?Is Ahwaz entitled to self-determination

The aim of this article is to figure out whether Ahwaz can be qualified to self -determination under the international law.

The formal and firm stances of most Iranian politician  nationalists figures are utterly clear that they are oppose to recognize the right for self-determination of non-Persian nations that are caged in so-called the integrity of  Iran.

They do believe that the recognition of self-determination right for the oppressed non-Persian nations like Ahwazi people and other non-Persian nations will be a start or an excuse for disintegration of Iran. They must bear in mind that the self _determination is not a sin but it is the right of a people to determine its own destiny.

The Iranian nationalists whose racism have deafened and blinded them to hear and to see the reality are claiming that Ahwazi Arabs, Azari, kurds, Turkamen and Baluchi are not considered nations but they are just a group of ethnic minorities. So, they will not be able to qualify to conceive the right to self-determination under the covenants of international laws.

As it is historically vivid and Known, Ahwaz was occupied by military occupation from Persia state in 20/4/1925. During that era, Sheikh Khazal used to reign over the emirate of Ahwaz whose borders were determined by the will of its Arabic rule. But, the sovereignty and its Arabic rule fell down after the Persia state occupied Ahwaz by force and assassinated Sheikh Khaazl. Before the Persia state occupied Ahwaz the Ahwazian Arabs were a majority in their territory and they were enjoying their Arabic sovereignty without the intervention of Iranian hands. But after that the occupied Persian officials tried to turned Ahwazi  people  to a minority by constructing thousands of settlements as the same as the Israel do in  Palestine . During the past  prolong decades Ahwazi people were oppressing severely by Iranian regimes at the other side there was a systematic ignorance and unjust discrimination and sort of  conspiracy from the neighboring countries to back and support the Ahwazi cause because they did not want to put their political and economic interests at risk with Iran but we cannot deny that there was a number of Arab figures that are not more than a number of fingers of hands who written about the history and the profound civilization of Ahwaz. During the past decades Ahwazi people experienced a long bitter oppression and crackdown and systematic ethnic purification by Iranian regimes but they never gave up and the more oppression of Iranian occupied regimes ,the more commitment of Ahwazi nation to fight and struggle to liberate their occupied country and take their destiny by their hands .

 Let us leave the military occupation of the emirate Ahwaz aside, and raise a question to those it may concern, therefore, do Ahwazi Arabs consider a people or a minority based on the international law? And if they are a minority, what are the features and characteristics of that minority? And if they are a people, what are the features and characteristics of that people?

It is vital to explain some basic facts and concepts regarding the self-determination:

Self-determination – characterized by the International Court of Justice as “the need to pay regard to the freely expressed will of peoples” – is unquestionably a self-evident truth based on, and consistent with, basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The outcome of self-determination could be independence, genuine autonomy, federation, devolution of power (regional self-government), voluntary integration within a state, or some other acceptable political status. It may also involve different resolutions for different areas such as the economic, cultural and social spheres. And Self-determination, as applied to a nation of people, is the principle that a people has the right to freely choose its own political status and to determine its own form of economic, cultural and social development.

The right to self-determination is recognized as a right of all peoples in the United Nations International Bill of Human Rights and of indigenous peoples in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the General Assembly in 2007. See United Nations Treaties and Declarations for more details.

      “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. To be mentioned that the plain meaning of the term “all peoples” includes peoples under colonial or alien subjugation or domination, those under occupation. So, Ahwaz and other non-Persian notions such as south Azarbayjan, Kurdestan, Baluchestan have an undeniable right to pursue their national aspirations and take their national destiny by their hands and build their nation and say to Iran enough is enough for what they have done against these nations because these nations are under the occupation of Iran for years and oppressed and suffocated.

Definition of a People:

While there is no universally accepted definition of people in the international law, the international bodies and scholars have developed some important criteria for identifying the holders of the right to self _determination.

A generally accepted description was developed in 1989 by the UNESCO International Meeting of Experts on Further Study of the Concept of the Rights of Peoples. This description identifies a people as a group of individual human beings who enjoy some or all of the following common features:

۱: a common historical tradition

۲: racial or ethnic identity

۳: cultural homogeneity

۴: linguistic unity

۵: religious or ideological affinity

۶: territorial connection

۷: common economic life

There is no doubt that the Ahwazi Arabs people are one of the oldest peoples in the Middle East region. Despite the fulfillment of every condition for it to be a nation, it remains deprived of its own state and of any political framework to protect its existence, particularities and to ensure its development.

 Here we must also review the international law that defines the precise meaning of minority and other issues that are relating to people and for a start the following should be addressed:

۱: the definition of national minorities in international law

۲: the rights of peoples and national minorities within international law

In the era of the League of Nations, a minority was defined as followed: a “group of citizens of the state, whose members are differentiated from the rest of the population based on ethnicity, religion and language” and those in solidarity with one another to maintain their distinctive characteristics. A minority has two types:

1. The citizens of a foreign state. 2. the citizens of the any state itself, in which they reside.

Although we have more than one definition for a minority during the era of the League of Nations, they all agree on the following points: 1.shared language; 2.Shared culture; 3. common historical fate. This indicates that since the era of the League of Nations the minority has been recognized as ‘people’ or nation but not a state.

Following the above explanation, it is possible to classify minority within three groups: religious minority, linguistic minority, and racial minority (known today as national minority or ethnic minority)

Returning to various laws and international conventions and treaties, we see that the national minority is defined as followed: the national minority identifies itself by its racial specificities, i.e. biological and genetic manifestation, as well as ethnic particularities, i.e. cultural and historical characteristics. The national minority is another element and it is common feeling, awareness and political will for independence. According to this definition we find that national minority (racial minority) conforms fully to the concept of a ‘people’. On the other hand, German professor of international law Kay Heilbronner says that if minority lives within the geographical framework delimited lands and is historically linked to this land, then the minority will be a “people “. The expert of the commission of Human Right, Cristesco, confirms that the presence of a historic relationship with the lands is a prerequisite for a people.

Therefore, the national (racial _ethnic) minority gains status as a people and what distinguishes it today from other minority is its right for self _determination.

According to these international laws  and basic concepts about the self-determination we can conclude that Ahwaz must be entitled to self-determination because Ahwaz has all the components to be called a nation which is under the Iran occupation ,as I mentioned Ahwazi people have not any common features or aspect with Iranian people because Ahwazi people are Arab native speaker, have  a different culture, history ,and costumes and since the Iran occupation they have been struggling to liberate their stolen homeland from Iran.

During the past 76 years of occupation Ahwazi people experienced nothing but oppression, imprisonment, crackdown, systematic Arabic purification, execution, and many other things. it is shame for Iran that exploited Ahwazi lands savagely they even destroyed and polluted the Ahwaz climate and now Ahwaz is the most  highly polluted province in Iran and some cities in Ahwaz such as falahya (also knows Shadegan)and Khafajia (also knows Sosangerd) people are suffering from unusually  high rate of skin ,heart, and kidney diseases due to the continued storage and uses of chemical, biological and other related polluted materials remaining from Iran_ Iraq war and the government has not taken any action to remediate the situation and in Ahwaz the state hospitals are not healthy with insufficient numbers of doctors and medicines and the death rate is unacceptably high.

  I would like to add additional information for readers who maybe have modest information on Ahwaz. Ahwazi people have lived for thousands of years on their historic land and they have their shared Arabic language and culture, history and consciousness, and are proud of this. In the 1925 Ahwaz has been occupied by Iran but before that it was independent country with a determined borders and it is fully ruling its sovereignty. Ahwaz was victim of its rich and wealthy lands that the malicious hands of Iran exploited and destroyed its environment. Ahwaz has the second largest oil with four billion barrels while Ahwazi Arab populations are proximately living under the abject poverty line and Ahwazi Arab children are suffering from highly malnutrition and severe anemia .Iran governments have always treated the Ahwazi Arabs as the second class citizens, Iran demolish and confiscate Ahwazi lands and the Ahwazi houses just like Israel, the ethnic oppression and ethnic cleansing that carried out against Ahwazi Arabs are unspeakable .Iran has no mercy on everything that is related to Ahwaz i.e.in relation to the Ahwaz environment a large proportion of Ahwazi Arab population depends on farming and fishing for their life. Yet, the Iranian government is carrying out a river diverting project that the local water of Ahwaz is redirecting to the dry areas of Iran such as ethnic Persian provinces of Yazd and Rafsanjan leading to further impoverishment of indigenous Arab and an aggressive form of persianization has been pursued by regime to impose forced migration of indigenous Arabs of their homeland and destroy and confiscate their lands and creation of military industrial of free zone from 2005 has involved a massive expulsion of Ahwazi Arabs and destruction of their villages and up to 50,0000  Ahwazi Arabs could be displaced by the creation of 5000 square kilometers for Security zone stretching 30 Kilometers along the Shat Al_ ARAB waters away. The government had not cleaned up the rivers from the toxic materials of security zone which systematically pour into the Karoon and Karkhe rivers that contributed to the problems of pollution and dying of many species of fish .every year many of Ahwazi Arabs displace from their homes by the devastating floods that also destroy the crops of Ahwazi Arabs farmers. As a result, Ahwazi Arabs farmers experience hunger and starvation and finance loss without any compensation from the Iran government.

The official unemployment rate in all over of Iran is 12percentbut in Ahwaz cities such as Almmuhammerah (also knows Khoramshahr) and Abadan the amount of unemployment rate is 30 percent and sometime reaches to 5o percent respectively. The high poverty raise, as a result of racial discrimination and unemployment paralyze the Ahwazi Arabs economically, socially and culturally.

While the illiteracy rate in Iran is about 10 to 18percent, this is over 50 percent among the Arabs men in Ahwaz (Khouzestan)and even higher for Ahwazi women .the indigenous Ahwazi Arabs students abandon school that rate 30 percent in the elementary level, 50 percent in secondary level and 70 percent in high school because they force to study in the official Farsi language which is not Thiers. There is not any official institute for teaching Arabic in Ahwaz and learning Arabic is just confined to religious study for people who want to be a clergyman consequently the Ahwazi Arab are semi learner in their native language  and are struggling to learn Arabic  despite the denial of their Arabic language .

In fact, the education system in Iran promoted and enforced a superficial sense of nationalism based on Persian language and identity. Therefore, the multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual character of Iranian was explicitly denied and oppressed.

According to 19 and 15 of Iran constitution all non-Persian ethnic minorities have right for education in their native language but fascist Persian regime violates the rights of learning Arabic in Ahwaz and other non-Persian languages such as Kurdish in east Kurdistan, and Turkish in south Azerbaijan. in fact shortly after the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in the1925,all non-Persian ethnic group and nationalities in Iran were denied the right to education in our own language .Notwithstanding the fact that we  as non-Persian nation such as Arabs ,Azeris ,Kurds, Baluchs, Turkemens, and others constituted the numerical majority in the country ,all the Persian regimes from Pahlavi to the Islamic Republic are sought to supplant our languages, cultures, and histories with those of Persian minority. As non-Persian nations, we were subjected to open and shameful acts of linguistic, cultural annihilation, and forced assimilation.

We as Ahwazi Arabs believe that after the devastating occupation of Iran of Ahwaz and other non-Persian regions that experienced nothing just bloodshed, crackdown, abject poverty, and many other things, must have the right to control their own destiny through ballet box rather than bullet box to pursue their national aspirations and build up their nations and overcome the legacy of the country so-called Iran that dominated on these oppressed nations for years.

Self –determination is not a sin or terrorist demand but it is legitimate right for all nations that are under the occupation or domination to take their national destiny by their hands and pursue their national prosperity.

Written by Rahim Hamid

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self_determination_international_law

http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/A86EB2C8A0C1BF9B85257B5C004CF42A