Amnesty press release highlighted the case of two Ahwazi Arabs who face imminent execution - Mohammad Ali Sawari and Mehdi Nawaseri. The British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS) highlighted the cases of Mehdi Nawaseri and his brother Abdolreza Nawaser on 21 February (click for details).
The Iranian regime has stated that seven of 45 people accused of bomb attacks in Ahwaz had been convicted of "enmity with God, corruption on earth and murder". Amnesty says the offences carry heavy penalties, including "execution, cross amputation [amputation of right hand and left foot], crucifixion for three days, or banishment."
Amnesty states that it "recognizes the rights and responsibilities of governments to bring to justice those suspected of committing recognizably criminal offences, but the organization is unconditionally opposed to the use of the death penalty as the ultimate violation of the right to life. It therefore urges the Iranian authorities to impose an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty and to abide by its international obligations not to execute anyone for an offence committed when they were a child."
Link: "Iran: Worrying trends in use of death penalty" - Amnesty International Press Release, 24 February 2006 (2/24/2006 9:35:40 PM)

University of Cambridge academic Gabriel Glickman has called for greater recognition of cultural and ethnic diversity as a basis for democratic change in Iran.
Writing for the Henry Jackson Society think tank, the Pembroke College historian stresses the need to brak from the notion that "the nation's key political dynamic as that of a popular theocratic mainstream, opposed by a fragile minority of reformists, whose cultural base - the student movement - is under vigorous assault."
He criticises the 'realist' tendency within the British Foreign Office, which hopes that 'moderates' can emerge to lead Iran by accommodating and appeasing the Iranian regime. Such arguments, he says, "deny the reality of dissident political forces."
Glickman advocates a "re-interpretation" of Iran to recognise the social forces that lie outside the regime. He states: "The greatest of our Iranian misconceptions surrounds the country's ethnic composition. A Tehran-centred analysis exaggerates the capacity of the ruling Persian community that, in reality, probably comprises less than 50 per cent of the Iranian population." The rest of the population comprises Arabs, Azeris, Balochis, Kurds and Turkomen.
The West has chosen to ignore the ethnic cleansing, state terrorism, land confiscation and environmental destruction faced by ethnic minorities such as the Ahwazi Arabs under an Islamic Republic which has adopted the creed of Persian ultra-nationalism advanced by the Pahlavi monarchy.
"Western disregard is cruelly ironic," he writes, "when Tehran's surface rationale for mistreatment of the Ahwazis is a belief that they represent 'the stooges of foreign nations' and British imperial designs."
However, ethnic minorities have developed a "complete, alternative and increasingly coherent" blueprint for the reform of Iran. The Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), which includes parties representing minority groups, has published a manifesto that looks to establishe "a democratic, independent and non-aligned Iran", including "separation of religion and state" and "equality of men and women."
Glickman acknowledges the role the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) has played in "the need for the realization of democracy and human rights in Iran", against "continuing systematic social, ethnic and cultural discrimination ... The upshot is a genuine moral and intellectual challenge to the orthodoxy communicated from Tehran.
"Taking these alternative voices into account, a re-interpretation of Iran should shape a new response to the current nuclear crisis, not by propelling us into a drive for war, but by encouraging a more robust policy in the region; based unapologetically on liberal democratic virtues. Western powers can work to foster connections between minority groups, lend support to a unified vision of reform, and enhance the credibility of liberal voices at the forefront of the disaffected communities, to offset separatist claims.
"Now is the time for the West to let re-interpretation bring about re-engagement, by embracing the democratic possibility."
The Henry Jackson Society was founded to support "the pursuit of a robust foreign policy ... based on clear universal principles such as the global promotion of the rule of law, liberal democracy, civil rights, environmental responsibility and the market economy." Its patrons include Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former US Assistant Secretary of Defence Richard Perle, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Jack Sheehan and Former CIA Director James Woolsey. Among the list of signatories of its founding principles are senior politicians, academics, leading journalists and former military chiefs.
Links
"Re-interpreting Iran", by Gabriel Glickman, 13 February 2006
"Democracy, Ethnicity and Repression in Iran: The Plight of the Ahwazi Arabs", by Daniel Brett (Chairman, British Ahwazi Friendship Society), HJS, 27th November 2005
"Safeguarding the Ahwazi Arabs: Essential for a Stable and Democratic Middle East", by Daniel Brett, 11th December 2005 (2/24/2006 2:53:43 AM)

London's Financial Times has reported that the US Marines Corps Intelligence has launched a probe into unrest in Ahwaz with fears heightening that increased ethnic oppression by the Iranian could lead to the country's fragmentation.
The Iranian regime has already accused the British government of responsibility for bomb attacks in Ahwaz, although it has failed to produce any evidence to back up its claims. There is no suggestion as yet that the US's interest in the Ahwazi issue is anything but an attempt to better understand the ethnic composition and commonalities between Iran and Iraq. The FT states that Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Long, a marines spokesman, confirmed that the marines had commissioned Hicks and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic groups. Hicks and Associates is a subsidiary of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
The FT reports that: "US intelligence experts suggested the marines' effort could indicate early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. Or it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for marines stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration.
"Other experts affiliated to the Pentagon suggest the investigation merely underlines that diverse intelligence wings of the US military were seeking to justify their existence at a time of plentiful funding."
Karim Abdian, head of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation, participated in the research on the understanding that the results would be made public, but did not know the motives behind the research. Hicks and Associates was referred to him by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS) several months ago after it was approached to give evidence. BAFS did not participate in the research and has had no further contacts with the US government or its contractors.
Abdian told the FT that the SAIC researcher had asked him questions relating to "the ethnic breakdown of Khuzestan province on the Iraq border, populations in cities, the level of discontent, the percentage of Arabs working in the oil industry, how they were represented in the central government, and their relations and kinship with Iraqi Arabs next door." He speculated that the Marines were probably seeking a better understanding of the region that directly affects them or formulating contingency plans.
The FT said analysts believed that the upsurge in ethnic unrest in Iran was related to the adoption of a federal constitution in Iraq, which has served as a catalyst for a politicisation of economic and cultural grievances.
Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, told the FT that the State Department, not the Pentagon, is running Iran policy. He said the State Department was was "nowhere near the point" of trying to use separatist tendencies among minorities to undermine the regime's authority, adding that they were unsure that such a move would work.
BAFS spokesman Nasser Bani Assad: "US interest in Ahwaz appears to have been generated by the intifada last April, when Iran lost control over parts of Khuzestan province. It is natural that the US authorities would want to commission their own research on the unstable situation in Ahwaz and its effects on Iraq. From what we understand, the Pentagon is gathering its own information separate from the State Department.
"BAFS does not support any invasion of Iran and cautions against government funding for separatist groups. We support the Democratic Solidarity Party of Ahwaz's platform of non-violent direct action, a federal Iranian state and opposition to separatism.
"We believe the international community should regard the Ahwazi issue as a human rights and humanitarian crisis, rather than an issue of military strategy. Ahwazis need land, jobs and democratic freedoms, not bullets and bombs. The UN and its agencies need to be more proactive on the Ahwazi issue to prevent ethnic cleansing."
Click here for the Financial Times report "US marines probe tensions among Iran's ethnic minorities", by Guy Dinmore, 23 February (2/24/2006 12:16:21 AM)