01 June, 2009
by Professor Gholam-Reza Sabri-Tabrizi, President of World Azerbaijanis Congress
The Special Representative of Switzerland Parliament members and The United Nations High Commission on Human Rights
The situation on Islamic Republic of Iran, With special reference to South Azerbaijan,
First, we deeply appreciate your giving us an opportunity to bring our peoples’ deep grievances to your attention. We also would like to thank you for defending all those whose basic and ethnic human rights have been grossly violated, especially millions of Azerbaijani Turks that have been exposed to forced assimilation and Persianization. We hope you will give due voice to over 30 million Azerbaijanis in your reports to the UN General Assembly. Helping us in our efforts to fight the systematic destruction of ethnic identities will promote freedom and equality worldwide. Only if you report these injustices to the world community can proper actions be taken to terminate the systematic destruction of ethnic identity and gross violation of human rights in Iran over the last 70 years. Azerbaijanis are looking for your help.
Iran is a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country. Persians (Farsis), Azerbaijanis (Azerbaijani Turks), Kurds, Arabs, Loris, Beluchies and Turkomans have lived in Iran for thousands of years. Until the 1920s, they all retained and promoted their unique culture, history and language, without harming each other’s identities. However, the inception of the Pahlavi dynasty’s supremacist policy in the 20s has endangered this semi-harmonious way of life.
With his alleged national unity policy, Reza Shah Pahlavi designed a plan, forcing all non-Persians to sacrifice their ethnic identity and language, in order to fulfill his vision of purely Persian Iran.
Unfortunately, his successors, including the Islamic Republic, followed and perfected his inhumane conduct. Subsequent results have been brutal against all persons not of Persian descent. Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Loris, Beluchis, Arabs and Turkomans have been under tremendous Persianization.
Iran’s reformist leader, President Khatami, deceived the global community with his talk of “dialogue between civilizations,” meanwhile suppressing the people of Iran by ignoring Human Rights in general and Azerbaijani Turks in particular. However the reaction of World Human Rights’ organizations to this assimilation and rather cultural genocide has been very slow and ineffective due to lack of objective information from South Azerbaijan (Iran).
More than 30 million Azerbaijanis are on the verge of losing their language and rich cultural heritage, which they have preserved for thousands of years. They are paying heavy tolls to obtain Iran’s purported “national unity.” This “national unity” with “Islamic” and fanatically supported theocratic government is determined to annihilate Azerbaijani national and ethnic identity, the Iranian government has participated in forced assimilation and other methods of Persianization to create a monolingual “national unity.” We would like to briefly highlight some of them:
Policy on Language
The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran in the article 15 claims: “The state and common language and script of Iran is Persian. Documents. Correspondence, official texts and text books shall be in this language and script. However, the use of local and ethnic language in the press and for the mass media and the teaching of their literature shall be allowed, besides the Persian language.”
The Constitution Revolution in 1905-1911, the Democratic movement in 1945-46 and subsequent agreement by the Iranian government to guarantee ethnic rights as well as the constitution of Islamic Republic have for some degree taken ethnic grievances into consideration. However, the Iranian governments have all been against honoring their promises and the constitution.
The Iranian government has banned the Azerbaijani Turkish language in schools. Education is available only in the Persian language. Many first grade school children struggle to understand school books written in Persian. Those children unaccustomed to Persian suffer high drop out rates. To prevent this, some parents teach their children Persian as their primary language, rather than their native Azerbaijani Turkish. Said Persian instruction usually comes at the expense of children’s mastery of Azerbaijani Turkish, thus children are encouraged to replace Persian with their mother tongue for social and job advancement.
Television and radio broadcasts help to propagate the hybridized Azerbaijani Turkish, considered a local language. So-called “local languages,” however, are rarely used and thus marginalized, with Persian predominating Iranian media. Azerbaijani Turkish, in fact, has no place in Islamic Republic’s media.
Discrimination operates in other ways, as well. In cities like Tabriz, where Azerbaijanis comprise more than 99% of the population, the judiciary and government systems still must operate solely in Persian. Incredulously, proceedings for a lawsuit comprised of a Azerbaijani plaintiff and an Azerbaijani defendant in a Azerbaijani city, with an Azerbaijani judge, prosecutor and defense lawyer, must be conducted in, not Azerbaijani Turkish, but Persian.
The Iranian government’s destruction of language is one part of the multi-pronged attack to eliminate Azerbaijani ethnic identity. If this policy persists, Azerbaijani identity is doomed to perish.
The following CARTOONS show the attitude and view of Iran Islamic Republic and Persian chauvinism
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