The Federal Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan (FDMA), a pro-federalist party representing Iran's Azeri community, sent a letter of solidarity to the Ahwazi Arabs demonstrating in Brussels on Saturday.
Ahwazi groups from around Europe gathered outside the European Parliament to draw attention to human rights abuses in Al-Ahwaz (Khuzestan), including the killing of unarmed demonstrators, the imprisonment and torture of Ahwazi children and pregnant women related to opposition activists and the government's land confiscation programme. The protest marked the first anniversary of the Ahwazi intifada against the Iranian regime.
The FDMA said it stood with "our Arab compatriots in their struggle for a just cause, in proclaiming of their denied political and cultural identity." It attacked the "systematic political, cultural and economic oppression by the successive governments in power in our country" and the "deliberate dislocation of indigenous Arabs, cultural assimilation and expulsion of them from their lands by subtle methods or direct coercion." It added that it stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Ahwazis campaigning for freedom, equality, democracy and cultural oppression and pledged its "political and moral support for a common struggle for a democratic and federative Iran, the common country and fatherland of all nationalities in Iran."
The FDMA is a member of the Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran (CNFI), which also includes the Democratic Solidarity Party of Al-Ahwaz (DSPA).
Links
Federal Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan
Congress of Nationalities for a Federal Iran
Democratic Solidarity Party of Al-Ahwaz
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