Below is a letter from UK-based Ahwazi organisations to the editor of the Sunday Telegraph in relation to an article that made unsubstantiated allegations that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is funding and organising Ahwazi separatist organisations to carry out bomb attacks in Iran. Click here to read the Sunday Telegraph article .
If the Sunday Telegraph's reports of CIA involvement in bomb attacks in Ahwaz are correct, then it is clear the US government is not listening to the Ahwazi Arab movement. If it had, then the first demand it would have heard would not be arms but the deployment of UN human rights observers to report on the Iranian regime's ethnic cleansing of Ahwazi Arabs from their homeland in Khuzestan, the denial of their cultural rights and the African levels of poverty they are forced to endure.
Iranian opposition groups representing Arabs, Azeris, Balochis and Kurds have repeatedly stated that they do not receive and do not seek to receive financial or military support from Western governments. They want to retain their political independence and do not want to be pawns in geopolitical power games.
Ahwazi Arabs know more than anyone the price of war, following eight years of the Iran-Iraq war which was fought over their homeland. They no longer want to be a cause that foreign powers pick up and discard when it suits them. They want a permanent political settlement of their long-standing grievances against the chauvinist regime in Tehran. War will only give Iran more excuses to persecute its minorities.
Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation (AHRO)
Ahwaz Community Association of the UK (ACA-UK)
British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS)
Labels: activism
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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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