Portuguese Socialist MEP Paulo Casaca, the head of the European Parliament's delegation to NATO, has slammed the Iranian regime's "show trials" of Ahwazi Arabs.
He has also raised the possibility that the regime itself is responsible for terrorist attacks in Ahwaz in order to blame them on the Ahwazis, who hard-liners have accused of "waging war on God".
Mr Casaca has previously called Iran's treatment of its Ahwazi Arab population "ethnic cleansing", referring to the regime's mass expulsions of the indigenous Arab population of Khuzestan.
Following the latest wave of executions, he told the British Ahwazi Friendship Society that "the Iranian show trials seem to be heading still further than its Stalinist predecessors: people are convicted for putting bombs in the city in spite the fact that they were in custody while the bombings take place. It might be a particularly cynical way to confess that the State planted the bombs in the first place.
"The totalitarian theocracy that is oppressing Iranians and exporting its fanatic model elsewhere in the Middle East is nowhere so bararian as with its own citizens of Arab descent. How can the Arab World go on ignoring this?"
The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a British think tank on foreign policy, has also brought attention to the persecution of Ahwazi Arabs following the executions. In an article on the HJS website, the society's Greater Middle East Section Director Martyn Frampton says: "Determined to secure access to energy resources and to use Khuzestan as a launch-pad for interfering in Iraq (which it borders), Ahmadinejad's regime has stepped up pre-existing repression of the province's Ahwazi Arab population. Falsely accused of 'disloyalty' to the state, the Ahwazis have been exposed to abuses ranging from cultural repression to whole-scale 'ethnic cleansing.'"
Mr Frampton also states that Iranian accusations of British responsibility for the Ahwaz bomb attacks, however unfounded, "mean that the UK, whether it wants to be or not, is involved." He criticises the West's fixation on the nuclear issue, while ignoring the problem of human rights abuse in Iran.
On Saturday, Ahwazi Arabs staged a demonstration outside the European Commission's offices in London calling on the European Union to stop being silent on the Iranian regime's imprisonment of pregnant Ahwazi women and children. They called on the EU to help protect the Ahwazis from Iran's violent ethnic cleansing project.
Links
"While the West Fiddles, Iran's People ..." , Martyn Framption, Henry Jackson Society
Iran is ethnic cleansing Ahwazis claims senior European politician , British Ahwazi Friendship Society, 19 January 2006
Labels: activism , human rights
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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